Humanity’s human. Approach to Lluis Duch’s Anthropology

Abstract

This article approaches the symbolic anthropology of Lluís Duch who proposes the urgent need of an “apology of the human” and of an “anthropology of ambiguity”as a response, aimed to overcome the various reductionisms and essentialisms (structuralists, historicistsand economicists) that have been endured by the humanistic disciplines and social sciences, especially during the past 20th Century, carrying it’s deepening crisis into the present. The authors exposethe main guidelines of his thinking, emphasizing the present validity of his analytical categories and of his lucid heuristic orientations, belonging to his symbolic anthropology. In particular, they work with those concepts referred to the biographical trajectory,the relation between symbolic thought and contingency, mythos and logos, Romanticism and Illustration, change and permanence. Finally, the authors underline that the Anthropology proposed by Duch aims to comprehend the paradox inherent in the human being, and the fascinating adventure of his existence, by the means of an oscillating and pendular movement between opposed and complementaryentities.