daniela galindo

karol chaves

Augustine's entire life was an intense search for the

definition of man. In his meditations he covered the
three directions that delimit the field of
anthropological research: the being of man, his
persistence beyond life and the meaning of his
existence. He discovered that the nature of man is
"dialectical": he is a being who is in a world made for
him, but he is made for God. As there is no adequacy
between his "being in" and his "being for", man
becomes an infinitely open discourse, whose end
transcends his possibilities. In addition, man occupies
an intermediate place in the ontological configuration
of the Augustinian universe, a medium between
Nothing and Everything, between the body and the
Creator of the self and of the body. In fact, in the
Narration to Psalm 109, he explains the mortal, finite
condition of the human being in this way:

También la concepción del ser humano en Sto. Tomás está

basada en la concepción aristotélica. Pero, al igual que
ocurre con los otros aspectos de su pensamiento, ha de ser
conciliada con las creencias básica del cristianismo: la
inmortalidad del alma y la creación. El ser humano es un
compuesto sustancial de alma y cuerpo, representando el
alma la forma y el cuerpo la materia de dicha sustancia.
Frente a la afirmación de algunos de sus predecesores de
que existen en el ser humano varias formas sustanciales,
como la vegetativa y la sensitiva, Sto. Tomás afirma la
unidad hilemórfica del ser humano, que constituye una
unidad en la que existe una única forma sustancial, el alma
racional, que informa inmediata y directamente a la
materia prima constituyendo el compuesto "hombre".

Saint Bonaventure elaborates the concept of the

human person from two contexts. A more general
one is exemplarism, which explains the existing
relationships between God and creatures in terms
of metaphysical and symbolic participation. The
other, of a theological nature, responds to the
Trinitarian and Christological question, and leads
him to consider the concept of «person». The
human structure is determined by his personal
character. Bonaventure uses the analogy to speak
of the created person, which he defines in terms of
relationship, individuation, and dignity. In this way
he develops the sense of person, present in the
Holy Scriptures.