PERFORMATIVE UTTERANCE
176beings should aspire and strive for per-
fection. A perfectionist need not believe
that human beings can actually attain
perfection, but they should still seek it.
Most perfectionists are not utilitarians
and they believe that perfection involves
more than the cultivation of pleasure or
happiness.
PERFORMATIVE UTTERANCE. An
utterance that accomplishes an act such
as the making of a vow. In a marriage
ceremony, two people uttering, “I do,”
intentionally can bring about a marriage.
Announcing that you forgive someone
may also be performative, either actually
conferring forgiveness on someone or
announcing that you will come to a state
in which you will bear no resentment
toward the wrong-doer.
PERSONALISM. A movement which
gives a central role to persons in philoso-
phy of God, ethics, and theology. Borden
Parker Bowne is considered a founding
member. Other prominent personalists
include Edgar Sheffield Brightman and
Peter Bertocci at Boston University.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was influenced
by his personalist professors at Boston
University.
PERSONS, PERSONAL IDENTITY. A
philosophy of persons and personal iden-
tity is central to a philosophy of the trin-
ity, human birth and death, and the
standing of nonhuman animals. The con-
cept of being a person is fraught with
moral consequences. If personhood is not
identical with being human, this opens
the door to recognizing nonhuman ani-
mal and transcendent beings as persons,
but it also opens the door to questioning
whether all human beings are persons.
An example of the concept of being a
person not essentially linked to humans
would be: a subject who can think, reason,
desire, and act with a memory by which
the subject may understand itself existing
over time.PERSPECTIVALISM. The view that
truth and falsehood are features of per-
spectives or points of view. Nietzsche
defended a form of perspectivalism. One
challenge facing the theory is that it seems
that the truth of perspectivalism cannot
be a matter of perspectives, because from
the perspective of many philosophers
perspectivalism is false. See also ETHICS.PHENOMENOLOGY. From the Greek
phainomenon, meaning “that which
appears or is seen,” and logos, meaning
“study.” A disciplined method that gives
central attention to experience and appear-
ances. As a formal philosophical method, it
was advanced by the German philosopher
Edmund Husserl (1859–1938).PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA (c. 20 BCE–
c. 50 CE). A Jewish philosopher influenced