What Is a Person?

To be human and to be a person are not necessarily the same thing. While our definition of human has remained pretty constant, personhood has taken on all kinds of technical, philosophical, and legal definitions over the years. We now know that corporations are people; dogs and cats have recently won certain legal rights that hinge on the idea of personhood; and the question of when a human fetus becomes a person continues to be debated in politics and religion. We hear from a writer who recently devoted a week to exploring the concept of personhood on her blog.