THE CENTRALITY OF LIVED EXPERIENCE IN WOJTYLA’S ACCOUNT OF THE PERSON S u m m a r y The aim of this paper is to illuminate the centrality of lived experience in Karol Wojytla’s account of the person and identify its significance for philosophy and praxis in the contemporary period. Specifically the author intends to pursue the meaning of Wojtyla’s claim that “the category of lived experience must have a place in anthropology and ethics—and somehow be at the center of (...) their respective interpretations.” The paper seeks to recover an important insight into the task of philosophy: according to Karol Wojtyla, if philosophy is to perform its essential function in the recovery of our culture, we have no choice but to turn our attention to the subjectivity of human persons— and this can only be done by taking up the somewhat risky challenge of studying the reality of lived human experience. The paper will analyze Wojtyla’s argument that the problem of human subjectivity is at the epicenter of debates about the human person and will argue that his solution reconciles the dilemma posed by the historical antinomies that have characterized anthropology and epistemology, viz., the “objective” or ontological view of the human being and the “subjectivism” often associated with the philosophy of consciousness, and their corollaries, realism and idealism. At least in the English speaking context, where the validity of individual experience has risen to the level of almost dogmatic significance for social and political life, Father Wojtyla’s claim appears either to have gone unnoticed or to have been rejected. And perhaps, at least on the surface, this is not without reason. The modern interest in human subjectivity is blamed for many contemporary THE CENTRALITY OF LIVED EXPERIENCE IN WOJTYLA’S ACCOUNT OF THE PERSON S u m m a r y The aim of this paper is to illuminate the centrality of lived experience in Karol Wojytla’s account of the person and identify its significance for philosophy and praxis in the contemporary period. Specifically the author intends to pursue the meaning of Wojtyla’s claim that “the category of lived experience must have a place in anthropology and ethics—and somehow be at the center of their respective interpretations.” The paper seeks to recover an important insight into the task of philosophy: according to Karol Wojtyla, if philosophy is to perform its essential function in the recovery of our culture, we have no choice but to turn our attention to the subjectivity of human persons— and this can only be done by taking up the somewhat risky challenge of studying the reality of lived human experience. The paper will analyze Wojtyla’s argument that the problem of human subjectivity is at the epicenter of debates about the human person and will argue that his solution reconciles the dilemma posed by the historical antinomies that have characterized anthropology and epistemology, viz., the “objective” or ontological view of the human being and the “subjectivism” often associated with the philosophy of consciousness, and their corollaries, realism and idealism. At least in the English speaking context, where the validity of individual experience has risen to the level of almost dogmatic significance for social and political life, Father Wojtyla’s claim appears either to have gone unnoticed or to have been rejected. And perhaps, at least on the surface, this is not without reason. The modern interest in human subjectivity is blamed for many contemporary THE CENTRALITY OF LIVED EXPERIENCE IN WOJTYLA’S ACCOUNT OF THE PERSON S u m m a r y The aim of this paper is to illuminate the centrality of lived experience in Karol Wojytla’s account of the person and identify its significance for philosophy and praxis in the contemporary period. Specifically the author intends to pursue the meaning of Wojtyla’s claim that “the category of lived experience must have a place in anthropology and ethics—and somehow be at the center of their respective interpretations.” The paper seeks to recover an important insight into the task of philosophy: according to Karol Wojtyla, if philosophy is to perform its essential function in the recovery of our culture, we have no choice but to turn our attention to the subjectivity of human persons— and this can only be done by taking up the somewhat risky challenge of studying the reality of lived human experience. The paper will analyze Wojtyla’s argument that the problem of human subjectivity is at the epicenter of debates about the human person and will argue that his solution reconciles the dilemma posed by the historical antinomies that have characterized anthropology and epistemology, viz., the “objective” or ontological view of the human being and the “subjectivism” often associated with the philosophy of consciousness, and their corollaries, realism and idealism. At least in the English speaking context, where the validity of individual experience has risen to the level of almost dogmatic significance for social and political life, Father Wojtyla’s claim appears either to have gone unnoticed or to have been rejected. And perhaps, at least on the surface, this is not without reason. The modern interest in human subjectivity is blamed for many contemporary THE CENTRALITY OF LIVED EXPERIENCE IN WOJTYLA’S ACCOUNT OF THE PERSON S u m m a r y The aim of this paper is to illuminate the centrality of lived experience in Karol Wojytla’s account of the person and identify its significance for philosophy and praxis in the contemporary period. Specifically the author intends to pursue the meaning of Wojtyla’s claim that “the category of lived experience must have a place in anthropology and ethics—and somehow be at the center of their respective interpretations.” The paper seeks to recover an important insight into the task of philosophy: according to Karol Wojtyla, if philosophy is to perform its essential function in the recovery of our culture, we have no choice but to turn our attention to the subjectivity of human persons— and this can only be done by taking up the somewhat risky challenge of studying the reality of lived human experience. The paper will analyze Wojtyla’s argument that the problem of human subjectivity is at the epicenter of debates about the human person and will argue that his solution reconciles the dilemma posed by the historical antinomies that have characterized anthropology and epistemology, viz., the “objective” or ontological view of the human being and the “subjectivism” often associated with the philosophy of consciousness, and their corollaries, realism and idealism. At least in the English speaking context, where the validity of individual experience has risen to the level of almost dogmatic significance for social and political life, Father Wojtyla’s claim appears either to have gone unnoticed or to have been rejected. And perhaps, at least on the surface, this is not without reason. The modern interest in human subjectivity is blamed for many contemporary maladies, including subjectivism, relativism and the pride of place now given to any individual point of view, no matter how ill informed. Claims about the existence of truth or an objective moral order often cannot find a foothold when confronted with the argument that such realities do not resonate with a particular individual’s personal “experience.” The priority given to subjective personal experience in determining what constitutes right thinking and moral human behavior, assuming that question is even asked, is now a commonplace assumption; it is something alternately deplored or celebrated both by intellectuals and the “man on the street.” Given this situation, that a philosopher of Father Wojtyla’s stature and obvious moral authority should make such an argument is a matter of critical importance, especially for those who seek to ground human action in objective moral norms in an era where an arguably flawed account of human subjectivity clearly has taken center stage. The paper shows that Wojtyla is not adverting to experience as an adjunct to moral relativism or personal preference as an approach to questions of the true and the good. On the contrary, the author shows that the philosopher Karol Wojtyla provides a way to remain grounded in the metaphysical and ontological categories that not only comprise our intellectual heritage, but refer to real and profound truths, while simultaneously accounting for the subjectivity and dynamism of the person. The paper concludes with an argument that this account provides a key hermeneutical device for understanding the enormous importance of the work of Pope John Paul II. (shrink)

This article is the result of research on the occurrences of the terms suppositio, supponere and their linguistic derivations in the literature on fallacies of the second half of the thirteenth century. The authors analysed are Albert the Great, Giles of Rome, Simon of Faversham, the so-called Incerti Auctores, the Anonymous of Prague and John Duns Scotus. The central elements that emerge are the role played by the notion of suppositum and by the linguistic context to determine the denotation (...) of an expression, and the importance of the metaphysical problem of the unity and identity of suppositum in both the theory of predication and the theory of inference. Both subjects, obviously, are closely connected. (shrink)

Theologians in the liberal tradition have developed the distinctive method of critically correlating Christian revelation with critical interpretations of history, texts and social realities. Non‐foundationalists react to this stance by developing theological anthropologies for which interdisciplinary correlation is deemed unnecessary. In response, this paper argues for a retrieval of a philosophical anthropology that address the advances made in the fields of genetics and evolutionary biology, though aware of the secularizing failings of theological liberalism. In contrast to the anti‐religious materialism of (...) scientists such as Daniel Dennett and Steven Pinker, human freedom needs to be argued on the basis of complexity science and the emergent systems it explains. Both correlationist and non‐foundationalist theological strategies are unable to respond to the threat to human freedom posed by scientific materialism. The science of emergent complex structures is the most plausible research programme for constructing a viable theological anthropology. To uphold the humanum is to uphold human freedom based on a scature. This leads me to suggest that theology is best characterized as foundationalist in the general sense of its universal scope. (shrink)

The few passages in Spinoza’s work in which he focuses on the concept of human law have not received as much scholarly attention as passages focused on other themes, but they have still been very well examined. It is true that most of these studies do not directly aim to determine whether Spinoza adopts a normative conception of human law in the political-legal field or, if he does adopt such a conception, what the conditions under which he could do so (...) could be, given the logical-causal necessitarianism and naturalism of his metaphysics, explicitly reaffirmed in paragraph 3 of Chapter IV of the TTP. However, this problem is unavoidable, and it is precisely to this matter that I would like to contribute, in a rather modest way, by examining the answer that Spinoza himself offers in the passage just cited. My purpose is to demonstrate that these four paragraphs clarify how and why Spinoza can introduce a source of regulation of our actions (which is referred to by the expression “ab placito humanum”) that is different from the principles that necessarily follow from our nature without violating the basic tenets of his metaphysics. (shrink)

Theologians in the liberal tradition have developed the distinctive method of critically correlating Christian revelation with critical interpretations of history, texts and social realities. Non‐foundationalists react to this stance by developing theological anthropologies for which interdisciplinary correlation is deemed unnecessary. In response, this paper argues for a retrieval of a philosophical anthropology that address the advances made in the fields of genetics and evolutionary biology, though aware of the secularizing failings of theological liberalism. In contrast to the anti‐religious materialism of (...) scientists such as Daniel Dennett and Steven Pinker, human freedom needs to be argued on the basis of complexity science and the emergent systems it explains. Both correlationist and non‐foundationalist theological strategies are unable to respond to the threat to human freedom posed by scientific materialism. The science of emergent complex structures is the most plausible research programme for constructing a viable theological anthropology. To uphold the humanum is to uphold human freedom based on a scature. This leads me to suggest that theology is best characterized as foundationalist in the general sense of its universal scope. (shrink)

(1982). A methodology for achieving the aims and objectives of the Forum Humanum: The approach of the Venezuelan group. World Futures: Vol. 18, Alternatives for Humankind: The Role of Latin America, pp. 145-158.

Carl Schmitt spent much of his life arguing against human rights. While this may not come as a surprise, a closer examination of The Concept of the Political reveals that Schmitt’s critique of Liberal humanitarianism is itself rooted in a concept of the humanum as a sphere of substantive moral and political conflict. As an analysis of Schmitt’s concept of the enemy shows, this humanum serves as an argument for the necessity of a juristic distinction between enemy and (...) foe. For, only by distinguishing between the relativized enemy and the absolute foe, Schmitt argues, will we be able to distinguish create a space for particularly political action. Having revealed the framework of mediated moral conflict, in which Schmitt conceives of political action, I then turn to consider Schmitt’s minimalist proposal for a positive definition of a “universal jus commune” and assess its significance for a discussion of human rights. (shrink)

This paper is an inquiry into Edward Schillebeeckx’ concept of resurrection, though it is fairly different from a thorough analysis of the meaning of resurrection per se. The difference comes from the fact that we will not simply view his take on the concept as a peculiar experiment, but the question of the importance of resurrection today receives special attention. This does not mean that certain attempts at defining and elaborating on the significance of Schillebeeckx’s concept of resurrection have been (...) overlooked. Still, the main purpose of this study is to literally put this concept to the test and see the tradition associated with it over the years. A final purpose is to determine Schillebeeckx’s place at the end of this experiment, as he is associated with the two poignant interpretations of resurrection today, namely the radical and liberal positions. The aim of this experiment is to decide whether we still need to talk about resurrection today and how critical it is to ask serious questions about it in this human history facing its end. This paper explores the concept of resurrection based on its impact on the humanum or the potential of human history always with an eye to its future, where in Schillebeeckx’s thought the perfect human state will be attained. (shrink)

Drawing on Hegel, Judith Butler argues that the subject is the product of its desire for subject-ion. The subject, its gender, and even the sexed body itself come into being through reiterating or parodying preexisting norms and discourses of power. Butler rejects the realities of substance and a fixed human nature that would limit the possibilities of performativity. I summarize and assess Butler’s proposals, highlighting both the value and the drawbacks of her theory. I then show how John Paul II’s (...) understanding of meaning and of the body as tasks takes up what is positive in Butler. He escapes the pitfalls of her thought, however, by retaining both metaphysics and revelation. He argues that the subject exists as substance or suppositum, which defends it against the encroachment of power. He also insists on the importance of human nature, which makes the human person to be the kind of substance who can form herself through the God-given task of creative action directed toward meaningful self-gift. Lastly, John Paul II emphasizes that the divine power of God enables the person to transcend the power dynamics of the culture of death. (shrink)

Twelve years after his Origin of Species, Charles Darwin published his Descent of Man. If the first book brought the gases of philosophi cal controversy to fever heat, the second exploded them in fiery roars. The issue was the nature, the condition, and the destiny of genus humanum. According to the prevailing Genteel Tradition mankind was a congregation of embodied immortal souls, each with its fixed identity, rights and duties, living together with its immortal neigh bors under conditions imposed (...) by "the laws of nature and of nature's God." Obedience or disobedience of these laws destined all to eternal bliss or eternal damnation. What had come to be called "evolution" was assimilated to the Tradition in diverse interpretations such as John Fiske's, Henry Drummond's and Charles Pierce's. Their common ten dency was to establish "evolution" as somehow the method whereby divine providence ordains the conditions under which man accom plishes his destiny. The most productive competitor of the Genteel Tradition went by various names, with positivism, materialism and naturalism the most telling. Its success as competitor was not due to its theological or metaphysical import. Its success flowed from its mode of observing how effects or results, those undesired as well as those desired, got produced. Unified and generalized, these observations were taken for notations of causal sequences always and everywhere the same, thus for laws of "nature" to whose workings "the providence of God" added nothing productive and could be and was dispensed with. (shrink)

Peter Auriol was one of the most influential authors of the generation after Scotus. He developed an anti-realist ontology (he denied the extra-mental existence of common natures and consequently the necessity of a principle of individuation) and a new epistemology. In his view, the mental world is somehow richer than the extra-mental one, since our mind can abstract general notions (such as humanitas) that are not matched by general objects in reality. The article is aimed to show how, according to (...) Auriol, the individual things existing outside are the grounds on which all our notions (even the general and abstract ones) are based. Accordingly, the first section analyzes the internal composition of the individual things: material suppositum and singular form, which are interrelated as potency and act. The second section deals with Auriol’s theory of knowledge. In particular, it focuses on the relation between our notions, both concrete and abstract, and the metaphysical parts of extra-mental individuals. The general, abstract notions originate from the formal parts (the singular substantial form) of extra-mental individuals, while the concrete notions from the whole individuals. (shrink)

Following in the hylomorphic tradition of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas holds that all material substances are composed of matter and form. Like Aristotle, Aquinas also recognizes two different types of forms that material substances can be said to possess: substantial forms and accidental forms. Of which form or forms, then, are material substances composed? This paper explores two competing models of Aquinas’s ontology of material substances, which diverge on precisely this issue. According to what the author refers to as the “Standard (...) Model,” Aquinas’s view is that a material substance is composed of prime matter and substantial form. According to the “Expanded Model,” Aquinas’s view is that a material substance is composed of prime matter, substantial form, and all of its accidental forms. After outlining the main claims of each of the two competing models and considering two arguments in favor of the Standard Model, the author offers two arguments in favor of the Expanded Model. He argues that, given the way in which Aquinas argues for God’s simplicity in question three of the Prima pars, and the way in which he consistently describes the difference between an essence and a suppositum, or individual substance, throughout his works, there is good reason to believe that Aquinas thinks that the accidental forms of a material substance are included among its metaphysical parts. (shrink)

Aquinas distinguishes four types of part included in a hypostasis (’suppositum’): (1) kind-nature; (2) individuating feature(s); (3) accidents; (4) concrete parts. (1) - (3) in some sense contribute ’esse’ to the ’suppositum’. Usually Aquinas holds that Christ’s human nature does not contribute ’esse’ to its divine ’suppositum’, since it is analogous to a concrete part of its ’suppositum’. This effectively commits Aquinas to the Monophysite heresy. In ’De Unione’ Aquinas argues instead that Christ’s human nature contributes (...) ’secondary ’esse‘ to its divine ’suppositum’. This account is coherent and orthodox, but sacrifices explanatory power. (shrink)

Discrete supposition occurs whenever a discrete term, such as ‘Socrates‘, is the subject of a given proposition. I propose to examine this apparently simple notion. I shall draw attention to the incongruity, within a general theory of the semantic variation of terms in a propositional context, of the notion of discrete supposition, in which a term usually has a single semantic correlate. The incongruity comes to the fore in those treatises that attempt to describe discrete supposition as a sort of (...) personal supposition, although the same term cannot be in simple supposition in another propositional context, because it has no significate distinct from its suppositum. This shows a fundamental link between common signification, simple supposition and predicability, three notions that rely on the existence of a significate distinct and independent from the suppositum of the term. The connection is to be seen especially in William of Sherwood’s Introductiones, the only author of a terminist Summa who recognizes the existence of simple supposition for discrete terms. (shrink)

The author reflects on the anthropological role of the “self-cultivation” category in the philosophical system of Immanuel Kant, for whom self-cultivation stood as the central idea of the Enlightenment. Kant believed that it was man alone who created himself to a rational being, that his rationality was not a granted good but something he had to mature to by way of multiple disciplinary, civilizing and moralizing measures. An interesting avenue in Gernot Böhme’s approach is his assumption that this conceptual perspective (...) applied to all three Kantian Critiques, e.g., that Critique of Pure Reason propounds the disciplining of human cognition under the banner of subordinating the sphere of intuition to the categories of intellect. These categories are not inborn in the human mind, but are built by the willful disciplining of the perceptual elements of cognition anchored in the animal fundaments of the humanum. Towards the close of his essay Böhme attempts a critique of Kant’s philosophy, accusing it of reductionism and depreciating many anthropological powers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 311-315 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Fire and Water: Basic Issues in Asian Buddhism and Christianity Fire and Water: Basic Issues in Asian Buddhism and Christianity. By Aloysius Pieris, S. J. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1996. Aloysius Pieris, Jesuit priest and Buddhist scholar, is well known in theological and interreligious dialogue circles in Asia, and this is the third collection of essays of his to (...) be published in the Faith Meets Faith Series of Orbis Books. The eighteen essays which make up this book, all previously published elsewhere, are conveniently put together in three sections, under the following headings: 1) Women and Religion: Buddhist and Christian Appropriation of Feminist Criticism; 2) issues in Theology, Religion and Society; and 3) questions of Spirituality and Human Liberation. To merely summarize the content of the essays and offer a third-party critique would do injustice to the book, and could even mislead one who peruses such a summary into thinking one thereby "knows" what the book or Pieris is about. Such a hasty conclusion would deprive a would-be reader of the powerful experience that awaits in wrestling with Pieris through each essay of this volume. Judith Berling puts it well in her blurb at the back, pointing out that the author "uses poetry, evocative symbolism, and humor to offer a theological call to action in a voice that is liberationist, Asian, and feminist." Indeed, this volume invites one to a way of seeing that can also transform one's way of being in this world marked by increasing violence, poverty, and a systemic kind of oppression dehumanizing to both the perpetrators as well as the victims.The title of the present volume, Fire and Water, alludes to a dynamic dipolarity, masterfully sketched for the reader by Paul Knitter in his foreword, which underlies the author's vision of reality and vivifies much of his writing. The masculine and the feminine, the (Buddhist) gnostic and the (Christian) agapeic, the metacosmic (transcendent) [End Page 311] and the cosmic (immanent), the prophetic and the mystical, are different ways of naming this dipolarity. The way to ultimate liberation is in the effective embrace of both poles in complementarity and mutual interplay, whereas taking one pole in preference over the other results in a warped vision or mode of being, in imbalance, or even in abuse.In this review I would like to simply echo some key themes that will jump at one perusing the essays, reiterating that the very act of reading them can of itself be a transformative experience for an open-minded, open-hearted, and open-handed reader.The thrust of the six essays comprising the first section can perhaps be summed up in the thesis as formulated by the author himself: "Religion cannot survive in the future without appropriating the feminist critique, just as feminism cannot achieve its liberative goal without the aid of a religion so critiqued" (p. 62). Behind this statement is Pieris' emphatically critical stance, on the one hand, against all forms of patriarchal religion, whether Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, or other, which has justified, lent a hand in, or continued to perpetrate the physical, psychological, and especially religious abuse of women, and on the other hand, against secularist (or anti-religious) kinds of feminist theory that take off on what he enumerates as "five false starts" (pp. 50-51), which only result in unnecessary dichotomies that truncate the understanding of the goal of liberation, and consequently of the human as such.Pieris offers a vision of liberation centered on what he terms the humanum. This refers to the point of ultimate perfection to which the human, that is, "whatever pertains to men and women as self-conscious, other-oriented, and dreaming components of the cosmos," has the capacity to carry the cosmos. In this context, the human is no other than "this self-transcendent capacity immanent in the cosmos, this power to unfold within itself the Other, which is ever present from the first moment of evolution." To be human is inherently to be endowed... (shrink)

Taking into consideration the accepted evaluation and the meaning of the concepts of humanum and existence, in this paper we compare Abdulah Šarčević’s philosophy of humanity and Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism as humanism, and point out both the philosophical value paradigm of given reflections and the separate ethical-epistemic specificity, as well as the affinities between these humanistic intellectual worldviews, realised within the problem of anthropo-metaphysical and ethical-moral perceptions of Abdulah Šarčević’s conception of humanism in relation to Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialistically seen (...) humanism. (shrink)

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, "that which is said to exist through any nature is called a suppositum or subject of that nature. For example, that which has the nature of horse is said to be a subject or suppositum of equine nature." Subjects or supposita, moreover, occupy all the room there is in the Thomistic universe, since existence belongs properly only to individual subjects. These may be simple, as in the case of separate intelligences or composite as (...) in the case of inanimate and animate substances: "existence belongs properly to subsisting things, whether they be simple, as in the case of separate substances, or composite, as in the case of material substances. For the act of existing belongs properly to that which has existence: that is, to that which subsists in its own existence.". (shrink)

Sanciona este trabajo la confusión cayetanista en la inspección del actus essendi como esse actualis existentiae, defendiendo el valor del esse desde una recta lectura a propósito de la división capreolista, más ajustada al dictado del Aquinate: ser formal como complementum substantiae y esse como complementum suppositi. El esse recobra la dignidad metafísica que le otorga Aquino, más densa que el simple valor de existencia, con la diferenciación de una vertiente de composición sustancial y una línea de composición entitativa en (...) la que el esse adquiere relevancia como actus essendi asimilativo, plegados a tal fórmula actus informandi simpliciter y actus subsistendi. (shrink)

Convinced that anthropology constitutes the nucleus of K. Wojtyla's thought, the author attempts to discover what kind of anthropology is at the basis of Wojtyla's philosophical writings and the implications of that anthropology. The analysis of the basic structures of Wojtyla's anthropology (the experience of that which occurs and that of action, the structure of the person-act, the transcendence of the person in truth, gift, etc.) leads the author to hold that Wojtyla's philosophy can be considered a coherent metaphysics of (...) the person since the person who acts is not just the method (the conscience of the action), but also the object of study and, above all, the end, that is, to know and to make known to the person his special dignity. Regarding the contribution of Wojytla's anthropology, the author identifies two central themes: the relationship between person and act, and relationality. Regarding the former, Wojtyla effects a synthesis of metaphysics of being and phenomenology: the person is not relative to his acts, because he is a suppositum; nonetheless, the person is in close relationship to his acts. If it were not for these acts the person could not even know himself as subject and could not perfect himself as a person. Regarding the latter, Wojtyla sustains that the person is not person in the singular but in the plural, since each person is in relation with all the others, and this is shown from the phenomena of participation, solidarity, and, above all, donation. The author concludes by sustaining that the multiplicity and the original relationality of the person is one of the aspects of Wojtyla's anthropology that would be worthy of further study. (shrink)

Kaum ein anderes Thema bündelt aktuell so nachhaltig die Debatte über die Konsequenzen des unlängst ausgerufenen Anthropozäns, wie das des anthropogenen Klimawandels. Nicht nur wird die Umwelt des Menschen unabsehbaren Veränderungen ausgesetzt sein, sondern diese Veränderungen der natürlichen Umwelt sind insbesondere auch humanen Ursprungs. Anthropologie, Ökologie und Ethik werden verschaltet; die zu gewärtigenden Konsequenzen können unabsehbar sein. Damit wird der Klimawandel auch grundlegende anthropologische Folgen haben und sich etwa der epistemische Zuschnitt des Anthropos grundlegend neu definieren. Gerade aber weil Natur (...) hier konsequent humanisiert ist, kann sie auch für die Verfasstheit der Gattung bedrohlich werden und sich gegen das Humanum wenden. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that the problem of the one and the many, as first proposed in the West by Parmenides, can be resolved without recourse to either monism or nominalism by an appeal to distinct though mutually ordered principles of distinction in the realm of material substances, namely that of material individuation, distinction according to form, and supposital distinction. This solution, rooted in St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Albert the Great, maintains that what distinguishes one material substance from (...) any other substance absolutely is the agency of the Divine Intellect. This agency elicits in the created material substance the actuality of the relation of creation, which is the cause or principle that, in inhering in the ens creatum as a property subsisting in it, sustains the material substance in its mode of being as suppositum by formally perfecting its distinction with reference to God the Creator. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that the problem of the one and the many, as first proposed in the West by Parmenides, can be resolved without recourse to either monism or nominalism by an appeal to distinct though mutually ordered principles of distinction in the realm of material substances, namely that of material individuation, distinction according to form, and supposital distinction. This solution, rooted in St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Albert the Great, maintains that what distinguishes one material substance from (...) any other substance absolutely is the agency of the Divine Intellect. This agency elicits in the created material substance the actuality of the relation of creation, which is the cause or principle that, in inhering in the ens creatum as a property subsisting in it, sustains the material substance in its mode of being as suppositum by formally perfecting its distinction with reference to God the Creator. (shrink)

The bulk of Bastiat’s scientific work is contained in Economic Harmonies, a work generally overlooked or underestimated. Thsi paper would contribute to its comprehensive rehabilitation by re-examining and reappraising Bastiat’s theory of value.Bastiat defined value as “the relationship existing between two services that have been exchanged.” He respected the principle of objective or intrinsic value, of materiality or durability, utility, scarcity. “Products” have no value if not traded, and the exchange is not between two products but two services mutually produced, (...) traded and subjectively compared by two persons. The origin of the value is the “effort”, which transforms the gifts of nature, and consists in providing services to others in return for services desired.Bastiat’s criticism of Smith and Say anticipated recent developments in contemporary economics. By stressing the importance of services rather that of products, he laid the groundwork for a new approach to consumer theory. By abandoning the reference to production and concentrating on exchange, he has been joined by some Austrian Economists.However, Bastiat in his eagerness to blunt the socialist criticism of private property, was on a wrong fast in making the prediction that the area of property and value will decrease with the progress in civilization, since the efforts will be smaller and smaller, and the action of Nature will play a larger and larger role. Errare humanum Le talent scientifique de Bastiat s’exprime et s’apprécie dans Les Harmonjes Economiques, oeuvre posthume et injustement méconnue.En 1850, sa théorie de la valeur est d’avant garde. Bastiat réfute les conceptions courantes à l’époque qui rattachent la valeur aux caractéristiques d’un produit, qu’elles soient le travail requis, ou l’utilité ou la rareté. Pour lui la valeur naît de la comparaison subjective entre services échangés par deux individus. “Les services s’échangent contre des services”. L’échange est luimême le résultat d’un “effort”, c’est-àdire d’une action humaine tendant à rapprocher besoins à satisfaire et moyens de les satisfaire. Ainsi Bastiat annonce-t-il à la fois les nouvelles approches de la rationalité du consommateur et la théorie de la création entrepreneuriale et de la subjectivité des Autrichiens.Bastiat a été moins heureux dans sa prospective : pour répondre aux socialistes révoltés par la propriété privée, il diagnostique que le progrès de la civilisation, grâce au génie de l’homme, nous conduira vers moins d’efforts et d’échanges, donc moins de propriété, et plus de dons gratuits offerts par la nature, plus de communauté. Il se jugeait lui-même : Errare humanum... (shrink)

Dans le contexte d’une mondialisation qui n’est pas sans ambiguïtés ni opacités, il convient d’examiner à quelles conditions pluralisme culturel et pluralisme religieux sont des chances pour un humanum plus authentique. Le consensus porté par la Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme pourrait réorienter le dialogue interreligieux et le nourrir alors que les religions suscitent aujourd’hui un certain scepticisme. Quant au message évangélique, en résonance profonde avec l’attente légitime de plus d’humanité, il porte en lui une capacité de résistance, (...) plus forte que la crise institutionnelle et culturelle des Églises. (shrink)

In der Bundestagsrede 2011 hat Benedikt XVI. das Schlagwort "Ökologie des Menschen" in Verbindung mit dem Naturrecht gebracht. Letzteres steht für die Integration des Menschlichen und wird aktuell, wo der Mensch über sich selbst verfügen will. Die Zeit des Naturrechts als System ist vorbei, unabweisbar aber bleibt die Frage nach Leben und Sein des Menschen "im Recht". So wird z. B. bei biomedizinischen Eingriffen in das menschliche Genom die Frage nach der künftigen Identität der Menschennatur gestellt. Kein anderer Philosoph hat (...) den konstitutiven Zielbezug des Naturrechts auf die Person des Menschen als allem Denken vorausliegendes Sein so deutlich herausgearbeitet wie Robert Spaemann. Die Erschließung der Entsprechung von Sein und Sollen, wie sie in jeder Person schon präsent ist, und die Umsetzung in eine grenzbewusste Ethik sind entscheidende Anstöße zur Erneuerung naturrechtlichen Denkens. The old philosophical notion of "natural law" becomes relevant again, notedly concerning attempts taking possession of "humanum". Although the natural law cannot be seen as a system of rules, it fits to the necessity of generally binding coordinates. The present work shows how the opus of the philosopher R. Spaemann aids to renew the natural-law-thinking based on teleology and ontology of person. (shrink)

The paper discusses Seneca’s phrase ‘human rights’ (ius humanum) in On Benefits 3 and relates the passage to recent debates about human rights in Stoicism and ancient philosophy. I argue that the Latin phrase refers either to rights or to a law conferring rights. The difference between the passage and a common expectation for human rights lies in the kind of relation between right and duty. In Seneca’s passage the right does not in itself have a correlative duty on (...) the part of other people, and yet it does, if exercised through benefactions, create a duty in others. By contrast, the relation between right and duty is usually expected to be unconditional. (shrink)

Von Heraklit und Parmenides, Platon und Aristoteles bis zu Kant und dem Deutschen Idealismus und daruber hinaus bis heute hat die Philosophie sich als filosofia a solo, nicht aber als filosofia in compagnia verstanden. Der Einzelne steht vor ihr, zu dem kein Zweiter und Dritter tritt. Der auf ihn gerichtete Blick ist ein denkender und zugunsten des Denkens wertender. Weil die Philosophie es am liebsten mit der reinen Geistigkeit halt, gilt ihr Vernunft als selbstgenugsam: Sie hat hinreichend mit sich selbst (...) zu tun. Sieht Philosophie in der Denkkraft den ganzen, weil, wie sie emphatisch sagt, den wahren und wesentlichen Menschen und somit sich selbst als das Humanum, dann ist der Weg beschritten, das Denken mit dem Zudenkenden einswerden zu lassen. Daraus erwachsen vielfaltige Spekulationen des innigsten geistigen Einsseins, sei es in der Einheit von Sein und Nichtsein oder von Gott und Mensch. Rainer Marten wendet sich in diesem Buch gegen den Vorrang des Einen und unternimmt es, die Zweiheit philosophisch auszuzeichnen: die Zweiheit von Tag und Nacht, die Zweiheit von Leben und Tod, die Zweiheit von Ungerechtigkeit und Gerechtigkeit sowie die Zweiheit von Mann und Frau. (shrink)

In diesem biografisch gesättigten Essay entfaltet der Philosoph Rainer Marten vor dem Hintergrund des neoliberalen Zeitgeists der Silicon Valley-Gegenwart die Essenz seines Denkens in kraftvollen Zügen. Im Angesicht des eigenen Lebensendes legt er an unsere Zeit den Maßstab überzeitlicher Lehren der Philosophie, Theologie und Lebenskunst. Mit wachem Blick für die Verwerfungen unserer Zeit tritt er ein für die Schönheit des fragilen Lebens, dessen Grund er in der Poesie der Notwendigkeit sieht. Im Nachdenken über Technomessianismus, Verführung des Bösen und Künstliche Intelligenz (...) stärkt er sein Konzept des Humanums, plädiert für das Leben als Kunstwerk und gegen dessen Instrumentalisierung. (shrink)

Utopie und Tranzendenz.--Über Transzendenz und Symbol.--Der Einzelne und der Einsame.--Humanum und Exil.--Die phänomenologische Frage nach dem möglichen Menschen.

Das Handbuch bietet einen Uberblick uber Ansatze, Methoden und Themenfelder einer Historischen Technikanthropologie. Dies umfasst sowohl Grundbegriffe, die Vielfalt technisierter Menschenbilder, technisierte Praktiken sowie die Technisierung von Sinnen und Kompetenzen. Vorgestellt werden zudem wichtige Vertreter einer Technikanthropologie seit der Fruhen Neuzeit. Mit einer interdisziplinaren Herangehensweise arbeitet das Handbuch verschiedene Problematisierungen von Menschen und Maschinen, die gerade heute virulent sind, historisch und systematisch auf. Dabei steht die klassische anthropologische Frage nach dem "Menschen" in den jeweiligen Auspragungen und Wandlungen mit Blick auf (...) Technik im Zentrum. Diese Betrachtung geht nicht von einem einzigartigen, unveranderlichen Wesen des Menschen aus, sondern untersucht die historischen Veranderungen des Menschen durch und mit Technik. Gerade im Zeichen neuer Technologien wie der Digitalisierung und Kunstlicher Intelligenz-Forschung steht das Mensch-Maschinen-Verhaltnis erneut auf der Agenda. Das Humanum scheint zur Disposition zu stehen. (shrink)

This paper is not merely an attempt to come to terms with Edward Schillebeeckx’s theology and his philosophical mindset. Such attempts have already been made years back, when his ties with phenomenology, and also with postmodern hermeneutics and culture were pivotal for us in order to better understand his influence on mid-20th century Continental philosophy. This present study partially remains on those premises, but also brings Schillebeeckx’s thought closer to the 21st century, since nowadays concepts like salvation and resurrection tend (...) to embed particular meanings, such as well-being and ancestrality, which until recently were considered halfway synonyms of the previous images, and thus were looked upon with less persuasion. This study follows their interchangeable use in Schillebeeckx’s doctrine of creation, where the purpose of the Christian creedal formula is to appease in a tribal sense, rather than to fun­ction as a confession of faith. On the other hand, Schillebeeckx’s take on the resurrection as a means to reconnect humanity to its ancestral faith will further be inspected as the starting point of his rehabilitated anthropology or the humanum. The initial discussion on the relationship between God and Jesus in the history of salvation finalized with Jesus’ death receives a new turn in Schillebeeckx’s thought when in this same context he talks about the resurrection. Jesus’ status after the resurrection is analyzed here considering the tribal flavors it receives in Schillebeeckx’s work with an accent on its outcome for the new humanity and its well-being. (shrink)

This paper offers an analysis of Edward Schillebeeckx’s insights on different perceptions of revelation as related to concepts like salvation, God, church, human experience and creation in the work Jesus in Our Western Culture. The incentive of Schillebeeckx’s hermeneutical method in nowadays Western phenomenology, upon which God “breathed his breath of life”, triggered our interest in meanings which Schillebeeckx ascribes to human history as the realm of God’s work for the benefit of men and women. This meaning is suggested in (...) the very beginning of the book by its original Dutch title If Politics is not Everything. As stated in this work’s introduction, Schillebeeckx’s main theme is the origin of salvation in the humanum, from the Abba experience to nowadays revelatory events. Our attempt is to see how Schillebeeckx’s humanum, which is the embodiment of human experience of consciousness, becomes relevant for the Christian doctrines and why Schillebeeckx reckons that bringing them together would impact both his worldview and Western culture. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Witness Against the Beast, William Blake and the Moral LawDan LatimerWitness Against the Beast, William Blake and the Moral Law, by E. P. Thompson; xxi & 324 pp. New York: The New Press, 1993, $30.00.The social context from which William Blake arose was fundamentally hostile to the grandiose projects of Court and official Church. So modest were the ambitions of Blake’s working-class forebears that their historical oblivion would (...) be assured, had they not professed theological views irksome to those whose job it was to enforce uniformity. The eccentric theology of this nonconformist class earned them the name antinomian, from “anti-nomos,” “against the law,” a term which carried the sense of both “heretic” and “terrorist.”Antinomians emerged from the Puritan Interregnum of the 1650s. They went quiet during the Restoration of Charles II, then were given a second life in the 1790s when the energies of Jacobinism refocused working-class frustrations on the hegemonic alliance of Court and Church. Eventually, sedition laws drove the antinomians underground to stay. Abhorring all official places of worship, they met over pints of beer in public houses, singing songs composed by themselves out of their home-made hymnals set to such unthreatening melodies as “God Save the King” to delude the casual passer-by.One such sect was the Muggletonians, whose very name ensured groans of genteel ridicule from the educated and powerful. They never numbered more than two hundred members in all of England. Taking their name from a seventeenth-century sectary, Ludowick Muggleton, they kept largely to themselves, did not evangelize, and did not pray, since they considered prayer servile. They met for fellowship, song, and hours of intricate theological discussion. For three hundred years, the faithful preserved the manuscripts of their prophets, records of discussion and debate, song books and membership lists, until Thompson tracked it all down in 1975 to a furniture depository in Tunbridge Wells. What Thompson wanted to show was some empirical connection between Muggletonian theology and the eccentric mythos of William Blake, since the two systems had so many already obvious antinomian similarities. It must have been discouraging for him to get no closer than “Hermitage,” the name of Blake’s mother’s first husband, a hosier named Thomas. In the Muggletonian song books are compositions from the 1750s by a George Hermitage, who in Thompson’s working hypothesis is a possible uncle of Blake. Thompson admits, however, that the image of Blake’s mother singing nonconformist family songs over the cradle of her infant son will have to remain a pretty fiction.Why does Thompson specifically want the Muggletonians in the Blakean picture? There are four pertinent articles of Muggletonian belief. The first is that they repudiate moral law, that is, the notion of religion as a system of discipline and punishment for sin. They substitute love and generosity as [End Page 412] characteristic of the divine principle. The second is that Reason is explicitly identified as a Satanic item, binding, constraining, and inhibiting the imaginative vision of God. The third article is the doctrine of the Two Seeds, according to which Satan, in the form of the serpent, had carnal relations with Eve, who subsequently gave birth to Cain, the serpent’s child and half-brother to Abel and Seth, the legitimate offspring of Adam. Henceforth, though, the Satanic and divine seeds are mixed in all human beings. The persistent Satanic element, the humanum maternum, gives our worshippers occasion, not only for an indictment of the rich and powerful, serpent-spawn all, but for a gnostic hostility for all material creation, including the body, implying, one need hardly say, a robust sense of woman’s addiction to the secret and forbidden, the worm that flies in the night.The fourth article deals with the divine influx of God into man on the occasion of Christ’s birth. For the Muggletonians, this incarnation (and eventual extinction) was entire. There weren’t any other parts of God left over somewhere else. Thompson sees here elements of a radical humanism which may have motivated such notions as “the human form divine” in Blake. On the other hand, the doctrine of the... (shrink)

An original attempt at phenomenological description from a subjective starting-point, which Desan calls the totum genus humanum--i.e., the human race as a whole, surviving through time. From this standpoint, the "truth" of any individual's judgment or even philosophical system is seen to be "angular," or fragmentary. The planetary man is the exceptional person who attempts to coordinate various angular truths to arrive at the generic truth; but in the end his coordination, too, falls short of any Absolute Truth. The (...) implications of this position for language, a new logic, and the concept of God are explored. Some of the angular truths that the book offers and their mode of presentation are novel.--W. L. M. (shrink)

The text is divided into four chapters: 1.0 Metaphysics, transcendental philosophy and analytic philosophy; 2.0 The senses of being ; 3.0 Being and existence ; and 4.0 Modalities. After a defense of contemporary analytic philosophy against the usual charge of its supposedly superficial character and its lack of philosophical significance, Llano offers a thoughtful reading of Wittgenstein against his ancient, medieval and Kantian scholastic background. Following Gilson's historical analysis, Llano diagnoses a "tendency to reflect upon concepts with the risk of (...) forgetting the real things whose natures these concepts represent.... While the scholasticism most directly bound to Aristotle kept the consideration of real, concrete being firmly in view, Duns Scotus--in a direction already pointed out by Avicenna--was completely occupied with the concept of pure being ; a concept which, by being abstract, was understood as univocal. This perspective led him to 'prescind' from the actual reality of things, i.e., from their real existence; because, although existence itself is a notion or ratio knowable in the object, it is nevertheless required as actually belonging to the object in so far as it is knowable: 'existentia non est per se ratio obiecti, ut scibile est'". Against this background, being is taken as intelligibility, involving a relationship to the understanding that logicizes the meaning of being itself so that "the formal-essential dimension takes unto itself the whole weight of reality" and "esse is reduced to a quasi-accidental mode of the essence", which comes to be thematized in its own right as "the real modality, until a linguistic analysis, which can accept only the logical modality, passing through the logico-transcendental mediation of the gnoseological modality". Being is accordingly progressively "reabsorbed into human thought and later into various anthropological dimensions ". Section 1.3, "Toward a realist semantics," starts from Frege's attack on psychologism in the Foundations of Arithmetic and leads to a reinstatement of Aristotelian semantics in section 1.4, "Word and concept." Chapter 2 deals with the standard topics: 2.1, Predication, identity, existence; 2.2, being in propositions and being in reality; 2.3, accidental being ; and 2.4, being as it pertains to truth. Chapter 3 on being and existence suggests the thought-provoking comparison: as natura is to suppositum in Aquinas, so is Begriff to Gegenstand in Frege. Chapter 4, on the modalities of being, gets to the heart of the metaphysical issue of what happens when one of the modalities of being is substituted for being as the foundation of metaphysics. In Section 4.1, on actuality and facticity, Llano deftly centers attention on Heidegger's Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, where Heidegger maintains that the Thomistic notion of actus essendi is merely another instance of the forgetfulness of being. Llano rightly judges that Heidegger's understanding of an opposition between essence as one thing and existence as another is derived from a position of Giles of Rome and has nothing to do with the position of Aquinas himself. Llano cites Avicenna roughly five times as often as he does Giles of Rome; Heidegger, apparently relying on hearsay reports, mentions Avicenna only once in the Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, without citing any text, and mentions Giles of Rome three times, citing only one text. Heidegger uses a late scholastic as his authority for discrediting Aquinas. Llano quotes some of the explicit Thomistic criticisms against Avicenna including one that Heidegger partially omits ; the passage Heidegger suppresses begins "Opinio Avicennae fuit...." Though rhetorically subtle, Llano's clearly and forcefully written book is loaded with philosophical insights, bridges conversational gaps between analysts and phenomenologists, and offers a glimpse at some of the most important medieval notions sedimented within contemporary philosophy.--E. M. Macierowski, Washington, D.C. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 59 Heft: 3 Seiten: 410-426.