Historical Background of the Philosophy of Man
In the tradition of Western thought up to the 20th century, the study of man has been regarded as a part of philosophy. Two sayings that have been adopted as mottoes by those who see themselves as engaged in philosophical anthropology date from the 5th century BC. These are: "Man is the measure of all things" (Protagoras) and "Know thyself" (a saying from the Delphic oracle, echoed by Heracleitus and Socrates, among others). Both reflect the specific orientation of philosophical anthropology as humanism, which takes man as its starting point and treats man and the study of man as the centre, or origin, on which all other disciplines ultimately depend.
Man, the world, and God have constituted three important foci of Western thought from the beginnings of its recorded history; the relative significance of these three themes, however, has varied from one epoch to another. Western thought has laid greater stress on the existence of the individual human being than have the great speculative systems of the East; in Brahmanism, for example, personal identity dissolves in the All. But even so it was not until the Renaissance that man became the primary focus of philosophical attention and that the study of human nature began to displace theology and metaphysics as "first philosophy"--the branch of philosophy that is regarded as forming the foundation for all subsequent philosophy and that provides the framework for all scientific investigation.
From late antiquity onward differing views of man were worked out within a framework that was laid down and given initial development by Plato and later by Aristotle. Plato and Aristotle concurred in according to metaphysics the status of first philosophy. Their differing views of man were a consequence of their differing metaphysical views.
Plato's metaphysics was dualistic: the everyday physical world of changeable things, which man comes to know by the use of his senses, is not the primary reality but is a world of appearances, or phenomenal manifestations, of an underlying timeless and unchanging reality, an immaterial realm of Forms that is knowable only by use of the intellect.
This is the view expressed in the Republic in his celebrated metaphor of the cave, where the changeable physical world is likened to shadows cast on the wall of a cave by graven images. To know the real world the occupants of the cave must first turn around and face the graven images in the light that casts the shadows (i.e., use their judgment instead of mere fantasy) and, second, must leave the cave to study the originals of the graven images in the light of day (stop treating their senses as the primary source of knowledge and start using their intellects).
Similarly, human bodily existence is merely an appearance of the true reality of human being. The identity of a human being does not derive from the body but from the character of his or her soul, which is an immaterial (and therefore nonsexual) entity, capable of being reincarnated in different human bodies. There is thus a divorce between the rational/spiritual and the material aspects of human existence, one in which the material is devalued.
Aristotle, however, rejected Plato's dualism. He insisted that the physical, changeable world made up of concrete individual substances (people, horses, plants, stones, etc.) is the primary reality. Each individual substance may be considered to be a composite of matter and form, but these components are not separable, for the forms of changeable things have no independent existence. They exist only when materially instantiated. This general metaphysical view, then, undercut Plato's body-soul dualism.
Aristotle dismissed the question of whether soul and body are one and the same as being as meaningless as the question of whether a piece of wax and the shape given to it by a seal are one. The soul is the form of the body, giving life and structure to the specific matter of a human being. According to Aristotle, all human beings are the same in respect to form (that which constitutes them as human), and their individual differences are to be accounted for by reference to the matter in which this common form is variously instantiated (just as the different properties of golf and squash balls are derived from the materials of which they are made, while their common geometrical properties are related to their similar size and shape). This being so, it is impossible for an individual human soul to have any existence separate from the body. Reincarnation is thus ruled out as a metaphysical impossibility. Further, the physical differences between men and women become philosophically significant, the sex of a person becoming a crucial part of his or her identity.
Although Plato and Aristotle gave a different metaphysical status to forms, their role in promoting and giving point to investigations of human nature was very similar. They both agreed that it is necessary to have knowledge of human nature in order to determine when and how human life flourishes. It is through knowledge of shared human nature that we become aware of the ideals at which we should aim, achieved by learning what constitutes fulfillment of our distinctively human potential and the conditions under which this becomes possible. These ideals are objectively determined by our nature. But we are privileged in being endowed with the intellectual capacities that make it possible for us to have knowledge of this nature. Development of our intellectual capacities is thus a necessary part and precondition of a fulfilled human existence.
SEE ALSO MEDIEVAL PERIOD
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