CHRISTIAN HUMANISM AS THE SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF DEPERSONALIZATION IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD: A PERSPECTIVE ON NIGERIA

Abstract

The human person as an abstract universal concept has been subject of academic research in many fields of learning. One fact which is clear is that all disciplines that engage in these inquiries about the human person, some without being conscious of it, uphold the supreme value of the subject of their study above the values of all other subject matters within created reality. The human person is therefore, a subject of many inalienable rights. These fundamental, connatural rights of ‘the person’ have however been denigrated, suppressed an, in extreme situations obliterated by certain systems and conventions as the world snowballs across epochs and civilizations. The consequence is that the ‘subject’ of the human person which invests him with these rights is often lost sight of. The subject for who’s well-being the rights exist is thus ‘objectified’ and used as a means to an end thereby reducing the intrinsic, highest value which the human person possesses to the level of ‘thing-ness’, his life equated with that of any other lower creature. This paper captures this phenomenon as dehumanization and depersonalization. It argues that the only way out of the worrisome trend is a return to the principles of Christian humanism.