The concept of human nature in Antônio Vieira based on representations of slavery in the New World

Abstract

This work aims to point out an anthropological theory that gives consistency to human nature, its faculties and its autonomy based on the thoughts of Father Antônio Vieira. In the modern era, during the period of European maritime expansion to the west, philosophy and moral theology in the Iberian Peninsula were focused on legal debates about the legitimization of the occupation of the lands of America and the enslavement of its inhabitants. In view of the anthropological and cultural misunderstandings raised between Europeans and the New World, and which extended to the context of Vieira, we propose here an analysis of the universality of human nature, problematizing not only the representations of Amerindian peoples, but also of slaves Africans. We will not only expose Vieira's exaltation of high human dignity, with its qualities that define it, but we will indicate its attributes. We will list, according to Vieira, the concepts of: equality, freedom, knowability, will to agency; and rationality, as ontological values that outlined the essence of the human being, as well as its unity. In this direction, Vieira resisted the assumptions of inferiority of Indians and slaves and the Aristotelian conception of slavery and the natural hierarchy of society.