mauss_category_of_the _person.pdf

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A category o the human mind: the notion o

person; the notiono

selfMarcel Mausstranslated by W .D . Halls)

I: The subject : the person personne)My audience and readers will have to show great indulgence, for mysubject is really enormous, and in these fifty-five minutes shall be abl eonly to give you some idea of how to treat it. It deals with nothing lessthan how to explain to you the way in which one of the categories of thehum an mind one of those ideas we believe to be innate orig inate dand slowly developed over many centuries and through numerous vicis-situdes, so that even today it is still imprecise, delicate and fragile, onerequiring further elaboration. This is the idea of person personne), theidea of self moi).Each one of us finds it natural, clearly determined inthe depths of his consciousness, completely furnished with the funda-ments of the morality which flows from it. For this simplistic viewo ~ t shistory and present value we m ust substitute a m ore precise view.

A note on the principle underlying these kinds of researchIn so doing you will see an example one that is perhaps not up to wh atyou expected of the work of the French school of sociology. We ha veconcentrated m ost especially on the social history of the categories of thehuman m ind. We attem pt to explain them one by one, using very simply,and as a tem porary expedient, the list of Aristotelian categoriesZ as o u rpoint of departure. We describe particular forms of them in certain civ-ilisations and, by means of this comparison, try to discover in wh at co n-

sists their unstable nature, and their reasons for being as they are. It wasin this way that, by developing the notion ofmanq Hube rt and I believedwe had found not only the archaic basis for magic, but also thev ry


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M. Mauss category of the human mind

general, and probably very primitive, form of the notion of cause. It wasin this way that Hube rt described certain features of the notion of time.Likewise our much regretted colleague, friend and pupil, Czam owki, be-gan - but, alas, never finished - his theory of the 'parcelling ou t ofex-tension', in other words, of one of the features and certain aspects of the

notion of space. Likewise also, my uncle and teacher, Durkheim, hasdealt with the notion of the whole, after we had examined together thenotion of genus. have been preparing for many years studies on thenotion of substance. Of these 1 have published only a very recondite ex-tract which is not worth reading in its present form. I will mention toyou also the numerous times that Lucien Lhy-Bruhl has touched uponthese questions in those wo rksof his which deal with the primitive men-tality, especially, as regards our subject, wh at he has termed 'the primi-tive mind' 1 rime primitive). He, however, does not concentrate on thestudy of each special category, not even on the one we are going to study.But rather, in reviewing all of them, including the category of 'self', doeshe seek particularly to ascertain what element of the 'pre-logical' is con-tained in this study of the mentality of peoples, in relation to anthropo l-ogy and ethnology rather than history.

If you will permit me, let us proceed more methodically and restrictourselves t o the study of o ne single category, thatof the 'self' rnoi). Thiswill be amply sufficient. In the present s hort space of time, I shall conductyou, with some daring and at inordinate speed, across the world andthrough time, guiding you from Australia to our Europeansocieties fromextremely ancient history to that of our own times. More extensive re-search studies could be undertaken, each one of which could be gone intomuch m ore deeply, but I can only claim to sho w you how such researchmight be organised. What intend to d o is to provide you with a sum -mary catalogue of the forms tha t the notion has assumed a t various timesand in various places, and to sh ow you how it has ended up by taking onflesh and blood, substance and form, an anatomical structure, right upto modem times, when at last it has become clear and precise in ourcivilisations (in our Europ ean ones, alm ost in our lifetime), but not yetin all of them. I can only rough out the beginnings of the sketch o r theclay model. I a m still far from having finished the whole block or carvedthe finished portrait.

Thus I shall not discuss the linguistic problem which, fo r the sake of

completeness, should indeed be tackled. In no way do I maintain thatthere has ever been a tribe, a language, in which the term I , 'me' je,

moi) (you will note that we still decline it with two words) has neverexisted, or that it has not expressed something clearly represented. Thisis far from the case: as well as possessing the pronoun , a very large nu m-ber of languages are conspicuous for their use of many 'positional' suf-fixes, which deal for the m ost part with the relationships existing in ti me

and space between the speaker (the subject) and the object about whichhe is speaking. Here the 'self' rnoi) is everywhere present, but is notexpressed by 'me' rnoi) or 'I' je). However, in this vast domain of lan-guages my scholarship is only mediocre. My investigation will concernsolely law an d m orality.

No r shall 1 speak to you of psychology, any more than I shall of lin-guistics. shall leave aside everything which relatesto the 'self' rnoi), theconscious personality as such. Let me merely say that it is plain, pa rtic u-larly to us, that there has never existed a human being who has not beenaware, no t only of his body, but also at the same time of his individuality,both spiritual and physical. The psychology of this awareness has madeimmense strides over the last century, for almost a hundred years. Allneurologists, French, English and German, among them my teacher Ri-bot, our esteemed colleague Head, and others, have amassed a great dea lof knowledge a bou t this subject and the way this particular aw arenes s isformed, functions, deteriorates, deviates and dissolves, and about theconsiderable part it plays.

My subject is entirely different, and independentof this. It is one relat-ing to social history. Over the centuries, in numerou s societies, how ha sit slowly evolved - not the sense of 'self' moi) - but the notion or con -cept tha t men in different ages have formed of it? W hat wish to sho w

you is the succession of forms that this concept has taken on in the lifeof men in different societies, according to their systemsof law, religion,customs, social structures and mentality.

One thing may alert you to the drift of my exposition: I shall showyou how recent is the word 'self' rnoi), used philosophically; how recentthe category of 'self' rnoi), the cult of the 'self' rnoi) (its aberra-

tion) ; and how recent even the respect of 'self' rnoi), in particular t herespect of others (its normal state).

Let us therefore draw up a classification. Making n o claim to recon sti-tute a general history from pre-historical times to the present day, let usfirst study some of the forms assumed by the notion of 'self' rnoi). W e

shall then launch into historical times with the Greeks and work ou t fr omthere some definite linkages. Beforehand, with n o other concern save th a t


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So much for persons an d the clan. The 'fraternities' are even morecomplicated. Among the Pueblo of Zufii, and clearly among the otherstoo he Pueblos of Sia and Tusayan, in the Hop i tribe, thoseof Walpiand Mishongnovi he names do not merely correspondto the organi-sation of the clan, its processions and ceremonies, whether private or

public. They correspon d principally to ranks in the fraternities, in whatthe original terminologyof Powell and the Bureau of American Ethnol-ogy designated 'Fraternities', viz., 'Secret Societies', which w e might veryexactly compa reto the Colleges of the Rom an Religion. There were prep-arations in secret, and numer ous solemn rituals reserved for the Societyof the Men (Kaka or Koko, Koyemshi, etc.), but also public demonstra-tions almost theatrical performances and, especially at Zufii, andabove all among the Hopi, m ask dances, particularly th oseof the Katch-ina. These were visits of spirits, represented by their delegates upon e art h,who bore their titles. All this, which has now become a spectacle fortour sts, was still very muc h alive less than fifty years ago , and is so eventoday.

Miss B. Freire Marecco (n ow Mrs Aitken) and M rs E. Clew Parsonscontinue to add t o our knowledge andto corrobora te it.

Moreover, let us add that these livesof individuals, the driving forceof clans and of the societies superimposed upon them, not only sustainthe life of things and of the gods, but the 'propriety' of things. They notonly sustain the life of men, both here and in th e after-life, but also therebirth of individuals (men ), sole heirs of those that bear the ir forenam es(the reincarnation of women is a completely different matter). Thus, inshort, you will understand that with the Pueblo we already see a notion

of the 'person' personne)or individual, absorbed in his clan, but alreadydetached from it in the ceremonial by the mask, his title, his rank, hisrole, his survival and his reappearance on earth in one of his descendantsendowed w ith the sa me status, forenames, titles, rights an d functions.

The American North-W estIf I had time, ano ther group of Am erican tribes would well deserve inthis study a detailed analysis of the same facts. These are the tribesof theAmerican North-W est and it is to the great credit of your Royal An-thropological Institute and the British Association to have instigated acomplete analysis of their institutions. This was begun by Dawso n, the

great geologist, an d so magnificently continued, if not com pleted, by thegreat works of Boas and his Indian assistants, Hunt and Tate, and bythose of Sapir, Swanto n and Barbeau, etc.

A category of the human mind 7

Here also is posed, in different terms but ones identical in nature andfunction, the same problem hat of the name, the social position a ndthe legal and religious 'birthright' of every free man, and even more so,of every noble an d prince.

shall take as a starting-point the best knownof these important so-

aetie s, the Kwakiutl, and confine myself only to some broa d facts.One word of caution: just as with the Pueblos, so also with the Indian s

of the North-West, we must not thinkof anything in any way primitive.Firstly, one section of these Indians, in fact those in the North , the f li ng itand Haida , speak languages which according to Sapir are tonal lan guag esrelated to those derived from a root which it has been agreed to callproto Sino Tibetan Burman. And even, if I may tell you of one of myimpressions as an ethnographer f not an 'armchair' one, at least'museum' one have a very stron g recollection of a display ex hib itconcerning the Kwakiutl, the work of the esteemed Putnam, one ofthefounders of the ethnological section of the American Mu seumof Natura lHistory. It was a very large ceremonial boat, with figures life-size, wi thall their religious and legal paraphernalia, which represented the Ha-matse, the cannibal princes, arriving from the seato carry out a ri tu aldoubtless a marriage. With their very rich robes, their crownsof redcedar bark, their crewmen less sumptuously attired but nonetheless ma g-nificent, they gave me an exact impression of what, for example, No rt h-em China in the very remote past might have looked like. I believe thatthis boat, with its somewhat romanticised representations, is no longerexhibited; it is no longer the fashion in our ethnograph ic museums. N omatter, for at least this one had had its effect upon me. Even the Indianfaces vividly recalled t o me th e faces of the 'Paleo-Asiatics' (so calledbecause we do not know under whatto classify their languages). And,from this point in civilisation and of settlement, we have still to reckonwith many long and varied developments, revolutions and new forma-tions that ou r esteemed colleague, Franz Boas, perhaps w ith un due ha ste,is attemptin g to trace back.

The fact remains that all these Indians, an d in particular the Kw akiut l,installed in their settlements a whole social and religious system wh ere,in a vast exchange of rights, goods an d services, property, dances, cere -monies, privileges and ranks, persons a s well as groups give satisf actio nto one anothe r. We see very clearly how, from classes and clans, 'hu ma n

persons' adjust to one another and how, from these, the gestures of th eactors in a drama fit together. Here all the actors are theoretically t hesum total of all free men. But this time the drama is more than an a es-


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thetic performance. It is religious, and at the sam e time it is cosmic, myth-ological, social and personal.

Firstly, as with the Zuni, every individual in each clan has a name,even two names, for each season, one profane (summer)(WiXsa), andone sacred (winter) (LaXsa). These names are distributed between thevarious families, the 'Secret Societies' a nd the clans cooperating in therituals, occasions when chiefs and families confron t each other in inn u-merable and interminable p~tlatch,~bout which have attempted else-where to give some idea. Each clan has two complete sets of its pro pernames, or rather its forenames, the one commonly known, the other se-cret, but wh ich itself is no t simple. This is because the forename, actuallyof the noble, changes with his age and the functions he fulfils as a con-sequence of th at age.6 As is said in an ora tion, made, it is true, ab out theclan of the Eagles, i.e. abo ut a kind of privileged group amo ng privilegedclans:

For that they do not change their names starts from (the time) when longago I axt ilaLi+', t he ancestor of the numaym ig tlgam of the/Q 6moyleye, made the seats of the Eagles; and those went do wn t o theInumayms. And the name-keeper Wiltse'stala says,/ 'Now our chiefs havebeen given everything, and will go right down (according to the order ofrank).' /Th us he says, when he gives out the property; for will just namethe names // of one of the head chiefs of the numaymsof the / Kwakiutltribes. They never change their name s from t he beginning,/ when the firsthuma n beings existed in the world; to r names can not go ou tI of the familyof the head chiefs of the numayms, only to th e eldest one/ of the childrenof the head chief. P

What is at stake in all this is thus more than the prestige and the au-thority of the chief and the clan.I t is the very existence of both of theseand of the ancestors reincarnated in their rightful successors, wh o liveagain in the bodies of those w ho bear their names, whose perpetuation isassured by the ritual in each of its phases. The perpetuation o f things andspirits is only guar anteed by th e perpetuatin g of the names of individuals,of persons. These last only act in their titular capacity and, conversely,are responsible f or their whole clan, their families and their tribes. Forinstance, from conqu est in war a re acquired: a rank, a power, a religiousan d aesthetic function, dancing and demoniacal possession, paraphe ma-lia, and copper objects in the form of buckler shields eal crown shapes

in copper, impo rtant currency for present and future potlatch: it sufficesto kill the one possessing them, or t o seize from him one of the trappingsof ritual, robes o r masks, so as to inherit his names, his goods, his obli-

cutegory of the human mind

gations, his ancestors, his 'person' (personne), in the fullest sense o f theword.* In this way ranks, goods, personal rights, and things, as wellstheir particular spirit, are acquired.

This huge masquerade in its entirety, this whole drama, this compli-cated ballet of ecstatic states, concerns as much the past as the future,becomes a test for its performer, and proof of the presence within hi m ofthe nauulaku, an element of an impersonal force, or of the ancestor, orof the personal god, in any case of the superhum an power, spiritua l andultimate. The potlatch of victory, of the copper won by conquest, corre -spond t o the impeccable dance, to a successful state of possession.

There is no time left to develop all these subjects. Almost from ananecdotal viewpoint, I would like to draw your attention to an institu-tion, an object commonly found from th e Nootka right up to the Tlingitof North Alaska This is the use of those remarkable shutter masks,whichare double and even triple, which open up t o reveal the tw o or th reecreatures (totems placed one upon the other) personified by the wearerof the mask.9 You can see some very fine examples of them in the B ritishMuseum. And all those celebrated totem poles, those soapstone pipes,etc., all those objects which have become rubbishy goods designed forthe tourists brough t there by train or on cruises all these maybe ana-lysed in the same way. A pipe I believe to be Haida in origin, one towhich I have hardly given any attention, in point of fact represents ayoung initiate in his pointed headdress, presented by his spirit father,likewise behatted, bearing the grampus. Beneath the one initiated, to wh omthey are subordin ate in descending order: a frog doubtless his mo the r

and a crow, do ubtless his maternal grandfather..

We shall not deal with the very important case of change of nameduring a lifetime particularly that of,a noble. It would entail expo und-ing a whole succession of curious facts regarding substitution: the s on , aminor, is temporarily represented by his father, who assumes provision-ally the spirit of the deceased grandfather. Here also we would need toset out a complete proof of the presence among the Kwakiutl of dualuterine and male descent, and of the system of alternate and displacedgenerations.

Moreover, it is very remarkable that among the Kwakiutl (and theirnearest kin, th e Heiltsuk, th e Bellacoola, etc.) every stage of life is nam ed,personified by a fresh name, a fresh title, whether as a child, an ad oles-

cent or an adult, both male and female. Thus one may possess a nam e a sa warrior (naturally this does not apply to w omen), as a prince or prin-cess as a chief or a female chieftain. There is a name for the feast that


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men and women give, and for the particular ceremonial that belongs tothem, for their age of retirement, their name in the society of seals (thoseretired: n o states of ecstacy o r possession, no responsibilities, no gains,save those arising from past memories). Finally is namedtheir 'secretsociety , in which they are protagonists (a bear frequent amo ng women,

wh o are represented in it by their menfolk or their sons wolves, Ha-matse [cannibals], etc.). Names are also given to: the chief's house, withits roofs, posts, doors, ornamentation, beams, openings, double-headedand double-faced snake, the ceremonial boat, the dogs. To the lists setout in the Ethnology of the K~akiutl ~t must be added th at the dishes,the forks, the copper objects, everything is emblazoned, endowed withlife, forming pa n of thepersona of the owner and of the familia, of theres of his clan.

We have singled out the Kwakiutl, and in general the peoples of theNorth-West, because they really do represent the extremes, an excessive-ness which allows us better to perceive the facts than in those placeswhere, although no less essential, they still remain small-scale and invo-luted. Yet we must understand that a large part of the Am ericans of theprairies, in particular the Sioux, possess institutions of this kind. Thusthe W innebago, w ho have been studied by ou r colleague Radin, have inpoin t of fact these successio ns of forenam es, which are determ ined byclans and families, who distribute them according to a certain orde r, butalways following precisely a kind o f logical distribution of attributes o rpowers and natures, founded upon the myth of the origin of the clan,and legitimating the right of some person or ano ther to assume the role.

Below is an example of this o rig n of th e names of individuals whichRadin gives in detail in his model autobiography ofCrashing Thunder:

Now in our clan whenever a child was to e named it was my father whodid it. That right he now transmitted t o my brother.

Earthmaker, in the beginning, sent four men from above and when theycame to this earth everything that happened to them was utilized in makingproper names. This is what our father told us. As they had come fromabove so from that fact has originated a name Comes-from-above; andsince they came like spirits we have a name Spirit-man. When they came,there was a drizzling rain and hence the names Walking-in-mist, Comes-in-mist, Drizzling-rain. It is said that when they came to Within-lake theyalighted upon a small shrub and hence the name Bends-the-shrub; andsince they alighted on an oa k tree, the name Oak -tree. Since our ancestorscame with the thu nderbir ds we have a name Thunder bird and since theseare the animals who cause thunder, we have the name He-who-thunders.Similarly we have Walks-with-a-mighty-tread, Shakes-the-earth-down-with-his-face, Comes-with-wind-and-hail, Flashes-in-every-didon, Only-a-flash-

A category of the human mind

of-lightning, Streak-of-lightning, Walks-in-the-clouds, He-who-has-long-wings, Strikes-the-tree.

Now the thunderbirds come with terrible thunder-crashes. Everythingon earth, animals, plants everything, is deluged with rain. Terrible thun der-crashes resound everywhere. From all this a name is derived and that ismyname Crashing-Thunder.12

Each one of the names of the thunder birds which divide up the differ-ent elements of the thunder totem is that of ancestors who are perpetua llyreincarnated. (W e even have a story of two reincarnations.)13 The menwho reincarnate them are intermediaries between the totemic animal andthe protecting spirit, and the things emblazoned and the rites of the clanor of the grea t 'medicines'. All these names and beq ueathals of 'roles'(personnalitks) are determined by revelations whose limits, indicated byhis grandmo ther or the elders, are known t o the beneficiary beforeha nd.We discover, if no t the sam e facts, at least the same kind of facts, almos teverywhere in America. We could continue this exposition for the w orl dof the Iroquois an d the A lgonquin, etc.

AustraliaIt is preferable to revert for a m oment to more summary an d more pr im-itive facts. Two o r three items concern A ustralia.

Here also the clan is in no way conceived to be entirely reduced t o animpersonal, collective being, the totem, represented by the an imal speciesand not by individuals on the one hand men, on the other, animals.Under its human aspect it is the fruit of the reincarnation of spirits th athave migrated and are perpetually being reborn in the clan. (Th is is tru efor the Arunta, the Loritja and the Kakadu, etc.) Even among the Aru ntaand the Loritja, these spirits are reincarnated with very great precision atthe third generation (grandfather-grandson) and at the fifth, wher egrandfather an d great-great-grandson are homonym s. Here again it is thefruit of uterine descent crossed with male descent. We can, for ex ample,study in the distribution of names by individuals, clans and exac t mat ri-monial category (eight Arunta categories) the relationship of these nam esto the eternal ancestors, to theratapa, in the form they take at the m o-ment of conception, in the foetus and in the children that they bring tothe light of day, and between the names of theseratapa and those ofadults (which are, in particular, those of the functions fulfilled at clan

and tribal cerem~nies). '~he a n underlying all these kinds of d istribu-tion is not only to a rrive at religion, but also to define the position of t heindividual in the rights he enjoys and his place in the tribe, as in its rites.


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Moreover, if, for reasons that will immediately become apparent,have spoken especially about societies with permanent masks (Zuiii,Kwakiutl), we must no t forget that in Australia, as elsewhere, temporarymasquerades a re simply ceremonies with masks th at are not perman ent.In these men fashion for themselves a superimpo sed 'personality' (per-sonnaliti), a true o ne in the case of ritual, a feigned one in the case ofplay-acting. Yet, as between the painting of the h ead and frequently ofthe body, and the wearing of a robe a nd a mask, there is only a differencein degree, and none in function. In both cases all has ended in the enrap-tured representation of the ancestor.

What is more, the presence or absence of the mask are more distin-guishing marks of a social, historical and cultural arbitrariness, so tospeak, than basic traits. Thus the Kiwai, the Papuans of the Isle of Kiwai,possess admirable masks, even rivalling those of the Tlingit of NorthAmerica, whilst their not very distant neighborn, the Marind-Anim, have

.scarcely more than one single mask, which is entirely simple, but enjoyadmirab le celebrations of fraternities and clans, of people decorated fromtop t o toe, unrecognizable because of their ador nment.

Let us con dud e this first part of ou r demonstration. Plainly wha t emergesfrom it is that a whole immense group of societies have arrived at thenoti on of 'role' (perso nnage), of the role played by the individual in sa-cred dramas, just as he plays a role in family life. The function had al-ready created the formula in very primitive societies and subsists in soci-eties at the present day. Institutions like that of the 'retired', seals of theKwakiutl, usages like that of the A runta, wh o relegate to the people ofno consequence he who can no longer dance, 'he who has lost his Ka-

bara', are entirely typical.~ n b t h e rspect which 1 am still somewhat ignoring is that of the notion

of the reincarnation of a n umber of spirits that bear names in a determi-nate number, into the bodies of a determinate number of individuals.Nevertheless, B. and C. G. Seligman have rightly published the pap ers ofDeacon, who had observed the phenomenon in Melanesia. Rattray hadseen it among theAshanti Ntoro.16 1 should like to state t o you that M.Maup oil has found in this one of the most importan t elements in the cultof the Fa (Da hom ey and Nigeria). All this, however, 1 am om itting.

Let us move on from the n otion of 'role' (personnage) to the notion of'person' (perso nnej and of 'self' (moi).

Acategory of the human mind 3

m h e Latin 'persona'You all know how normal and classical is the notion of the Latin per-sona: a mask, a tragic mask, a ritual mask, and the ancestral mask. Itdates back to the beginnings of Latin civilisation.

1 have to show you how indeed the notion h as become one shared also

by us. The space, the time and the differences that separate that originfrom this terminal point are considerable. E volutions and revolutions pileup upon o ne another, this time in history, according t o precise dates, forcauses, plain to see, which we are abou t to describe. In one place thiscategory of the mind has wavered, in another it has set down deep roo ts.

Even among the very great and ancient societies which first becameconscious of it, two of them, so to speak, inven ted it, only to allowit tofade away alm ost irrevocably. All this occurred in the last centuries B.C.The examples are edifying: they concern Brahmanic and Buddhist Indi a,and ancient China.

IndiaIndia appears to m e indeed to have been the m ost ancient of civilisationsaware of the notion of the individual, of his consciousness- may I say,of the 'self (m oi). Ahamkrira, the creation of the 'I' (ie), is the na m eof the individual consciousness; aham equals 'I' (je): It is the same Indo -European word as 'ego'. The word aham krira is clearly a technical wo rd,invented by some school of wise seers, risen above all psychological iilu -sions. The srimkhya, the school which in poin t of fact m ust have precededBuddhism, maintains the composite character of things and minds(sZmkhya actually means 'composition'), esteeming that the 'self (mo t)is the illusory thing. For its part, Buddhism, in a first phase of its history,

laid dow n that it wa s a mere composite, capable of division and of beingresolvable into the skandha, a nd sough t after its annihilation in the m on k.

The great Brahmanic schools of the Upanishads- assuredly pre datingthe srimkhya itself, as well as the two orthodox forms of the VedHntawhich follow them - all start from the maxim of the 'seers' (voyants),right up to the dialogue of Vishnu in the Bhagavad G iti dem onstratingthe truth to Arjuna: t at &am asi which corresponds almost word forword to the English, 'that thou art' (the universe). Even the later Vedicritual and the commentaries upon it were already imbued with these me -taphysics.

ChinaAbout China I know only what Marcel G ranet, my colleague and friend ,has been kind enough t o inform me. Even today nowhere is mor e acco unt


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study of other R oman collegia would permit other hypotheses. All in all,Samnites, Etruscans an d Latins still lived in an e nvironm ent we have justleft, from personae, masks and names, and individual rights to ritualsand privileges.

From this to the notio n of 'person' (personne) but a single step needs

to be taken. It was p erhaps not taken immediately.I

imagine that legendslike that of the consul Brutus and his sons and the end of the right of thepater t o kill his sons, his sui, signify the acquisition of the person a by thesons, even while their father w as still alive. I believe that the revolt of thePlebs, the right to full citizenship that, following upon the sons of sena-torial families, was gained by all the plebeian membersof the gentes, wasdecisive. All freemen of Rome were Roman citizens, all had a civil per-sona; so me became religious personae; some masks, names an d ritualsremained a ttached to some privileged families of th e reIigious collegia.

Yet another custo m arrived a t the same final state: tha t of forenames,surnames and pseudonyms (nicknames). The Roman citizen had a right

to the nomen, the praenomen and the cognomen that his gens assignedto him. A forename, for example, might signify the birth-order of theancestor wh o bore it: Primus, Secundus. The sacred name omen, nu-men of the gens; the cognomen, the pseudonym (nickname) not sur-name uch as Naso, Cicero, etcZ 0A senatus-consultus decision deter-mined (clearly there mu st have been some abuses) that on e had n o rightto borrow and ad orn oneself with any other forename of any other gensthan one's own. The cognom en followed a different historical course: itended by confusing cognomen, the pseudonym tha t one might bear, withimago, the wax mask moulded upon the face, the?r o?rov of the deadancestor kept in the wings of the aula of the family house. For a longti m eh e use of these masks and statues must have been reserved for pa-trician families, and in fact, even more so than in law, it does not app earto have spread very widely amon g the plebeians. It is rather usurpers a ndforeigners who ad opt cognom ina which did not belong to them. The verywords cognomen and imago are, in a manner of speaking, indissolublylinked in formulas that were almost in current use. give below one ofthe facts n my view typical which was my starting poin t for all thisresearch, one which I found without even looking for it. It concerns adoubtful individual, Staienus, against whom Cice ro is pleading o n behalfof Cluentius. This is the scene. Tum appelat hilari vultu hominem Bul-bus ut phcidissime potest. Quid tu nquit, Paete? Ho c enim sib1 Startarenuscognomen ex imaginibus Aeliorum delegerat ne sese Ligurem fecisset,


nationis magis quam generis uti cognomine vide ret ~r .~ 'aetus is a co g-nomen of the Aelii, to which Staienus, a Ligurian, had no right, andwhich he usurped in order to conceal his nationality and to make believethat he was of an ancestry other than his own. Usurpation of 'person'(personne), fictitiousness of 'person' (personne), title and affiliation.

One of the finest documents, and among the most authentic, signed inthe bronze by Claudius the emperor (just as the Tables of Ancyre ofAugustus have come down to us), the Table of Lyons 48 A.D.) contain-ing the imperial oration on the senatorial decision de ur e honorum Ga l-l s dando, concedes to the young Gaulish senators freshly admittedt theCuria the right to the imagines and cognomina of their ancestors. N o wthey will have nothing mor e to regret. Such as Persicus, 'my dea r friend'(who had been obliged to choose this foreign pseudonym [nicknam e].. . acking this senatorial decision) and who can now inter imaginesmajorum suorum Allobrogici nomen legere ('choose his name of AlIo-brogicus amo ng the images of his ancestors').

T o the very end the Ro man Senate thought of itself as being made upof a determina te number of patres representing the 'persons' (personnes),the 'images' of their ancestors.

It is to the persona that is attributed the property of the simulacra an dthe imagines.22

Along with them the word persona, an artificial 'character' (pers on-nage), the mask and role of comedy and tragedy, of trickery and hypoc-risy a stranger to the 'self' (moi) continued on its way. Yet the pe r-sonal nature of the law had been established,13 and persona had aIsobecome synonymous with the true n ature of th e individuaLZ4

Moreover, the right to the persona had been established. Only the slaveis excluded from it. Servus non habet personam. He has n o 'personality'(personnalitk). He does not own his body, nor has he ancestors, name,cognomen, or personal belongings. Old Germ anic law still distinguishe dhim from the freeman, the Leibeigen, the owner of his body. But at thetime when the laws of the Saxons and Swabians were dra wn up, if t heserfs did not possess their body, they already had a soul, which Chris-tianity had given them.

But before turning to Christianity, we must trace back an other sou rceof enrichment, in which not only the Latins participated, but also th eirGreek collaborators, their teachers and interpreters. With Greek philos-ophers, and Roman nobles and legal experts it is altogether a differentedifice th at is erected.


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M Maws

V: The pen on (persome): a moral factLet me make myself plain: 1 h ink th at this effort, this step forward, cameabout above all with the helpof the Stoics, whose voluntarist an d per-sonal ethics were able to enrich the Roman notion of the person (per-sonne), and was even enriched itself whilst enriching the law.2s I believe,

but unfortunately can only begin to prove it, that the influence of theSchools of Athens and Rh odes on the development of Latin moral think-ing cannot be exaggerated, and, conversely, the influenceof Roman ac-tions and of the educational needs of young Romans on the Greek think-ers. Polybius and Cicero already attestto this, as do later Seneca, MarcusAurelius and others.

The word ?rp ra~?rov id indeed have the sam e meaning as persona, amask. But it can then also signify the personage (personnage) that eachindividual is and desires to be, his character (the tw words are oftenlinked), the true face. From the second century B.C. onw ards it very quicklyassumes the meaningof persona. Translating exactly a nd legally persona,

it still retains the meaningof a superimposed image; for example, in thecase of the figure at the pr ow of a bo at ( amo ng the Celts, etc.). But it alsosignifies the huma n, even divine, personality (personnalitk). It all de-pends upon the context. The word?rprjuo rrov s extended t o the individ-,ual, with his nature laid bare and every mask tom away, and, neverthe-less, there is retained the senseof the artificial: the sense of wha t is theinnermost natureof this person (personne), and the sense of what is therole-player (personnage).

Everything about the classical Latin and Greek Moralists (200B.C. to400 A.D. has a different ring t o it.mpiwolrov is no longer only a persona,and a matter of capital importan ce o its juridical meaning is more-over added a m oral one, a sense of being conscious, independent, au ton-omous, free and responsible. M oral conscience introduces consciousnessinto the iuridical conception of law. To functions, honours, obligationsand rights is adde d the conscious moral person (personne). In this re-spect 1 am pe rhaps mo re venturesome, a nd yet more clear-cut than M .Brunschvicg, who, in his great work, LeProgres de la Conscience, hasoften touched up on these matters.26 For me the words designating firstconsciousness and then psychological consciousness, the vwisqurorb

vwdbs re really Stoic, seem technical and clearly translate conscius,conscientia in R oman law. W e may even perceive, between the early phaseof Stoicism and that of the Greco-Latin era, the progress and changesdefinitevely accomplished b y the age of Epictetus an d Marc us Aurelius.In one of the original meanings of accomplice, he wh o has seen with


one , airvot , as a witness, we have passed to the meaning of the con-sciousness of good an d evil . In current use in Latin, the wo rd finallytakes on this meaning with the Greeks, with Diodorusof Sicily, Lucia nand Dionysus of Halycarnassus, and self-consciousness (conscience desoi) has become the attributeof the moral person. Epictetus still keeps

the meaning of the two images which this civilisation had worked on,when he writes what Marcus Aurelius quotes, carve out your mask , pu ton your role (personnage), your type , yo ur character , when he sug -gested to him what h as become with us the examination of conscience.Renan saw the im portance of this mome nt in the life of the Mind.27

But the notion of person (personne) still lacked any sure metaphysicalfoundation. This foundatio n it owes to Christianity.

VI: Th e Christian person (perso me)It is Christians wh o have made a metaphysical entityof the moral per-son (personne morale), after they became awareof its religious power.

Our own notion of the hum an person is still basically the Christian o ne.Here I need only follow the excellent book of Sch l~ ss rn an .~ ~e clearlysaw after others, but better than they did the transition from th enotion of persona, of a man clad in a condition , to the notionof man ,quite simply, that of the human person (personne).

Moreover, the notion of a moral person had become so clear tha t,from the very beginning of ou r era, and even earlier at Rome a n dthrougho ut the Empire, it was applied to all non-real personalities (per-sonnalitks) wha t we still call by the term moral persons ( legal enti -ties ): corpora tions, rel igo us foundations, etc., which have become per-sons (personnes). Th e word ? r ~ w ? r o v esignated them right up to th eNew Laws an d most recent Constitutions. A universitas is a collectiveperson (une personne de personnes), b ut like a city, like Rome,it is athing , an entity. Indeed as Cicero (De Oficiis, 1,3 4) says: Mag istratu sg ai t personam civitatis. And von Carolsfeld compares and c omm entsvery aptly upo n the Epistle to th e Galatians, Ch.3 v. 28: You are, withrespect to the one, neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor freeman, male norfemale, for you are all one person, cis, in Christ Jesus.

The question was raised regarding the unity of the person (personn e),and the unity of the Church, in relationshipto the unity of God. (cis). I twas resolved after many discussions. It is the entire history of the C hu rchthat would have hereto be retraced (cf. Suidas, s.v. and the passages othe celebrated Discourse upon the Epiphany by St Gregoryof Nanzian-zus, 39, 630,A).29-30 t is the quarrel concerning the Trinity, the M on o-


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M. Mauss

physite dispute, which continued for a long w hile to exercise men's mindsand which the Church resolved by taking refuge in the divine mystery,although however w ith decisive firmness and clarity: Unitas in tres per-sonas, una persona in duas naturas, the Council of Nicea pronounceddefinitively. Unity of the three pe rsons- of the Trinity - unity of the two

natures of Christ.t

is from the notion of the 'one' th at the notion of the'person' (personne) was created- believe that it will long remain s ofor the divine persons, but a t the same time for the human person, sub-stance and mode, body and soul, consciousness and act.31

shall not comm ent further, or pro long this theological study. Cassio-dorus ended by saying very precisely: persona- ubstantia rationalis in-dividua (Psalmum VII). The person is a rational substance, indivisibleand i nd i~ idua l ?~

It remained to make of this rational, individual substance what it istoday, a consciousness and a category.

This was the work of a long study by philosophers, which I have only

a few minutes left to describe.33

v he 'person' personne): a psychological beingHere I hope I may be forgiven if, summarising a certain am oun t of per-sonal research and countless views the history of w hich might be tracedback, I put forward more ideas than proofs.

However, the notion of the 'person' (personne) was still to undergo afurther transformation to become w hat it has become over less than oneand a half centuries, the category of 'self' (moi). Far from existing asthe primordial innate idea, clearly engraved since Adam in the innermostdepths of our being, it continues here slowly, and almost right up t o ourow n time, to be built upon, t o be ma de clearer and m ore specific, becom-ing identified with self-knowledge and the psychological consciousness.

All the long labours of the Church, of churches and theologians, of theScholastic philosophers a nd the Renaissance philosophers- disturbed bythe Reformation - even brought ab out some delay, setting up some ob-stacles to the creation of the idea th at this time we believe to be clear. Upto the seventeenth and even u p to the end of the eighteenth century, thementality of our ancestors is obsessed with the question of knowingwhether the individual soul is a substance, or supported by a substance:whether it is the nature of man, or whether it is only one of the twonatures of m an; wh ether it is one an d indivisible, or divisible and sepa-rable; whether it is free, the absolute source of all action, or whether it isdetermined, fettered by other destinies, by predestination. Anxiously they

category of the human mind 1

wonder whence it came, who created it and wh o directs it. And in t hearguments between sects, between coteries in both the great institutionsof the Church an d in the philosophical schools, we do hardly any bette rthan the results achieved in the fourth centuryA.D. Fortunately the Coun -cil of Trent put a stop to futile polemics regarding the personal creationof each individual soul.

Moreover, when we speak of the precise functions of the soul it is tothought, thou ght th at is discursive, clear and deductive, that the Renais-sance and Descartes address themselves in order to understand their na-ture. It is thought that con tains the revolutionary Cogito ergo sum; t hi sit is that co nstitutes Spinoza's opp osition of the 'extension' to 'thought'.

Even S p i n o ~ a ~ ~ontinued to hold precisely the idea of Antiquity re-garding the immortality of the soul. We kno w th at he does not believeinthe survival after death of any part of the soul other than that which isimbued with 'the intellectual love of God'. Basically he was reiteratingMaimonides, who w as repeating Aristotle (D e Anima, 408,6; cf. 43 0 a;

Generation of Animals, trans. A.L. Peck [1943], Heinemann [London]and Haward University Press, 11,3, p. 736 b). Only the noetic soul canbe eternal, since the oth er tw o souls, the vegetative and th e sensory, ar enecessarily linked to the body , and the energy of the body does not pe n-etrate into the wk. At the same time, by a natural opposition thatB r ~ n s c h v i c g ~ ~as effectively highlighted, it is Spinoza who, better t ha nDescartes, better than Leibnitz himself, because he posed abov e all elsethe ethical problem, has the soundest view of the relationships of theindividual consciousness with things and with God.

It is elsewhere, and not am ong the Cartesians, but in other circles th a tthe problem of the 'person' (personne) who is only consciousness has

found its solution. We cannot exaggerate the importance of sectarianmovements throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for theformation of political and philosophical thought. There it was that wereposed the questions regarding individual liberty, regarding the individua lconscience and the right to communicate directly with God, to be one'sown priest, to have an inner God. The ideas of the Moravian Brothers,the Puritans, the Wesleyans and the Pietists are those which form thebasis on w hich is established the notion: t he 'person' (personne) equa lsthe 'self' (moi); the 'self' (moi) equals consciousness, and is its primo rdialcategory.

All this does not go back very far. It was necessary to have Humerevolutionizing everything (following Berkeley, wh o had begun to d o so )before one could say that in the soul there were only 'states of conscious-


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M. Mauss

ness', 'perceptions'. Yet he ended up by hesitating when faced with thenotion o f 'self' ( m ~ i ) ~ ~s the basic category-of consciousness. The Scotsadapted his ideas better.

Only with Kant does it take on precise form. Kant was a Pietist, afollower of Swedenborg, the pupil of Tetens, a feeble philosopher but a

well-informed psychologist and theologian. He found the indivisible 'self'(moi) all around him. Kant posed the question, but did not resolve it,whether the 'self' (moi), sZch is a category.

The one who finally gave the answer that every act of consciousnesswas an act of the 'self' (moi), the one wh o founded all science and allaction on the 'self' (moi), was Fichte. Kant had already made of the in-dividual consciousness, the sacred character of the human person, thecondition for Practical Reason.I t was Fichte3' wh o made of it as well thecategory of the 'self' (moi), the condition of consciousness and of science,of Pure Reason.

From that time onwards the revolution in mentalities was accom-

plished. Each of us has our 'self' (moi), an echo of the D eclaration of theRights of Man , which had predated both Kan t and Fichte.

VIII: ConclusionFrom a simple masquerade to the mask, fro m a 'role' (personnage) to a'person' (penonne), to a name, to an individual; from the latter to abeing possessing metaphysical and mo ral value; from a moral conscious-ness to a sacred being; from the latter t o a fundam ental form of thoughtand action he course is accomplished.

Who knows what progress the Understanding will yet make on thismatter? We do no t know what light will be thrown o n these recent prob-lems by psychology and sociology, both already well advanced, but whichmust be urged on even more.

Wh o know s even whether this 'category', which all of us here believeto be well founded, will always be recognised as suc h? It is formulatedonly for us, among us. Even its moral strength- he sacred charac ter ofthe hum an 'person' (personne) s questioned, not only throughou t theOrient, which h as not yet attained the level of ou r sciences, but even inthe coun tries where this principle was discovered. We have great posses-sions to defend. W ith us the idea could disappear. But let us refrain frommoralising.

Yet d o not let us speculate too much. Let us say that social anthropol-ogy, sociology, history - all teach us to perceive how human thought'moves on' (Meyerson). Slowly does it succeedin expressing ie lf , through

A category of the human m ind 3

time, through societies, their contacts and metamorphoses, along path-ways that seem most perilous. Let us labour to demo nstrate how w emustbecome aware of ourselves, in order to perfect our thought andto ex-press it better.

NotesMauss's notes have been corrected and elaborated by Ben Brewster, in his translation ofMauss's essays, Sociology and Psychology (19 79: Ro utledge andKegan Paul. London),which we have largely followed in our presentation of the notes here.

1. Two theses of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes have already touched upon problemsofthis nature: Charles le Coeur, Le Culte la gki rat ion en Guinee (vol. 45 of theBibliothtque de 1'Ecole des Haute s Etudes, Sciences Religieuses); and V. Larock , Essa isur la Valeur sacrde et la Valeur sociule des n o m de personnes us k s Socictes inf ir-k r e s (Paris 1932).

2. H. Hu bert and M. Mauss, Melanges Histo ire des Religions. Preface, 1908.3. On the respective dates of the different civilizations which have occupied this ar ea of

the 'basket people', the 'cliff dwellers', the peop le of the ruins of themesa and finallyof the 'pueblo' (of squa re and circular shap e), a good expo sition of likely recen t hy-potheses is to be found in F. H. H. Roberts, 'The Village of the great Kivas on the Zuni

Reservation', Bulletin of Am erican Ethnology, No. 1 11, 1932, Washington, p. 2 3 ffAlso by the same author, 'Early Pueblo Ruins', Bulktin of Am m' an Ethnology. 1 93 0,No. 90, p.9.

4. Cushing, Frank Ha milton (1896). 'Outlines of Zufii Creation Myths', 13th AnnualReport of the Bureau of Amm'an Ethnology to the Secretory of the Smithsoniun In-stitutio n, 1891-2, Wash ington, D.C., pp. 371-2.

5. Sn also G Davy. Foi jurir (Paris 1922); Mauss, 'Essai surk Don', Ann Sociolo-gique 1923, where 1was not able to emphasisc, because it was outside my subject, thefact of the 'person' (personne), hisrights duties and religious powers, nor the su cces-sion of names, ctc Neither Davy nor I were able either to insist on the fact that thepotlatch not only comprises 'exchanges' of men and w omen, inheritances, contrac ts,property, ritual services, and first, especially, dances and initiatio ns ut also, ecsta tictrances, state s of possession by the eternal and reinc arna te spirits. Everything,m nwar and conflicts, tokesplace only between the bcclrers of these hereditary titles, who

incarnote these souls.6. b a s , 'Ethnology of the Kwakiutl', 35th Annual Report of the Bureau of Ame ricun

Ethnology, 1913-1 4, Washington, 1921,p. 43 1.7. b k , Franz (1921). Ethnography of the Kwaluutl based on data collected by Georg e

Hunt, 35th Annual Report of the Bureau of Amm'can Ethnology to the Secretory ofthe Smithsoniun Institutio* 1913-14 p 823.

8. The best general exposition of Boas is to be found in 'The Social Org anisa tion and th eecm Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians', Repo rt of the U.S. Natio nul Museum, 18 95 ,

p.396 ff See also pages 465, SOS, and 658.9. Th e last shutter opens to m e a l if no t his wholeface at least in any case his mouth,

and most frequently his eyes and m outh. Sce Boas amcle ate d in Note 6, p. 6 28, fig.195)

10. Sce Boas article. Note 6, pp. 792-801.11. P. Radin, 'The Winnebago Tribe'. 37th Annual Report of the Bureau of Am mmcun

Ethnology, V:246, gives the names of the Buffalo da n and in the following pages thos eof the other dans . N ote especially the distribution of the first four to six forenames fo rmen, and those for women. kc a h ther lists, dating from J.O. Dorsey's work.


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4 M Mauss

12. Note also the same fact, set out differently, in Radin, 'The Winnebago Tribe', p. 1 94.13. P. Radin, Crashing Thunder, The Autobiogr aphy of an American Indian, New York,

Appleton, 1926, p. 41.14. Forms of totemism of this kind are to be found in French West Africa and in Nigeria,

the number of manatees and crocodiles in such and such a backwater correspondingto the nu mber of living people. Also probably elsewhere individual animals correspondto the numbe r of individual men.

15. Concerning these three series of names, see the bottom of the five genealogical tables(Arunta), in: Strehlow, Aranda Stiimme, Vol. 5, Plates. One can follow with interestthe case of the Jerrambas (the honey-ant) and the Malbankas (the bearers of the nam eof civilising hero who was the founder of the wild-cat clan), both of which occurseveral times in these entirely reliable genealogies.

16. See also the article by Herskovits, 'The Ashanti Ntoro', I.R.A.I., LXVII: 287-96. Agood exam ple of the reappeara nce of names in B antu country has been cited byE. W.Smith and A. Dale, The I&-Speaking Peoples of Northern Rhodesia, London, 1920.C.G. and B. Seligman have been constantly aw are of this question.

17. The sociologist and historian of Rom an law ar e still hampered by the fact that we havealmost no authentic sources for the very earliest law: some fragments from the era ofthe Kings (Nu ma) and some pieces from the Law of the Twelve Tables, and then onlyfacts written down very much later. Of the complete Roman law, we only begin tohave a certain idea by legal texts duly reported o r discovered in the third and secondcenturies B.C. and even later. Yet we need to conceive of wha t was the past for the lawand the City. Regarding the City an d its earliest history, the books of M. Piganiol andM. Carc opino can be used.

18. A clear allusion to a wolf-totem form of the god of cereals (Roggenwolf: German ic).The word 'hirpex' gave 'herse' (cf. 'Lupatum'. Cf. Meillet and Emou t.)

19. Cf. t t commentaries of Frazer, ad loc., cf. ibid., p. 453., Acca lamenting over thecorpse of Remus killed by Romulus he foundation of the Lemuria (the sinister feastof the Lemures, of the souls of the dead lying bleeding) lay of words upon Remuriaand Lemuria.

20. W e should develop further this problem of the relationships a t Rome between the'persona' a nd the-'imago1, andof the latter with the name: 'nomen', 'praenomen','cognomen'. W e have not sufficient ime here. The 'person' (personne): this is'condi-tio', 'status', 'munus'. 'Cond itio' signifies rank (e.g., 'secunda person a Epaminondae ','the second person after Epam inondas'). 'Status' is one's standing in civil life. 'Munus'signifies one's responsibilities and honou rs in civil and military life. All this is deter-mined by the name, which is itself determined by family place, class and birth. Oneshould read in 'Fastes', in the translation and admira ble commentary of Sir JamesFrazer , the passage in which thc origin of the nam e of Aug ustus is deal t with (11, 1.476; cf. I line 589), and why Octavius Augustus did not wish to take the name ofRomulus, nor that of Quirinus ('qui tenet hoc numen, Romulus ante fuit') and tookone which summed up the sacred character of all the others (cf. Frazer, ad loc., line40) . We find there the whole Roma n theory regarding names. Likewise in Virgil: Ma r-cellus, son of Augustus, is already named in limbo, where his 'father', Aeneas sees him.

Here also should be added a consideration of 'ritulus', which is raised in this line.M. Etnout tells me that the wor d itself might wellbe of Etruscan origin.

Likewise the grammatical no tion of 'person' (personne) which we still use, 'persona'(Greek mpiwwmov, grammaria ns), should be considered.

21. Cicero, Marcus Tullius (1927), The Speeches, Pro lege Manilia, Pro Gtecina, ProCluentio, Pro Rabirio perduellionis [translated by H. Grose Hodge), London, Heine-mann, pp. 296- 7. ('Then Bulbus, with a smile on his face, approache d Staienus andsaid in his most ingratiating manner: "Hullo, Paetus " or Staienus had adopted the

A category of he human mind 5

surname of Paetus from the family tree of the Aelii for fear that if he styled himselfLigur, it would be thought that his surname came from his race a nd not his family'.)

22. Pliny, Natu ral History, 35 ,4 3, Ilcstiniani Digesta 19.1.17ff and Lucretius, 4, 296.23. For further examples of the usurpation of 'praenomina', cf. Suetonius, Nero,124. Thus Cicero, in Ad Azticum, says 'naturam et pcrsonam mean', and 'personam sceleris'

elsewhere.25. To my knowledge the best boo k on Stoic ethics is still Bonhoffer, Adolf (1894).Die

Ethik des Stotkers Epictet, Stuttgart, Ferdinan d Enke.26. See especially, I, p. 69ff.27. Renan, Joseph Ernest (1889). 'Examen de conscience philosophique', Revue des m

Mondes, Paris, 94, pp. 721-37.28. Siegrnund Schlossman (1906), Persona und mpdoornov, im Recht und im C hristlichen

Dogma, Leipzig. M. Henri Ltvy-Bmhl introduced it to me a long while ago and in sodoing has made this whole demon stration easier. See also the first pa n of Vol. 1 ofSchnorr von Carolsfeld, Ludwig (1933), Geschichte der Juristischen Person, Mun ich,C.H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchthandlung.

29. Suidas (1935 ) Suidue Lexicon (edited by Ada Adler), vol.1, Leipzig, Teubner.30. Gregory of Nazianzu s (1858)ELS c iL y u ha or O ratio in Sancta Lumine', Pa triol-

ogiae Cursus Complehcs, Series Graeca (edited by J.-P. Migne), Paris, Petit-M outrou ge,V. 36. cols 335-60.

31. Cf. the notes of Schlossmann, loc. cit., p. 65, etc.32. Cf. the Concursus of Rusticus. Cassiodoms Senato r, Magnus Aurelius (1958). Expos -

ito Psalmorurn I-LXX', Magni Aurelii Grcsiodore Senatoris Opera, para. II,1, Cor pusChtirtianonrm Series Latino, Brepols, Turnbolt.

33. Regarding this history, this revolution in the notion of unity, there might be a lot mo reto say here. Cf. especially the second volume of Bmnschvicg, Progres de la C onscience.

34. Ethics, PanV, Proposition XL, corollary, Proposition XXlll and scholia, in conjunc-tion with: Pr. XXXlX and scholia, Pr. XXXVlll and scholia, Pr. XXlX and Pr. XXI.The notion of intellectual love comes from Leo Hebraeus, the Florentine Platonist.

35. Progr is de la Conscience, I, p. 1 82ff.36. M. Blondel reminds me of the relevance of the notes of Hume, where the latter poses

the question of the relationship between 'consciousness and self' (conscience moi ).See Treatise of Human Nature (Of Personal Identity).

37. Die Tatsachen desBewusstseins (Winter lecture course, 1810 -11 A very fine and ve rybrief summary is to be found in Xavier E o n (19 27), Fichte et son temps, Vol. 111, pp.161-9.


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This volume is dedicated to the mem ory of Marcel Mau ss,in whosewords:

comprehensive knowledge of the facts is only possible through the w l-laboration of numerous specialists. Sociology, though lacking the re-sources of the laboratory, do es not lack empirical control, on the condi-tion tha t one can truly compa re all the social facts of history as

understood by the specialists of each branch of history. This is impossiblefor a single person. O nly mutua l supervision a nd pitiless criticism, thanksto the f an s being st t in opposition, c an yield firm results.

Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of CambridgeThe Pin Building, Trumpingon Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP32 East 57th Stree t, New York, NY 10 022, USA10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia

ambridge University Press 1985

First published 1985

Reprinted 1989 1991 1993 1996 1997Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Main entry under title:The Category of the person.

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

1. Self Addresses, essays, lectures.2. Self Cross-cultur al studies Addresses, essays,lectures. 3. Individualism Addresses, essays, lectures.4. Individualism Cross-cultural studies Addresses,essays, lectures. 5. Mauss, Marcel, 1872-1950 Addresses,essays, lectures. I Carrithers, Michael. 11 Collins,Steven, 1951- . 111 Lukes, Steven.BF697.C288 1985 302.5 4 84-23288ISBN 0 521 25909 6 hard covers

ISBN 0 521 27757 4 paperback

Contents

Preface

Contributors

page ix

xi

1 A category of the human mind: the notion of person; thenotion of self Marcel Mauss translated by W.D . Halls) 1

2 Th e category of the person: a readin g of M auss s last essayN . Allen 6

3. Categories, concepts or predicam ents? Remarks on Mauss s

use of philosophical terminology Steven Collins 46

4. Marcel Mauss and the quest for the personin Greekbiography and autobiography A. Momigliano 83

5 modified view of our origins: the Christian b ep ni ng s ofmodem individualism Louis Dumont 9 3

6. Person and individual: some anthropological reflections

J S La Fontaine 23

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