Courses

Erica Stonestreet

Associate Professor

College of St. Benedict and St. John's University

Erica Stonestreet is an associate professor of philosophy at the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University.

Blog Posts

What makes a person a person?

December 26, 2016
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Role of Government

Hilde Lindemann's baby sister, Carla, was born with hydrocephaly — a condition in which fluid around the brain impairs mental function. It was untreatable, and Carla died before she was two years old. In Lindemann’s new book, Holding and Letting Go: The Social Practice of Personal Identity, she observes that despite Carla’s helplessness the family treated her as a full member of the family, a person. This raises a number of intriguing questions about the nature of personhood, a status usually reserved for fully functioning adults. Personhood Personhood is a moral concept,