When we watch on TV that a man has killed his wife or his partner, we think that it is an evel and unfair act. It is the same if a woman kills a man. But, who committed that crime? Some people can say that it has been an effect of the body, and other ones that it is so of the soul. But, both of them are mistaken, because the author of this behaviour is a human person.

    The person is a radical unity of body and soul, i.e., it has body and spirit. When it comes to separating them, the concept of man is destroyed, and it is the same in real world, when they are separated the death of individual occurs.

    There have been two mistakes about the concept of person in history: dualism and monism. Dualism reckons man to be formed from two different principles (body and soul) being independent each other, and considering the resposibility for their acts depending on both. Affirming body to be the subject of good and evil is declaring an incorrect moral judgement, because certain natural tendencies of human life, such as sensuality and sexuality are good by themselves. At the same time, we cannot conclude that good and evil only affect the soul.

    Monism reduces man to a single substance, from which every act comes. For some people, man is a spiritual body, and others think of it as being a corporal soul. Monists are unable to explain the man’s singularity, with their spiritual soul and their physical body. In this case, the principle of “distinguishing without separating” has to be applied. Body and soul differenciate each other, but it is impossible to be kept apart.

    To sum up, the radical unity of human being has to be affirmed: it is the flesh and blood man informed by the soul who does the good or avoids the evil.

    Arturo Ramo   

    --------------------

Other related topics:

Loyalty