Vazian philosophical anthropology: the conceptions of man in contemporary philosophy and the category of person

Abstract

The question of man for Lima Vaz is fundamental in philosophical anthropology. Through this lens we can understand the criticism of Modernity (contemporary) as a promoter of the crisis of being (human) and of science that in one moment reduced the conception of man to multiple faces; in another moment fragmented that conception in its completeness; in another moment excluded the elements of tradition (metaphysics, ontology, culture, history) that constitute anthropology at its highest level. The anamnesis method that equates the object to the subject of anthropology both takes up the history in which philosophical anthropology was formed and the various aporetic images of man that were established in time but were treated as oppositive. In the process of critical reflection and philosophical reconstruction, the understanding of man raised to his highest state is outlined in the category of person. Thus, the research looks at Vazian anthropology as 1) the modern-contemporary crisis of anthropology, 2) the various conceptions of man in contemporaneity and 3) previous points of Vazian anthropology and the category of person. After the presentation of some aporias about man in the “sciences of man”, Lima Vaz returns to the foundation of relationship, structuring and constitution of man present in western tradition. In this process, the category of person shows itself to be the integral synthesis of philosophical anthropology between transcendent and immanent, data and form, finitude and immortality, subject and object of being. Thus, a philosophical anthropology whose source and richness derive from the transcendental, the absolute.