Relationals

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In a world facing climate change, pollution, epidemics, and violence, there is a pressing need for thoughtful collective responses. If individuals, institutions, and communities shift their priorities from preserving privileges to serving communal and relational values, innovative solutions to global issues may emerge. This exploration is framed by two key debates regarding language and personhood. The first, relevant to archeologists and paleontologists, investigates the moment when a person becomes distinct from a human being, marked by the emergence of human language. The second debate, involving linguists and philosophers, focuses on the unique capacities for full human language use, extending beyond the combinatorial language of Neanderthals to encompass deep linguistic and philosophical reflection on symbolic discourse itself. This empirical and philosophical essay aims to shed light on these debates and encourage a fundamental shift in understanding persons as relational beings rather than merely individual or social entities. Peter McCormick, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Permanent Member of the Institut International de Philosophie, previously served as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ottawa and holds an emeritus position in Moral Philosophy at the Internationale Akademie für Philosophie im Fürstentum Liechtenstein.