Phersu > Persona > Pessoa

(circa 510 a. C.) Phersu, Tumba dos Augúrios, Tarquínia, Itália.

Reza a lenda que a palavra latina Persona, de onde se deriva o termo Pessoa, se originou a partir do nome dessa personagem etrusca, Phersu, que provavelmente significava "Personagem Mascarada".

Seleciono alguns trechos do famoso ensaio* de Marcel Mauss sobre a questão:

"[The present subject] deals with nothing less than how to explain to you the way in which one of the categories of the human mind - one of those ideas we believe to be innate - originated and slowly developed over many centuries and through numerous vicissitudes, so that even today it is still imprecise, delicate and fragile, one requiring further elaboration. This is the idea of 'person' (personne), the idea of 'self' (moi). Each one of us finds it natural, clearly determined in the depths of his consciousness, completely furnished with the fundaments of the morality which flows from it. For this simplistic view of its history and present value we must substitute a more precise view." (p. 1)

"What I intend to do is to provide you with a summary catalogue of the forms that the notion [of the self/person] has assumed at various times and in various places, and to show you how it has ended up by taking on flesh and blood, substance and form, an anatomical structure, right up to modern times, when at last it has become clear and precise in our civilizations (in our European ones, almost in our lifetime), but not yet in all of them. I can only rough out the begginings of the sketch or the clay model. I am still far from having finished the whole block or carved the finished portrait." (p. 2)

* MAUSS, Marcel. "A category of the human mind: the notion of the person; the notion of the self" (1938), in: CARRITHERS, Michael & COLLINS, Steven & LUKES, Steven (Eds.) The Category of the person. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999 (1985), pp. 1-25.