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2.1. The Foundation of Brotherhood
12. The characteristics that make up man's being have always
been sought. In our century, man has been studied sufficiently on the basis of
the many human sciences; nonetheless, the question, Who is man?, has
never been asked so insistently. This paradox has not been solved: while, on
the one hand, man, his dignity, freedom, greatness and power have never been
spoken about so much, on the other hand, he has never been so trampled under
foot, subjected to dreadful massacres, and humiliated by violence, especially
by the powerful.12 World wars, fratricidal wars (which every
war is because "every man is my brother") and tribal wars are a dark
chapter in history, and still more the attacks made on the weakest and the
innocent, a category of persons who are trampled on in so many ways.13
Since ancient times, it has been thought that man is characterized by his
reason. Euripides thus stated that "the intellect is God in each one of
us".14 Along the same lines, Plato 15
and Aristotle 16 chose reason as the distinctive human
faculty. After Boethius' well-known, "Individua substantia rationis
naturae", St. Thomas Aquinas continued in this direction and
recognized that man is a person and that this is what is most perfect in
the whole of nature: perfectissimum in omni natura. Man is a living,
bodily and spiritual being; he is a structured whole. He is distinctum
subsistens in intellectuali natura.
13. The concepts of person and dignity are related to one another
but not identical. The person refers to being in its highest degree of
perfection with its three characteristics of subsistence, spirituality and
totality. Dignity refers first to a quality of being, a value that can be
opposed to a countervalue. Every person as such has an innate dignity that
must be recognized and respected.17 However, the personal
being, as a free and evolving being, is called to take on another dignity by
developing his or her human possibilities. In this sense, a person also has an acquired
dignity that is attained as one perfects in the human order.
14. As the image of God, man has been created through an act
of love. God wanted to give man a nature that was different from the whole
created order. Man stands out among the other created beings; he transcends
them. We all share in existence in a personal way through God the Creator
himself. As a personal creature endowed with reason and free will and called to
eternal happiness, each human being reflects something of divine magnificence.
This is the ultimate, indispensable foundation of our brotherhood.
15. The family is the pre-eminent, most favorable and
irreplaceable place for the recognition and development of a personal being on
its way to complete dignity. In the family the first steps in human development
are taken. In it one is forged not only in the maternal uterus but, as St.
Thomas points out, in a "spiritual uterus".18 In
this family and formational context, the process of education and promotion of
a human being begins. A person who does not receive this initial promotion in
the family will be greatly hampered in achieving the human fullness to which
heshe is called as a person.
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