Abstract
One of the most crucial problems Philosophical Anthropology confronts is the search for the characteristic features of the being which is the study’s very own subject: the human being. These are the features which, while they define what essentially belongs to him, reveal at the same time his specificity amongst other beings and, in particular, in the realm of living beings.
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Notes
A-T. Tymieniecka, The Moral Sense. A Discourse on the Phenomenological Foundation of the Social World and the Ethics, in Analecta Husserliana, XV, 1983, p. 23.
Ibid., p. 5.
Ibid., p. 9.
Ibid., p. 10.
Op. cit., pp. 23–24.
Ibid., p. 24.
Ibid., p. 24.
I do not completely agree with the comparison made by A-T. Tymieniecka between belevolent sentiment and instinct (Cf. Op. cit., p. 25). Of course, perhaps the human axiological capacity — as all other dimensions related to society and culture — may, in some way, occupy the place reserved for animal instincts, and, in this sense, the moral sense could be compared to instinct. But some points must be clarified. First of all, I do not think we can continue talking about human instincts. The human being is charac terised by open Drives (Triebe). (Cf. A. Gehlen, Der Mensch, Athenaion Verlag GmbH., Frankfurt, 1974). Secondly, it does not seem certain that instinct is uniquely oriented to the survival of the self. Ethology provides us with some good examples of instinctual functioning in animals, which are precisely oriented to the surrender of self-interest to the common interest of the group. A-T. Tymieniecka would probably call this “gregariouness.” I think the main point is that this surrender of self-interest on the part of animals is not a conscious function in contradistinction to man, who acts for the sake of the Other quite consciously.
Op. cit., p. 40.
Ibid., p. 39.
Ibid., p. 40.
Idem.
Ibid., p. 64.
Ibid., p. 69.
Ibid., p. 61.
Besides, I essentially agree with A-T. Tymieniecka’s approach here.
Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere (1921), Streifzüge durch die Umwelt von Tier und Mensch (1958), etc.. Quoted from A. Gehlen, Op. cit.
Op. cit., pp. 39–40.
Ibid., p. 40.
Biologische Fragments zu einer Lehre von Menschen, 3, Aufl. Schwabe, Basel, 1969. As quoted by Wezler in his article “Life from the Physiologist’s Point of View,” in Gadamer and Vogler, Neue Anthropologie, Vol. 2 (Spanish edition, Barcelona, Omega, 1974, pp.309ss.)
Cf. The book by L. Maison, Les enfants sauvages, Paris, Union Générale d’Editions, 1964. About this, Maison states: “There is a human social constant; these is no human nature, which should be called pre-social, in the same manner as animal nature.” (p. 39)
Op. cit., p. 24.
Idem:. “The set of virtualities to be unfolded in the conscious development of the living individual into guideposts of moral significance for his self-interpretative progress in the intersubjective interaction with others.”
Ibid., p. 54: “Certainly there would be no ‘human’ being in his complete ‘humanity’ — the individual would not be capable of unfolding the fully human significance of his existential route — had he not been virtually capable of, and prompted by, an intersubjective interrelation and expansion of his existential route.”
Ibid., pp. 24–25; “insofar as we conceive of ‘human nature’ as a conundrum of virtualities necessary to initiate and promote the dynamic intersubjective progress of individualised existence, human nature contains the moral sense as its essential and decisive factor.”
Evidently this does not mean that everything is absolutely conscious in human actions, nor that man begins from nothing in his vital enterprise. Besides the idea of existence as a task, the whole domain of the Involuntary must be considered. (Cf. P. Ricoeur, Le volontaire et l’involontaire, Paris, Aubier, 1967).
A-T. Tymieniecka, Op. cit., p. 31.
Op. cit., p. 5
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Cecilia, A. (1987). The Axiological Dimension of the Human Being (Concerning the Moral Sense in the Thought of A-T. Tymieniecka). In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Morality within the Life - and Social World. Analecta Husserliana, vol 22. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3773-4_3
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