A Need for a New Anthropology?

To address the ecological crisis that we are confronted today, I believe that an inter-disciplinary dialogue is imperative. Obviously, no single discipline can exclusively claim a total solution to the ecological problem at hand. Every positive contribution must be welcome on board. Thus, it is in this spirit of dialogue that I would like to post a kind of philosophical reflection. From a philosophical perspective, the global ecological crisis reflects an anthropological and a cosmological crisis. There seems to be a truncated, if not a bankruptcy of an adequate understanding of the human being and the relationship that s/he has to establish with the cosmos. The understanding of who the human person is and the role that s/he has to play in the universe, certainly, influence her/his individual and collective behavior and action towards others and the natural world. For instance, on the one hand, an extremely one-sided understanding of human being as a spiritual being on account of her/his soul would certainly be indifferent to the material historical events in this world. On the other hand, the materialistic or technological understanding of the human being, as it prevails today, has also serious and devastating consequences to the life system of the earth.

It is in this context, that a re-definition of our understanding of the human being and the universe/world is needed. The alarming situation demands a reformulation of our anthropological and cosmological formulas. Humankind cannot go on with her/his illusion of absolute human freedom. This has only led her/him to consumerism. S/he cannot go on declaring war against the natural world, manipulating and plundering its life-resource at whim to satisfy her/his unlimited desire.

There is, therefore, a need for a philosophy of the human being that is wholistic and total, an anthropological formula that would chart a friendly relation between the human being and her/his universe. Harmony and balance become the operational terms. The exercise of human freedom and the pursuit for human development must be tempered by the limitations of what the other and the universe can realistically sustain. These are some of the ingredients that have to be included in our search for an adequate anthropological formula.

A re-visit on Teilhard’s evolutionary thoughts which this reflection attempts to engage in can offer us some insights that could serve as possible answers to the following problems: a) the problem of methodology and approach that may be used for the total understanding of reality; b) the problem of the interconnectedness of things that has to be considered in the process of human development; c) the problem of human responsibility in the use of human freedom; d) the problem of the human being’s ultimate future.