scholarly journals The Dignity of the Person in the Context of Human Providence

1970 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-118
Author(s):  
Piotr S. Mazur

Thomas Aquinas understands providence as the reason of directing things to ends (ratio ordinis rerum in finem), and as the execution of that directing, i.e. governance (gubernatio). Thus, providence is one of the fundamental attributes of the person that reveals the person's perfection and dignity. Providence consists in a free and reasonable directing of oneself and the reality subject to oneself in order to actualize potentialities of oneself and of other beings in the context of the ultimate goal of existence. Human providence joins the providence of the Absolute with regard to the world. In spite of its deficiencies human providence reveals the essential dignity of the human person.

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 27-51
Author(s):  
Andrzej Maryniarczyk

In this article, the author notes that Thomas Aquinas, in his brief work entitled De Ente et Essentia, proved that at the base of understanding the world, the human being, and God in particular, there is our understanding of being and its essence. When we make a small mistake at the beginning (parvus error in principio) in our understanding of being and its essence, it will turn to be a big one in the end (magnus in fine). And what is “at the end” of our knowledge is the discovery of the First and Ultimate Cause of all things, known as: Ipsum Esse, God, the Absolute, The Most Perfect Substance, on whom everything depends, and who depends not on anything else. These present inquiries about the proper understanding of being and its essence are aimed at formulating proof of the necessity of existence of a Being that is the First Cause, and which, existing as Ipsum Esse, is the source and reason of existence of all beings. Without these inquiries, the proof itself would be incomprehensible, and more importantly it would be a purely a priori one (i.e., ontological). Furthermore, without the existential conception of being, which Thomas first formulated, one could not discover the First Cause which, as Ipsum Esse, is the source of the existence of every being. This issue seems to have escaped the attention of the author of the book Aquinas’s Way to God. The Proof in “De Ente et Essentia.”


1941 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 411-427
Author(s):  
Jacques Maritain

Let us think of the human being, not in an abstract and general way, but in the most concrete possible, the most personal fashion. Let us think of this certain old man we have known for years in the country, —this old farmer with his wrinkled face, his keen eyes which have beheld so many harvests and so many earthly horizons, his long habits of patience and suffering, courage, poverty and noble labor, a man perhaps like those parents of a great living American statesman whose photographs appeared some months ago in a particularly moving copy of a weekly magazine. Or let us think of this certain boy or this girl who are our relatives or our friends, whose everyday life we well know, and whose loved appearance, whose soft or husky voice is enough to rejoice our hearts. Let us remember—remember in our heart—a single gesture of the hand, or the smile in the eyes of one we love. What treasures on earth, what masterpieces of art or of science, could pay for the treasures of life, feeling, freedom and memory, of which this gesture, this smile is the fugitive expression? We perceive intuitively, in an indescribable not inescapable flash, that nothing in the world is more precious than one single human being. I am well aware how many difficult questions come to mind at the same time and I shall come back to these difficulties, but for the present I wish only to keep in mind this simple and decisive intuition, by means of which the incomparable value of the human person is revealed to us. Moreover, St. Thomas Aquinas warns us that the Person is what is noblest and most perfect in the whole of nature.


2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (106) ◽  
pp. 233
Author(s):  
Eleandro Teles

Uma posição contrária ou favorável ao aborto depende da resposta à questão bioética elementar: quando tem início a vida qualitativamente humana no feto? Adotando o princípio da inviolabilidade da vida humana como critério ético fundamental de análise, busca-se responder à pergunta sobre o status do embrião a partir da antropologia personalista de Lima Vaz. Conforme o autor, a pessoa humana é compreendida na tríplice estrutura: somática, psíquica e espiritual. Uma nova e ampla categoria de pessoa é proposta: ser humano, unidade de estrutura e relações, convocada a realizar-se pelo movimento dialético de expressão do dado somático, através das relações fundamentais com o mundo, o outro e o Absoluto, abrangendo toda a existência, desde a fecundação até a morte. O humanismo personalista de Lima Vaz oferece uma resposta filosófica contundente ao problema do aborto.ABSTRACT: A stand against or in favor of abortion depends on the answer to the elementary bioethical question: when is the beginning of the human life in a fetus? Adopting the principle of inviolability of human life as the fundamental ethical criterion of analysis and using Lima Vaz’s personalistic anthropology, we search for an answer to the question about the embryo status. According to the author, the human person is comprehended in the triple structure: somatic, psychic and spiritual. A new and broad category of person is proposed: the human being, unity of structure and relations, is called to self realization by the dialectical movement of expression from the somatic base, through the fundamental relations with the world, the other and the Absolute, including the entire existence, from fecundation until death. Lima Vaz’s personalistic humanism offers a forceful philosophical answer to the problem of abortion. 


2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kas Saghafi

In several late texts, Derrida meditated on Paul Celan's poem ‘Grosse, Glühende Wölbung’, in which the departure of the world is announced. Delving into the ‘origin’ and ‘history’ of the ‘conception’ of the world, this paper suggests that, for Derrida, the end of the world is determined by and from death—the death of the other. The death of the other marks, each and every time, the absolute end of the world.


Philosophy ◽  
1950 ◽  
Vol 25 (92) ◽  
pp. 3-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick C. Copleston

I. In the early part of the sixth century a.d. Boethius defined the person as “an individual substance of rational nature” (rationalis naturae individua substantia). This definition, which became classical and was adopted by, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas, obviously implies that every human being is a person, since every human being is (to employ the philosophical terms of Boethius) an individual substance of rational nature. If one cannot be more or less of a human being, so far as “substance” is concerned, one cannot be more or less of a person. One may act as a human person ought not to act or in a way unbefitting a human person; one may even lose the normal use of one's reason; but one does not in this way become depersonalized, in the sense of ceasing to be a person. According to St. Thomas, a disembodied soul is not, strictly speaking, a person, since a disembodied soul is no longer a complete human substance; but every complete human substance is always and necessarily a person.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-131
Author(s):  
Lukman Hamdani

Property is one of the most important instruments in this life, because wealth is as a support  for the continuity  of human life, in Islam it is always emphasized the importance of independence in owning property  through  work or business, because Allah really loves his servant who is always giving  alms with  his own property.  Allah Almighty really likes hard workers or people who are persistent in seeking treasure for the sake of the afterlife, even Allah SWT  emphasizes in  Surah at-taubah  father 10. And Say: "Work  for you, Then Allah and His Messenger and the believers  will see your work, and you will be returned to (Allah) who knows the unseen and the real, then He tells you what you have done. Even the  Companions of the Messenger  of  Allāh  adalah were rich people  who possessed  wealth  for  the progress and development of Islam  at the time, a  very real example was the Friends of Abu Bakr, Abdurrah bin ʻAuf, Uthman ibn Affan and the Wife of the Messenger of Allāh adalah was a great entrepreneur, Siti Khadijah. They are friends looking  for wealth and have it as much as possible then after that they distribute their wealth through ZISWAF, it is obligatory and must for Muslims  to seek / have property  for the benefit of the world and the hereafter and the interests of Muslims and provision  in  the hereafter Can be concluded that ownership of property in Islam  it is very important because it is a means of sustaining life and as a place to find savings  for ukhrawi life  later,  because indeed ownership of property in Islam  is  not only focused  on worldly matters, but there are  two elements  that are always included,  namely for  worldly  and spiritual interests. It  should be underlined in the ownership of the property  that the principle  must be instilled that this property has the absolute God Almighty, we are only temporarily entrusted, therefore it is not beautiful to not distribute the assets we have to people in need through ZISWAF instruments.  


2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 110-127
Author(s):  
Henri Hude

This articles describes the “neuronal crisis,” the epidemic of psychosomatic illnesses observed all over the world, particularly in the West. The paper looks into the deeper real causes and seeks the most effective kind of cure for this malady. This leads to rational consideration of the metaphysical dimension of the human being and the fundamental problems (those of evil, of freedom, of God, of the soul, and of the body), where lack of sufficiency plays a major part in the etiology of these pathologies, as the desire for the Absolute is the basis of the unconscious. This approach presumes the Freudian model but denies its purely libidinal interpretation that substitutes desire for the Absolute with libido. Hence, an explanatory system applied to increasingly serious pathologies: ailments, neuroses, depressions, and psychoses. Frustration of one’s desire for the Good gives rise to a sublimation of finite goodness. The inevitable desublimation, caused by anguish because of the Evil, intense guilt, and the dramatization of evils, causes neuroses as awkward but inevitable solutions to the existential problem that is still unresolved, due to lack of functional and experimental knowledge. Psychiatry and even medicine must take into account the metaphysical layer, and, therefore, operate within an existential dynamic, aiming to progress in wisdom and to discover man, man’s brain and body, as these are structured around the axis of his desire.


2021 ◽  
Vol 218 (5) ◽  
pp. 240-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Hoare ◽  
Richard M. Duffy

SummaryThe World Health Organization has developed training material to support its QualityRights Initiative. These documents offer excellent strategies to limit coercion. However, the negative portrayal of psychiatry, the absolute prohibition on involuntary treatment and the apparent acceptance of the criminalisation of individuals with mental illness are causes for concern.


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