1 The Person at the Crossroads: A Philosophical Approach J. Beauregard, G. Gallo, C. Stancati (eds.), Vernon Press, Wilmington 2020, p. 149-161. Chapter 8 The Person as an Emergent Reality. Some Critical Remarks Grzegorz Hołub The article examines the attempts to explain the human person through the prism of the process of emergence, as proposed by Christian Smith and William Hasker. At present, that is a popular way of explaining personal reality, well anchored in scientific philosophy. There are several stages in this article. Firstly, patterns of understandings of the person as elaborated in European philosophy are briefly sketched. Secondly, the theory of emergence is described, especially in its application to personal reality. Thirdly, some critical remarks toward the latter are presented and an attempt made to establish its viability. Fourthly, some suggestions are offered in order to make the theory of emergent personhood more credible and hence acceptable. Keywords: personhood; emergence; Christian Smith; William Hasker; philosophy of the human person 1. Introduction Discussions concerning the human person are long-standing and very complex. In recent years there have been attempts to offer explanations of personal reality that are in tune with philosophies dominated by anti-Cartesian and naturalistic turns. What drives these attempts is a tendency to put aside these interpretative categories which are not part of contemporary science or scientific philosophy. One of the results stemming from this enterprise is that the concept of the person is understood as an emergent reality. On the one hand, it seems to be quite constructive and positive in that it updates the notion of person, making it more acceptable for an individual educated in a science-oriented culture. On the other, it brings with it some essential doubts and questions as to its adequacy. If we compare the emergent understanding of the person with the notion stemming from a wider (not only scientific) human experience of the person, we can easily grasp some important tensions and differences. Which is more reliable and informative: the personal reality seen through the lenses of empirically-oriented philosophy or the person whom we experience – for instance – in our personal dealings and relationships? In this paper we are not going to present all the ideas connected with the process of emergence as applied to the personal reality. Our approach is much more modest; we are only to analyse some selected voices and postulates which seek to strengthen our grasp of this important reality, as expressed by Christian Smith and William Hasker. These voices and postulates are parts of a very specific tendency, namely to make the personal reality more comprehensible and less mysterious. Thus, at the beginning we are going to sketch what kind of understanding of the person is to be replaced. Then, we will be following the new proposal formulated by adherents of emergentism. At this point, we will analyse some important emergentist beliefs and ask some critical questions. A general intention of this paper is to