Abstract

Usually philosophers worry about the existence of mind, or consciousness, or persons, or other difficult-to-explain phenomena. Having posited matter or nature, or fields, they wonder where can person or consciousness originate? This kind of thinking is backward. Only persons ask such questions. Persons exist. I turn the tables on the traditional problem of person by asking whether anything impersonal really exists. I argue that the impersonal almost exists, using the theory of feeling of Max Scheler and supplementing it with insights from Alfred North Whitehead and Josiah Royce. Even though feeling almost succeeds in divesting itself of the pre-supposed act of the person, but its concrete actuality blocks such complete self-abstraction.