Homo Amans: A Personalist Response

Abstract

The Homo amans project has called for a re-examination of the notion of persons as Homo economicus, an outdated notion that does not fully account for the whole human person. The authors have proposed the concept of Homo amans as a model for considering the nature of persons and their role in the economic sphere. This essay responds to the authors’ initial challenge from the perspective of the philosophy of personalism, specifically in the areas of philosophical anthropology, the virtues, some aspects of contemporary neuroscience, and how these might be brought into dialogue with economic theory.