Endorsements
Prof. Dr. Juan Manuel Burgos
Founder of the Spanish Association of Personalism and the Ibero-American Association of Personalism
‘‘Personalism has a beautiful past, and a more splendid future if we continue to build on what has already been achieved. That is why new initiatives that want to work in this direction, such as the Institute for Christian Personalism, are very welcome.’’
Dr. Emma Cohen de Lara
Senior lecturer at Amsterdam University College
‘‘All around us there are people who feel invisible, unseen, and misunderstood. As social creatures, we need the human connection, but in fragmented and polarized times this seems so difficult to maintain. The tradition of Christian personalism offers a treasure trove of sources that encourage us to see the other person and make them feel seen. Engagement with this tradition helps us set aside our prejudices and pay full attention to those around us. It can help us revive genuine conversation, both in private and public life.‘‘
Dr. Patrick Overeem
Associate professor Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
“Ecce homo! Truly seeing the human person, recognizing essential greatness amidst existential misery both in others and in ourselves, is one of the most important things we need to learn again. It is also, fortunately, what the Institute for Christian Personalism aims to help us with.”
Dr. Elisa Grimi
Executive Director of the European Society for Moral Philosophy; Associated Scholar of the Hildebrand Project, U.S.A.
The new ICP is a great contribution in Europe. An initiative that leads to looking at the essence of the person, at the heart of man in his authenticity. As the well-known thinker Dietrich von Hildebrand, a staunch Catholic opponent of National Socialism and an exponent of the current Realist Phenomenology, states: "In many ways the heart is more the real self of the person than his intellect or will''. Card. Joseph Ratzinger wrote of him: "I am personally convinced that, when, at some time in the future, the intellectual history of the Catholic Church in the twentieth century is written, the name of Dietrich von Hildebrand will be most prominent among the figures of our time” (Foreword to The Soul of a Lion). I am truly honored to have participated in the 2024 Summer School in Austria in the company of eminent scholars and brilliant scholars of different nationalities, committed to real social welfare, a light of hope in our times.
Mgr. Everard de Jong,
Auxiliary bishop of Roermond, Bishop for the armed forces of the Netherlands, philosopher.
‘‘In a letter of 1968 to the French theologian Henri de Lubac (1896-1991), cardinal Karol Wojtyła (1920-2005), who later became pope Johannes Paulus II (1978-2005), already wrote: ‘The evil of our times consists in the first place in a kind of degradation, indeed in a pulverization, of the fundamental uniqueness of each human person. This evil is even much more of the metaphysical order than of the moral order. To this disintegration, planned at times by atheistic ideologies, we must oppose, rather than sterile polemics, a kind of "recapitulation" of the inviolable mystery of the person....’ I fully agree with that, and cordially commend this new institute!’’
Prof. dr. Sophie van Bijsterveld
Professor of Law, Religion and Society, Radboud University, Nijmegen
‘‘One of the unique contributions of Christianity to Western thought is the idea of personhood. It is through the Christian concept of the human person that the individual has become ‘the organizing social role in the West’ (Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual. The Origins of Western Liberalism). I greatly welcome a modern institute devoted to the intellectual inheritance of, continued philosophical reflection on and the study of the political consequences of this great Christian notion.’’
Mr. dr. lic. Michiel Peeters pr.
University pastor at Tilburg University
‘‘The Italian educator, Luigi Giussani observed that “Christianity did not arise as a religion, but arose as a powerful love for the human, in the concreteness of the person, in the precision of the individual born of a woman.” May the beautiful and timely initiative of the Institute be marked by this passion for the person, and contribute to understanding, deepening, and expanding it!’’
