Joseph Torchia--"Exploring Personhood" (Book Discussion)

Joseph Torchia (O.P.). Exploring Personhood: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Human Nature. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008.

Here are some things I observed about Torchia's text:

1) I do not believe there is any question about Torchia's scholarly integrity since he seems to handle the data in a fair manner and offers comments that satisfactorily represent the proposed object of his inquiry. I would also note that Torchia's approach generally is objective although he makes clear his perspective from the outset (see his Preface). A large portion of the book is historical.

2) There are a number of insights in Torchia's work. Particular insights can be found in the concluding portion of his chapter on postmodernism where he examines the role that incommensurability plays in postmodernist dialogue. After discussing Thomas Kuhn and Alasdair MacIntyre (inter alios), Torchia offers an assessment of MacIntyre's Thomism, which entails lauding the apparent success of his Enlightenment critique while simultaneously criticizing fundamental aspects of MacIntyre's thought. The chapter on postmodernism additionally contains information pertaining to debates on what constitutes a person or the possibility of there being "non-human persons" or "human non-persons."

3) Torchia writes: "This work is broad in scope, covering the Pre-Socratics to postmodernism, with an assessment of what transpired during the intervening 2,500 years. This volume is by no means an exhaustive history of the philosophical understanding of human nature, personhood, and the self. Rather, it uses the history of Western philosophy as the framework in which to explore critical problems pertinent to these three topics" (Preface, xiii).

4) Torchia arranges the chapters of his book as follows: The Pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Rene Descartes, David Hume, Postmodernism, Our Interpersonal Journey, Epilogue. Each chapter contains a subtitle that helps the reader to focus and there are discussion questions as well as end notes that accompany each chapter. Torchia quotes a number of primary texts while offering full explanations of what he thinks the primary literature is saying; furthermore, he gives sufficient historical background information within the chapters. The book's content accentuates the thought of each philosopher respecting human nature and personhood. For example, Torchia supplies an adequate historical account of Hume's moral psychology and his concept of the self as a "bundle of perceptions." The conceptual nexus between Sir Isaac Newton and David Hume is also sufficiently explained.

Torchia's Exploring Personhood can be used to supplement the Leslie Stevenson human nature text since Torchia's work provides more historical background and fuller accounts of philosophical passages. Moreover, this book introduces beginning students to some of the primary literature although it does not contain major sections from Plato or Aristotle (etc.). Torchia's expositions or philosophical claims are clear, and his observations are fair, yet incisive.

My criticism might be the somewhat "dull" manner in which certain parts of the material is written. Furthermore, Torchia composed this book in an abstract manner: he does not supply simple explanations to popularize his topic.

There is no doubt in my mind about the value of the material; Torchia's chapter on postmodernism especially appeared to strike a chord with students in terms of its relevance. So did the chapter on Descartes and Aquinas. But I thought the discussion questions at the end of each chapter were a bit labored at times, the sentence structure was hard to follow every now and again, and the book started off rather slowly. I would add that the vocabulary often assumes a certain erudition on the part of its reader. Nevertheless, I liked the overall constitution of the chapters.

There is much to commend in this work, including its clarity and objectivity. Most of the chapters remain focused on the subject matter but there are times when Torchia seems to introduce subject matter that should have been omitted or possibly introduced in another context. For example, see the chapter on Plato.

I now leave you with a few sample sentences from this work:

"Aristotle broadly defines substance as what is neither predicable of something nor a property. The chief sense of Aristotelian substance, then, is the notion of an underlying substratum of which everything else is predicated but which is not itself predicated of anything else" (page 75).

"In its broadest terms, then, Aristotle designates the soul as the principle of the nutritive (or vegetative), sensitive, and rational (or intellective) powers or faculties. Each faculty, in turn, finds it psychic counterpart in a specific kind of soul (plant, animal, or human souls, respectively). Plants, for example, are capable of movement connected with nourishment, growth, decay, and reproduction; animals of sense appetites, sense perception, and movement from place to place; and humans of rational knowing and willing" (page 86).

"Humans occupy the hinterland of being, sharing in the aspect of Soul that animates the material world. In this respect, they stand on the periphery between being and nonbeing, between the eternal realm of contemplation and a temporal world that bears but a faint imprint of the higher intelligible order" (page 105).