Self-determination does not imply that actions are predictable; actions are, in fact, not predictable, provided that the determining conditions are not entirely materialistic because they include spiritual or, perhaps, metal causes. Keep your eyes on God, not on people. Your motivation should not be the desire to be known as a praying person. Find an inner room in which to pray where no one even knows you are praying, shut the door, and talk to God in secret. Have no motivation other than to know your Father in Heaven. It is impossible to carry on your life as a disciple without definite times of secret prayer. God does not save us from temptations—He sustains us in the midst of them. There are heroes without armies, who hear martial music in their souls. A person is distinct from a (mere) thing, and any human being, insofar as he is a person, and is in consequence of this status to be treated in a special manner, and those are two of the main logical features of this concept, and they carry over from ordinary to philosophical usage. Explicit distinctions and attitudes are stipulated for persons, as contrasted with things, and they of an unconditional worth and that respect is an attitude which has application to persons only and never to things. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 11

Things may be pre-empted for our own purposes; their value depends upon the degree and kind of service they may be to us in the execution of our aims. Persons, however, must not be use (merely) as means to someone’s end; persons are end-in-themselves (existing for its own sake; existing for no clear purpose) and sources of value in their own right. The English word “person,” in fact, is alleged to have derived from the Latin persona, which was the mask worn by actors in dramatic performances. It has been suggested, in turn, that persona is a substantive derived from the participial per-sonando (“sounding through”), although this etymology has been challenged as being quantitatively impossible in Latin. Nevertheless, it is plausible enough to have gained even modern philological supporters. Added to this is the fact that persona sometimes seems to have stood for the person speaking through the mask and sometimes for mask through which the voice came, an ambiguity similar to that by our word “speaker” and one which accounts for a great deal of the interesting ambiguity that the concept retains to this day. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 11

Life is so constructed that the event does not, cannot, will not match the expectations. Thus, from persona we may derive, by nuanced steps, a variety of further uses, each perhaps best marked by synonyms, the differences between these synonyms serving to bring out a different sector in this word’s range of meaning. Thus, from “role” we may proceed in one direction to “function,” “office,” and “capacity” (since certain rights go with certain offices, this is the legalistic direction), while in another direction we proceed to “guise,” “semblance,” “appearance,” and “personification.” Thus, an individual may speak as an actor, as a dramatis persona, or as himself (“in person”)’ the term is sufficiently accommodating to cover all of these uses. Accordingly, we can use it to mean “self,” the individual as such (to treat someone as a person is to treat him as an individual), or, as distinct from the self, simply a role played or an office discharged—the uniform, so to speak, in contrast with the man who wears it. Influential theological interpretation, Christ, in this sense, was one of the three persons of the Trinity, which remained nevertheless one substance only. Indeed, Christ was the divine substance, which assumed the human mask, prosopon being the mask worn by Greek actors. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 11

Commit yourself to the current World. Human life is like a shadow, no sooner seemingly enjoyed than vanished. Let us cease to dispute, and learn to live. We speak of a citizen as one, who ideally, plays a role or takes part in the life of the community of which he is a member, and to this extent the dramatic and legalistic sense of the word are connected. Ideally, again, the citizen’s private life is one’s own; one’s citizenship is only the face one presents to the public (only the Roman citizen was entitled to wear a toga, but the toga was not worn in private life). However, not everyone who might be de facto a member of the community is recognized as being fit to play a role in its public life: there are criteria of enfranchisement, and satisfaction of these criteria constitutes someone a citizen or a person in the legal sense. Commonly, a necessary condition for having rights is being responsible for one’s acts: rights are ascribable only to persons, and, accordingly, persons alone are responsible (hence, children and idiots are not persons). A person conserves the consciousness, or the reflective inward feeling of what is: thus it is liable to reward and punishment. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11

Animals are not persons and human beings are simply on the grounds that the latter have, as the former do not a consciousness of having been the same thing previously in this or that state. Plainly, if I am to be responsible for my actions, I must continue to exist and to be capable of acknowledging that I am the same individual who performed them: otherwise I would be punished for acts that are not mine. It is a common legal usage to insist that rationality is a precondition for responsible action. Responsible agents must know what they are doing and must be able to give reasons for their having chosen to act so. It is responsible agents, executing their own purposes, who are regarded as person—which brings us back to the notion of persons as ends-in-themselves. It seems clear that the unfortunate tendency to identify moral responsibility with blame and punishment derives from moral responsibility. There have been other ingenious efforts to escape the toils of the dilemma. However, it has also been argued that person are indeed never morally responsible. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 11

Nevertheless, the assessment of legal responsibility is so closely related to the assessment of moral responsibility, and legal experts have given such sustained and imaginative attention to the task of articulating criteria which are applicable to complex cases, that a careful study of the relevant aspects of the law will certainly assist the develop of an adequate account of moral responsibility. For instance, Ryan Phillippe, a 42-year-old actor, has a fan page on a social media site called Instagram called “Official Ryan Phillippe Fan Page” (www.instagram.com/officialRyanphillippefanpage). The man who runs the site was posing as Ryan Phillippe and procuring naked pictures from fans, who thought that he was Ryan Phillippe. When a fan was slandered by the man running the page and had mean comments posted all over his pictures, he let Ryan Phillippe know that this fan page was using his name and images and exchanging nude pictures with fans. However, Ryan Phillippe took to action, and even showed the he approved of the fan page by liking the pictures he made and sharing the content. Now, morally, it is wrong to pretend to be someone else and ask for nude pictures. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 11

Also, Ryan Phillippe does have fans who are minors, so legally Ryan Phillippe could be sued and arrested if his fan page is obtaining pictures of minors, especially since Ryan Phillippe had been made aware on several occasions that his fan page (www.instagram.com/officialRyanphillippefanpage) was exchanging pornography with his fans. For reference, Jeffrey Miles Hayes, age 54, in Sacramento, California USA, was arrested 30 September, 2016, after a federal grand jury returned an indictment charging him with receipt of child pornography, announced by Acting United States Attorney Phillip A. Talbert.  According to the court documents, law enforcement identified an internet connection at Jeffrey Hayes’s residence that was being used to upload child pornography to his blog sites. A search of the residence revealed an iPad, identified as belonging to Jeffrey Hayes, that was receiving and distributing child pornography through chat messages. This cause is the product of an investigation by the Sacramento Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force in conjunction with the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office. Assistant United States Attorney Ms. Shelly D. Weger is prosecuting the case. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 11

If convicted, Jeffrey Hayes faces a sentence of 15 to 40 years in prison and a $250,000.00 fine. Any sentence, however, would be determined at the discretion of the court after consideration of any applicable statutory factors and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which take into account a number of variables. The charges are only allegations; the defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorney’s Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute those who sexually exploit children, and identify and rescue Victims. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 11

 I have let Ryan Phillippe know that his fan page (www.instagram.com/officialRyanphillippefanpage) is engaging in unethical behavior, which he can be sued for because he knew about the man posing as him and procuring naked pictures and did nothing. However, if it is found that any of the pictures his fan page obtained are of minors, Ryan Phillippe could face 15 to 40 years in prison, and a fine of $250,000.00. Through problems pertaining to responsibility occur in all branches of the law, criminal law has received the most attention; the topics most frequently discussed in this connection are mens rea and criminal insanity. Mens rea is the doctrine, which requires a certain “mental element” to have been present when the offense was committed. This mental element is usually, but misleadingly, described as “guilty mind.” The characterization is misleading, first, because it is generally supposed that the offender need not be aware that he is committing an offense (“ignorance of the law is no excuse”); and, second, because many advocate of mens rea do not even require that the offender be morally culpable. #RyanPhillippe 9 of 11

Some argue that unless an offender is morally blameworthy for his offense, he does not deserve to be convicted. Others insist on the distinction between moral responsibility and moral blameworthiness, arguing that a person may be morally responsible and may deserve to be convicted and punished for a crime even though his actions were not blameworthy. Broadly speaking, then, those who subscribe to the doctrine of mens rea believe at least that only persons who are morally responsible for their offense deserve conviction and punishment. Those who accept the doctrine of mens rea in any of its forms believe that the requirement is satisfied if the offender has committed his offense intentionally. Some also claim unintentional actions which are preformed recklessly or negligently involve the necessary mental element. In general, the person who commits an offense is thought to have satisfied the doctrine of mens rea if he knew what he was doing at the time or if he would have known what he was doing had he proceeded with reasonable care and deliberation. #RyanPhillippe 10 of 11

The extent to which an offender is able to or actually does exercise deliberate control over his actions and their results seems to be central to the way in which moral responsibility as a condition of deserved conviction and punishment is incorporated into the criminal law. This point is, however, more general than the doctrine of mens rea itself—it being possible for someone to have acted intentionally while, by reason of mental defect, not possessing deliberate control over his actions. Self-awareness and especially rationality have figured in. A person is a thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places; which it does only by the consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and seems to me essential to it. Efforts to solve the problem of freedom of the will are conveniently considered against the background of the following dilemma. In such a position, a person believed to be innocent of an offense might be held morally responsible and be blamed and convicted on the general grounds that it would be socially beneficial to do so. By not resolving the situation, you are accepting responsibility but rejecting the blame on the grounds that he was justified in what he did. #RyanPhillippe 11 of 11