Eliza Kaya-Mattey, BA Philosophy, Ethics & Religion

Dog is a Person, God is a Person

Is it possible that a dog is a person? Is God a person? What is a person? If you’re a really good person, can you supersede personhood and become a higher being instead? These aren’t frequently asked questions, but they are important ones nonetheless.

Many people believe that God is not a person because God is a God. Similarly, many people also think a dog is not a person because a dog is a dog. But what if humans aren’t the only type of person? Well, they’re not.

In this presentation, I will argue a paradigm of personhood that spans from dogs to God. Using a theoretical framework provided by popular philosophers such as Locke, Hume and Descartes, as well as the more contemporary Mary Midgley, I will address two main God-person concerns: the “bodiless God vs. agency” issue and the problem of anthropocentric personhood. What emerges from the debate is a proposition on “being a person” that reframes the hierarchical relationship between “God the Divinity” and “Human the Creation” into a mutual communion of “God the Person” and “Human the Person”.