Man in The Universal Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The author attempts to first review the most general and culturally important statements on the subject of man, and then present the developed and rationally justified conception of man as a personal being who, by his action, transcends nature, society, and himself. This conception, unique in world literature, finds its expression in St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, which presents a justifying context for man’s origin and life, ontic structure, individual and social actions, and his eschatic fulfillment by the intervention of the Incarnate God—Jesus Christ. In his Summa, Aquinas not only considers and rationally justifies all the basic aspects of the nature of man who transcends the world by his conscious and free action, but also takes into consideration various anthropological theories developed in ancient Greece and Rome.