We tell you what man is, the meaning of this concept and its history. In addition, its relationship with philosophical anthropology.
Aristotle was the first philosopher to define man as a rational animal.
What is man for philosophy?
Man is a biological being that belongs to the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens and is part of the species Homo sapiensof the genus homo. Its classic definition is, since Aristotle, that of a “rational animal.”
However, defining what a man is has been a matter of debate in philosophy since its beginnings. The problem of the definition of man is the subject of study of philosophical anthropology.and involves a reflection on its essence and an analysis of the foundations of the idea of the human.
Various philosophers and thinkers have addressed the problem of man. Among them are Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in Antiquity, the theologians of the Middle Ages and modern philosophers such as René Descartes (1596-1650) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
The word “man” comes from Latin homowhich derives from the Indo-European gjumy means earth. It is also related to the Greek anthroposmeaning human or man.
Key points
- Man is considered a “rational animal” and belongs to the species Homo sapiens.
- Philosophical anthropology is responsible for studying what man is through the analysis of his essence and the idea of the human.
- Defining man is a philosophical problem that still has no definitive answer, since the way he is thought of changes over time.
History of the concept of “man” in philosophy
The question of what man is has its origins in Greek philosophy.Although, from a philosophical anthropological perspective, it is considered that both Socrates and Plato wondered about the essence of the human being, the first to give a definition was Aristotle.
The question of these three philosophers was about the duality or unity of body and soul. Thus, Plato understood that the soul was man and that it inhabited the body as if it were a pilot on a ship. For Aristotle, on the other hand, the soul was the essence of man and was united to the body in the same way that form is united to matter.
The Aristotelian definition of the human being as a rational animal endowed with language put the spotlight on his rational character. This was given to him through understanding, which Aristotle called us and that related to the soul.
In the middle Ages, Philosophers such as Boethius (480-524) took up the Aristotelian idea and held that man was a single substantial compound of soul and body, as well as a rational creature. To this they added the ultimate purpose of man, who at that time was believed to be God.
Despite the predominance of the Aristotelian definition in medieval scholastic discussions, Plato’s idea of the duality of body and soul outlived its time and became an accepted problem. Even in the 17th century, with René Descartes, the idea of duality had philosophical force.
It may be useful to you: Plato’s contributions
Descartes defined the soul as a thinking substance and man as two substances at the same time.He is credited with the myth of defining man as a “ghost in the machine”, understanding the body as a machine and the soul as a ghost that inhabits it.
Immanuel Kant, for his part, replaced the duality of substance with the duality of world. For him, man belonged to two worlds, one phenomenal (of objects accessible to the senses) and one noumenal (of things in themselves, unknowable). As phenomenal, man could be studied by philosophical anthropology. As noumenal, man was unknowable, only understandable from a moral point of view as an autonomous and free subject.
The Kantian distinction between the dual aspect of man was taken up by philosophical anthropology to highlight the biological reality and spiritual specificity of man. This was widely used in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century.
Since then, Various philosophers took up the question again, such as Max Scheler (1874-1927), Michel Foucault (1926-1984) or Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)..
Philosophical anthropology
Philosophical anthropology is a branch of philosophy that has as its object of study man taken from a philosophical perspective. The question that inaugurates this discipline is “what is man?”
In a broad sense, many philosophers have made contributions to philosophical anthropology. However, this discipline is considered to have emerged in Germany from the 1920s onwards, thanks to the work of several philosophers, anthropologists and sociologists who were concerned with defining man.
Some of the main representatives of philosophical anthropology are Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner (1892-1985) and Arnold Gehlen (1904-1976).In particular, Scheler’s work is considered to be Man’s place in the cosmosis the work that inaugurated the discipline.
However, many other philosophers have made contributions to philosophical anthropology. Thinkers like Martin Heidegger, from his book Being and timeor Michel Foucault, with The words and the thingsare constantly cited as indispensable elements of the discipline.
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References
- Emmanuel, K. (1981). Critique of Pure Reason. Transcendental Aesthetics and Transcendental Analytics. Buenos Aires: Losada.
- Foucault, M. (1982). Words and Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. 21st Century.
- Ibrahim, AP (2022). Philosophical anthropology in search of its definition. Successes and failures. Dialektika: Journal of Philosophical Research and Social Theory, 4(11), 60-76.
- Sala, JSM (2013). Philosophical Anthropology I. From Scientific to Philosophical Anthropology. UNED Publishing House.
- Scheler, M. (1938). Man’s place in the cosmos. Losada.