Damian Th - To be human – to live life fully

Theodor DAMIAN*

PhD Professor emeritus of Human Services and Education, Metropolitan College of New York President of the USA branch of the Academy of Romanian Scientists, USA

Abstract:

The study below sets out to analyse the crises of human dignity, starting from man’s two dimensions: the immanent and the transcendent ones. One of the consequences of the diminution or loss of the sense of human dignity in a world where faith in God has become a mere option, where God Himself seems to have become optional, consists of the disintegration of communion through an exacerbated individualism. Theologically speaking, the dignity of the human being consists of the extraordinary, paradoxical and incomprehensible fact that man was created in the image of God. Here resides the ontological character of human dignity, its maximum height. And God’s image in man, that is to say reason, will, feeling, conscience, awareness, freedom, this essentially divine gift, is accompanied by the possibility of reaching the likeness of God, i.e., the possibility of attaining holiness and immortality or posse non mori, the possibility of not dying. Given that the greatest of all arts is the art of living, we conclude that to be here and to be beyond at the same time, to live the instant and to follow eternity indicates the simultaneous living in the real and the ideal, that is the immanent realism and the metaphysical one of the Christian life.

Keywords:

human dignity, living, image, crisis, communion

Bibliography:

  • Bellah, Robert et alii. 1985. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
  • Berdiaev, Nicholas. 1963. The Fate of Man in the Modern World. Ann Arbor Paperbacks. The University of Michigan Press.
  • Damian, Theodor. 2017. Gregory of Nazianzus’ Poetry and His Human Face in It. New York: Theotokos Press.
  • Heschel, Abraham. 1965. Who Is Man. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
  • de Mello, Anthony. 1986. One Minute Wisdom. New York: Doubleday.
  • Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. 1956. Oration on the Dignity of Man. Chicago: Gateway.
  • Zundel, Maurice. 1988. “L’homme tient Dieu dans sa main”. In: Dialogue des Amis de Maurice Zundel, nr. 25, Avril, 3.