Person/ne

The philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote that one becomes a person by inserting herself into the world through action and speech. Arendt also believed that an active process of thinking was the ‘means by which someone constitutes himself into a somebody, a person or a personality.’ It is also possible, in Arendt’s formulation, for someone to refuse these requirements of personhood, by refusing to think and to act. The modern French word, personne, may indicate both someone and no one; person, in English, indicates both an individual and a citizen with inherent rights and freedoms. The word…