To Have and to Hold

Posted: May 15, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: Child Centered Activities, consciousness, Money & Banking | Tags: | Leave a comment

Our pursuit of personhood continues.  Plato’s plucked chicken and Aristotle’s “thought bearing animal” both centered on materiality, to which Aristotle added the rational mind.  There should be no surprise with that, given materiality and the rational mind were absolutely central to Classical Greek civilization.  The birthplace of philosophy and science, the “life of reason” was considered their highest calling.  Their art and architecture, such as the Parthenon, the perfect embodiment of geometric harmony expressed in material form.  

Our homeschool emphasizes not the mono-rational mind but instead the multi-dimensional self; a person is more than a mind in locomotion.  The Greek definitions, foundational to western Civilization, seemed too narrow and so my son and I travelled to the other side of the globe, to Asia, to see what thoughts would emerge.  

Pudgala is a Sanskrit term (पुद्गल) that can mean “physical matter” or “person.”  At its root, pud means “combine” and gala means to “separate,” so the core understanding is that change is the constant, clusters of indivisible atoms forming and breaking apart, all of which create matter, the building block of life.  The term originated in Sanskrit around the 5th century BCE.  

In Greece at that time, Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic philosopher, understood the universe as the “unity of opposites” constantly in flux, always becoming, never being.  His writings remain only in fragments, sayings like “everything flows” and “no man ever steps in the same river twice.”  

Known as the “weeping philosopher,” Heraclitus was followed in the 4th century BCE by Democritus, known as the “Laughing Scholar.”  He reasoned the universe was composed of atoms (indivisible units) and the void (empty space); atoms, the building blocks of matter, never break or perish, but combine and separate to form clusters, differing forms of matter, by moving through the void.  The co-founder of Atomic Theory, Democritus described the essence of fusion and fission, which is the foundation of modern atomic physics.  

So whether from the Greek or Sanskrit, physical matter is clearly one trait of a person.  Aristotle added in “reason” while Asian philosophers went further.  To the Jain Dharma path pudgala was the non-living physical matter that makes up our bodies, breath and the physical brain, ever changing, both supporting and restraining consciousness and the soul.  Within Buddhism pudgala usually refers to a mere person as the suffering self – the burden bearer – experiencing birth, death and rebirth.  The Shaiva tradition of Hinduism went further, with pudgala as the person, bound in material form, whose path was to overcome physical impurities in their return to universal consciousness, the “man seeking to know divinity [śivatva].”

Such was the “Great Conversation” between these schools of thought, with multiple varying meanings hotly debated, but which seems remarkably similar to the “body-mind-spirit” concept of holism, popular today.  Our pursuit here is to define a person including the dynamic of constant change. Maslov’s hierarchy of needs comes to mind; physiological, safety, love and belongingness, esteem, and self-actualization are all parts of a whole person.  

After much discussion, we settled on our definition of a person as “a thought bearing biped mammal with consciousness of purpose, meaning, intuition and connection.”  We are, after all, in pursuit of the multi-dimensional self, and how that compares and contrasts with the “fictional person.”

At the most basic level, consider the body.  Corpus verum (real body) struggles with mortality, while the corpus fictum can exist in perpetuity.  Kongo Gumi, a Japanese construction company building Buddhist temples, was founded in 578 and is the world’s oldest continuously operating company.  The Hudson’s Bay Company, founded in 1670, was the oldest surviving joint-stock company until it was forced into liquidation last year.  The fictional person is a superb entity to amass power and wealth over the very long haul.  

Civil society is necessary for the fictional person to function, which requires real persons for that task.  Real persons can be remarkably clever, to a fault.  Consider that artificial intelligence is owned by the fictional persons, who have a combined market capitalization surpassing $30 trillion United States Dollars.  As fictional persons employ robots at scale, will freedom of speech and personhood be extended further?  Mind-boggling how creative we the real people can be, for better or worse.  Caveat emptor. 

But about that physical body, the corpus verum, a noteworthy thing happened long ago in England.  Charles II, the King, convinced of his Divine Right, was unaccountable to Parliament.  He raised taxes arbitrarily by decree and desired to send prisoners to remote overseas jails, beyond legal recourse.  He was a rake and libertine, and the reaction was swift and complete.  The Habeas Corpus Act 1679 was approved by the Parliament of England, taking power away from the King replacing it with a legal process preventing unlawful, arbitrary imprisonment.  Habeas in Latin means “you have” and when the King would hold any body in prison, that body, the person, was assured their day in court.  This became a cornerstone of democratic rule of law.  

Our homeschool operates on the “friends and family” plan, and so for socialization I recruit help from Uncles, Cousins, and friends.  My son’s Cousin happens to be an expert in Habeas Corpus, having clerked on the 2nd and 9th United States Circuit Court of Appeals and published, in the Stanford Law Review, the following:

“American habeas corpus, long conventionally known as the Great Writ of Liberty, is more properly understood as the Great Writ of Popular Sovereignty—a tool for We the People to insist that when our agents in government exercise our delegated penal powers, they remain faithful to our sovereign will. Once we grasp this conceptual shift, the implications for the law of habeas are profound.”

A noble argument, and yet in the history of the United States, American Presidents have suspended that Writ four times – most notably the “Great Emancipator” during the Civil War – plus one attempt concerning detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and the current occupant desiring to do so to immigrants.  Last year the Cousin joined us by teleconference to chat about the Great Writ and why the corpus fictum (the government) would suspend the rights of a corpus verum (the person).  A transcript follows here (edited for clarity and brevity).  

Cousin:  The basic theory of US government is: “we the people are in charge.”  Habeas is a way to enforce the principle of law.  If an Executive (President, Governor, etc) locks someone up, then that person is entitled to go to court.  But in war, you can’t follow an ordinary process.  [Discussion of Abraham Lincoln suspending the Writ during the Civil War, holding 12,000 civilians without due process.]

My son: It seems good and bad.  I can understand Abe’s thought process but you should have a fair trial.  

Cousin: [a discussion of prerogative writs, court orders restraining government officials from exceeding their authority]  …In summary, these are regulating the question of who has power.  “Prerogative writs” concern the royal prerogative, the privilege or powers specific to the King.  In the USA this is the sovereign people, as exercised by the agents of the people.  

[There followed a long discussion of “writ” and its derivation.  I used example of “to write” which my son understood.  The question arose of the phrase “the great writ of popular sovereignty” concerning whether, per use of the definite article, habeas is the one or are there others?] 

The Great Writ of Liberty is the traditional name.  Habeas was a mechanism through which all other liberties could be protected.  Habeas was the vehicle for asserting other rights we have.  The jailer must be held to account.  [Discussion turned to Stephen Miller’s proposal to suspend habeas corpus.]  

My son: Because (1) he likes DJT he would say this, and (2) he wants it to be really simple, any immigrant gets picked up, and gets locked up.

Cousin: A logistical simplicity.  Yes.  But why would many people think this is a good idea?

My son: Probably just a similar thought, just get rid of them.

Cousin:  There are 11 to 22 Million people here illegally.  There is a political will to change that.  But what is the argument on the other side?

My son:  There are many immigrants, and some are illegal, but this is not like Abe Lincoln at the Civil War.  Now it is not really necessary.  Everyone should have a trial.  If Stephen Miller was being deported he would want a trial.  If Donald Trump was being deported he would want a trial.  

Cousin: At a basic intuitive level, it feels the crisis facing our nation is not as critical as Civil War.  Was Lincoln’s suspending good or bad?  If suspended, it is really important to guard our liberties, but all lofty ideals matter nothing if the country ceases to exist.  How do you weight that?

Milo:  Suspending habeas corpus should be a last resort.  I don’t know what problems – people’s free will – but on a large level, it would fill up the jails.  

In closing, the Cousin brought up Aristotle’s concept of the good as it relates to government; the state exists not only for economic survival, but to cultivate virtue, promote justice and to provide a forum for citizens to engage in rational, virtuous political activity; the “thought bearing political animal” oriented to the virtuous, not only the capitalist, life.