The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

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Author QuotedEmmanuel Mounier
Title QuotedPersonalism
Date (Year/Month/Day)1956/08/19
ImprintLondon : Routledge & Paul. 1952
QuotationMounier says (in showing that the idea of person must be defined by the power to communicate - and showing how individualism bars communication - ) A kind of instinct works within us to deny or diminish the humanity of those around us"¦the lightest touch of the individual seems sometime to infect a mortal poison into any contact between man and man. Personalism p. 18... "The person only grows in so far as he continually purifies himself from the individual within him. He cannot do that by force of self-attention but on the contrary by making himself available." (Mounier-[Personalism])
Quotation SourceA Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk's True Life. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 3, 1952-1960.; Edited by Lawrence S. Cunningham. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1996, p. 68-69
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