Krąpiec on the Specificity of Man

Abstract

The author presents selected insights offered by Mieczysław A. Krąpiec, O.P., about the specificity of man. He starts with making a methodological remark about the correlation between Krąpiec’s anthropology and metaphysics. Then, he tries to grasp essentials in Krąpiec’s interpretation of attributes traditionally indicated as defining man alone, namely animal rationale, animal culturale, animal sociale, homo faber, and homo religiosus. Finally, he concludes that, although all these attributes aptly describe the specificity of man, they all are reducible to the fact that man is a person.

Keywords

• Mieczysław A. Krąpiec
• man
• human being
• human person
• specificity of man
• anthropology
• metaphysics
• animal rationale
• animal culturale
• animal sociale
• homo faber
• homo religiosus