المسارات الكلية في قراءة الطبيعة الإنسانية

Abstract EN

In the humanities, as well as in modern biology, man was reduced to a biological being, whereby the internal, invisible, element is minimalized.

Philosophical and religious approaches, on the other hand, were confined to the rational aspect of human beings, taking those material aspects, of human beings, to be merely preparative conditions for the spiritual life.

In scripture, however, the basic starting point for any understanding of human nature remains that man emerged from clay and it is to clay that he returns.

Such a scriptural truth instigated a surge of questioning and protest among the dwellers of the upper realm (the angels and (71-98)ʾIblīs), and by its virtue, man becomes the addressee of all Divine warning and encouragement.

If revelation, in its very essence, takes note of the animal aspect of man, an aspect which accompanies his existence inasmuch as he lives by thought and feeling together, then we are entitled to ask: is man an animal, characterized at some stage by being rational? Or is he a rational being, characterized at some stage by being an animal? The intention here is to pressure towards discovering the weight of the animal life within human nature, and to contemplate the essence, the functions and the constituting elements upon which this nature stands