Person

"Person� is a very ambiguous word (as most of our
words when isolated). The outstanding vagueness of the
terms used in philosophical discourse, like "action� or
"mind�, is an essential characteristic of language that
provides the set upon which philosophy relies. Indeed,
inquiries into certainty, objectivity and many other
important metaphysical problems would never arise if this
indeterminacy were not present in language. The history
of philosophy as such can be considered as a quest for
meaningful statements on which we can ground our
judgment. This search for certainty has an ethical
dimension, since it discloses what we have in common and
what we cannot share. An important feature of this ethical
dimension is that the investigation of "certainty� is, at the
same time, a struggle against arbitrariness. However, we
must be careful while engaging into this exploration, by
refusing to analyze or equate certainty with goodness or
correctness. The danger of this attractive analysis is
evident in our religious and political history.
I believe that Wittgenstein can help us in
elucidating some of these difficult issues. The problem of
the identity of persons, or what constitutes a human being,
pervades through philosophical texts. The general
strategy of this paper is to link the issue of certainty, as
explained by Wittgenstein, with the concept of person.