French Personalists, in condemning the totalitarian ideologies and decadent individualism, elaborate at length the distinction between person and individual. Their solution of the whole social problem is based on this doctrine.

In his Revolution personnaliste et communitaire, Emmanuel Mounier has set out the considerations which necessitate the distinction. The individual is definitely inferior : he is a prey to selfish complacency, to the inordinate love of his own singularity. Enclosed in the fortress of his own egoism, he is deaf to the importunities of social claims. The person, ‘by way of contrast, represents man’s triumph over this ignoble self. According to the exposition given in his Personalist Manifesto, the person embodies the nobler elements of human nature: generosity, self-possession, individual vocation, renunciation and self-sacrifice even to the point, of heroism. Such a being enjoys autonomy and spiritual liberty in its true sense (pp. 76-80).

The considerations by which Mounier seeks to reinforce this contrast are purely psychological in character. Thus, he argues that the person is ‘open,’ while the individual is ‘closed.’ Here the individual is credited with a psychological complex orienting all his activities towards his own selfish ends. The person, on the contrary, recognises his social duties; he is open to social intercourse, to the divine attractions of love, etc. But these psychological descriptions can in no sense replace the metaphysical doctrine of personality. If they have any intelligible sense, they must be interpreted in a broad Christian sense. Thus, man is destined to a transcendent end, in the light of which we must evaluate all his being and his activity.