Anthropology: Understanding Human Life and Its Distinctions
Anthropology, a term derived from Greek, is the science of humankind. There are fundamental differences between living and inert beings, including self-movement, unity, immanence, self, and cyclical rhythm. Among living beings, we can distinguish between vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual life.
Living beings belonging to the vegetative life can only develop five basic stages: birth, growth, development, nourishment, and death. Those belonging to the sensitive life can act upon receiving a stimulus captured by their instincts. Meanwhile, humans, who belong to the rational life, can not only experience the stages of vegetative and sensitive life but also possess the power to decide, discuss, and ponder their greatest good. This capacity grants humans a special dignity.
Distinguishing Living from Inert
What are the differences between living and inert? Let’s briefly explain each one:
- Self-movement: The ability of living things to move on their own.
- Unity: A living being is one and whole.
- Immanence: The ability to keep within.
- Self: To grow and develop the nature of each being.
- Cyclical rhythm: To go through stages from birth to death.
Three Levels of Life
What are the three levels of life?
- Vegetative life
- Sensitive life
- Rational life
What features can living things that belong to the vegetative life exhibit?
- Nutrition
- Growth
- Reproduction
Why is human life more perfect than that of plants and animals? Because it includes the characteristics of the other levels (vegetative and sensitive) and also the characteristic of rational life.
Human Capacity: Power and Action
Humans have the capacity (power) to perform an action and, at the same time, the power to specify that particular action (act). The essence of a human determines their powers. Even if some people are unable to exercise their powers temporarily or permanently, they still possess the same dignity as those who can put them into action.
Sensitive powers allow us to know and love the world through our senses, while intellective powers allow us to know reality through reason. The sensitive faculties are good, but not the best; the properly human life is to be guided by reason.
What is meant by power? It is the ability to do something.
What is meant by action? It is the execution of that power, its realization, its development.
Intelligence seeks the truth (which is good), and the will desires to achieve that good. True or False: To achieve the truth and live in it is the quest of all human beings because the truth is right living.
Answer: True
We can be happy only by exercising our sensitive powers. True or False?
Answer: False, because the properly human life is to be guided by reason.
Intelligence, Will, and the Pursuit of Truth
Humans understand the reality of things through intelligence, as they are capable of abstracting the essence of each one. There is a fundamental difference between what is called animal intelligence and human reason. The will has as its ultimate aim the good, but not just any good, but the greater good. Many times, we must make choices that are difficult but that we know, through intelligence, are the greater good, even though our senses may oppose the achievement of this task.
Language is the expression of thought, and thought is revealed when it has reached the highest level of rationality. Therefore, thought and language are inseparable. Feelings are based on the sensible but should be guided by reason; otherwise, we would fall into sentimentality, which distances us from our ultimate goal.
The ultimate goal of intelligence or human reason is the truth, that is, to know reality as it is. Reason cannot just stick with what we see but must capture the essence and associate concepts.
True or False: Man is the only species in this world that knows itself, and once it knows things, it wants to possess them.
Answer: True
Sensation and feeling are the same. True or False?
Answer: False, because sensation is merely the awareness of our body and ends when the sensation ceases. Feelings, on the other hand, generate a lasting impact and persist over time. It is important to remember that feeling stems from a sensation.
Wish and desire are the same. True or False?
Answer: False. Desire has to do with the instinctive tendency toward what we often like to do from the standpoint of the senses, while the will is the rational inclination toward the greater good.