EXPLANAT.& UNDERSTANDING IN THE HUMAN SCI, 3/E (OIP)

Personalism is understood today as the name of an important current in twentiethcentury thought which inspired by the Christian and humanistic traditions of the West has sought to deepen our understanding of the meaning and value of human personhood. Opposing both individualism and collectivism personalism has stressed the uniqueness of each person the meaning and value of interpersonal relations and the unity that holds persons together and is ultimately also personal in itself the person of God. Personalisms insights into the nature of personhood have broad implications for our view of ethics politics education and religion. The history of personalism has however been poorly understood. Jan Olof Bengtsson shows that personalism began as early as the eighteenth century and was a central international current of thought throughout the nineteenth century that it was in fact more characteristic of the nineteenth century than of the twentieth.