Contemporary Theories of 'Persona'
Review of the first cycle by Juliana Peiró
/Philosopher
Miguel García Baró, Alfonso López Quintás and Jacinto Choza proposed their own theory of the person in our seminar. Here is a summary:
Hápax. Instituto de Ciencias de la Acción -located in Mexico City- has organized a Permanent Seminar on Philosophical Anthropology (Seminario Permanente de Antropología Filosófica) with the aim of promoting the study and deepening of man from the point of view of higher knowledge. With this Permanent Seminar, Hápax wishes to promote the birth and development of an international philosophical community, in which open dialogue and inter-university synergy prevail. The Seminar is organized in biannual cycles, of three sessions each, in which we want to give voice to different personalities of international prestige in the field of Spanish-speaking philosophy.
The first cycle of the Seminar, Contemporary Theories of the Person, was led by the prestigious philosophers Miguel García-Baró, Alfonso López Quintás and Jacinto Choza. Each of the sessions was attended by a large number of participants from universities and academia from all over Latin America and Spain.
In the master session of Professor Miguel García-Baró, the Spanish philosopher presented his own theory of the person as the way of renewal of the first philosophy and of the activity of philosophizing itself, in its most genuine meaning. For the Spanish thinker, philosophy is not born from the passage from myth to logos, but when the human being discovers that he is "the being to whom things happen" because he is accompanied by the phenomenon of truth, which supposes a revelation of what happens to him. The philosophical exercise, then, consists in the reflection born after the original experience of "the exposed individuality". In this sense, Professor Miguel García-Baró wanted to emphasize that the human being is a philosopher only "when the other worries him more than himself; hence philosophical reflection arises, more than from admiration, from the experience of guilt, when we realize that we can be the cause of the absolute despair of others". It is a matter of recovering the philosophical exercise in relation to the conquest of Wisdom, in its most vital understanding; that is, "one philosophizes out of necessity not to remain a scoundrel".
Thus considered, for García-Baró, Philosophical Anthropology must try to approach the reality that is man as an individuality that, nevertheless, is called to harbor within itself something that is the absolute and relatively distinct from itself: that is, "called to embody and realize in itself the hypostatic union." And this, insofar as, man being a radical solitude, without interpersonal communication he is not constituted as an individual, for only in this way does he discover that he is a radical openness to otherness, in its multiple forms. For this reason - concludes Baró - it is not possible to do Philosophical Anthropology a priori. In this sense, to do Anthropology a priori is equivalent to philosophizing from fear; "but fear," he affirmed emphatically, "is the death of the life of the human spirit.
On the contrary, doing Philosophical Anthropology calls for an a posteriori reflection that is equivalent to "opening the truth to the happening of what happens to us and to what happens to us". And this, to the extent that "truth grows thanks to action, being so that action must be grounded in truth".
In conclusion, Miguel García-Baró emphasized that every human being is a Hápax. That is to say, each man is unique, individual and unrepeatable. Without, on the other hand, losing sight of the fact that the individuality of the human being only flourishes in the context of a freedom that is above all openness to the mystery of what is to come, in itself unobjectifiable.
In the second session of the Seminar, the renowned Spanish philosopher Alfonso López Quintás presented his own philosophical understanding of the person as the best theoretical path capable of endowing the prevailing culture with hope. Only by recovering the philosophical and scientific exercise in anthropological coordinates -underlined López Quintás- is it possible for contemporary man to access the original experience of his personal being. For, although any consideration of the person that each one of us is, is "especially difficult, nevertheless, our reflection on it is unavoidable because much is at stake".
It is urgent, the Spanish thinker stressed, that philosophical reflection on the human being should focus on the relational character of the notion of the person. "The person is a dynamic, relational, creative being, who has a very strong impulse to grow from within, to overcome limits, to reach high goals," he reiterated on numerous occasions throughout his brilliant lecture.
Just as beauty emerges in the relational, "the human person emerges from the loving encounter between two. Such an emergence contains within it an element of promising ambiguity," which must be embraced. Thus considered, López Quintás emphasized, "the human person belongs to this type of realities that emerge; that are events; and because they are events, they are charged with novelty". To grasp the person, therefore, it is necessary "to do so by grasping the genetic relationship that is its origin, in its genesis, from which it emerges as an event".
In conclusion, Dr. Alfonso López Quintás stressed that understanding the person as a relational event allows us to give a reason for his freedom in a radical way, as openness to the good, to truth and to love.
In the third session, Dr. Jacinto Choza presented a very enlightening panorama of the evolution of the notion of the person from its Greek origins to the present day. In doing so, he was able to show a progress that clearly explains the modern and contemporary approaches, in which it is possible to explain the anthropological and historical origins of the Declaration of Human Rights, understood as "the response of history to the discovery of the dignity of the person".
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Throughout his presentation, Professor Choza wanted to highlight the extent to which the evolution of the concept of the person points to the understanding that "the person is a living reality, embodied in three interwoven dimensions: actor-living-person". "What is the content of the self? And, even more, who am I?", have become inescapable questions for contemporary man. In this sense, the key question that the historical moment urges philosophical reflection to confront is the one that revolves around the ontological content of the self.
What is an "I", Jacinto Choza asked himself, "an unfathomable and mysterious background, of infinitely rich depth, a manifestation of the ineffable of the human being, his personal being; which, like the author of a play, is much more than the actor and the multiple roles he plays throughout his life". This is how a good part of contemporary theories that address the question of the human being in its most radical sense, insofar as the person contains within him or herself the singular subject of incommunicable consciousness, give reason for the person. Hence, the importance of the knowledge of the singular in the human being, as the nuclear that tries to address the phenomenology of experiences; which, in this context, becomes a true source of understanding and recognition of personal diversity. Beyond the transhumanist approaches that seek to expand human capabilities through technology.
In concluding his presentation, Jacinto Choza remarked the importance and responsibility of philosophical activity today in relation to the personal self, since only by placing the human person at the center of reflection is it possible for society not to fall into partial interpretations of truth that dehumanize societies, because they disembody the cultures in which personal life unfolds. It is therefore urgent to enter into a rigorous and humble consideration of the question of the personal self, which is always "in addition" to ideologies, structures or moral presuppositions.
After the presentation of each of the speakers, a space was opened for dialogue and common reflection in which the participants who so wished could ask the professors their questions, thus creating a very fruitful and enriching seminar atmosphere.
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