Wolfhart Pannenberg și antropologia filosofică a secolului 20

Wolfhart Pannenberg and the Philosophical Anthropology of the 20th Century

Abstract

Wolfhart Pannenberg is one of the most prominent Protestant theologians of the past century, whose vast work is at the crossroads of theology and philosophy. Concerned with the field of philosophical anthropology and interdisciplinary research, Pannenberg tried to capture in his writings the specifics of human existence by means of the notion of “openness to the world”: this concept acquires in his work a religious meaning, since by world-openness Pannenberg really means God-openness. Only man, as a rational and personal being, is able to transcend his environment and thus himself; man is an open being through his very ontological structure, and all the resources at his disposal. The study of Wolfhart Pannenberg’s doctrine may constitute an introduction to the past century’s philosophical anthropology. In his book Anthropology in Theological
Perspective he presents man from a multiple perspective, “in nature” “as social being”, as a cultural and religious being, thus debating the anthropological theories of important representatives of philosophic anthropology in the modern era and our own time, such as J. G. Herder, Max Scheler, Arnold Gehlen, Helmuth
Plessner, Adolf Portmann, Martin Heidegger. This work by Wolfhart Pannenberg is worth studying in all philosophy schools, especially by those who believe in the virtues of the dialogue between philosophy and theology, and in the beneficial character of interconfessional dialogue.