{62} (cont'd)

B) Co-determination of the persons. The constitutive notes of my genetic scheme belong to my own substantive system. The flowing back of this schema into my substantive “reality being” is therefore, the projection of the unity of my entire system into the notes of the schema. This projection is what in this problem I have called “dimension”. Since the schema qua schema is quite complex, this dimension is also complex, and has different dimensional aspects. To simplify I will also call these dimensional aspects “dimensions”. Strictly speaking they are only interpersonal dimensions. These dimensions are determined, then, by the schematic flowing back of the “others” over my reality. These dimensions are three.

a) First dimension. As animal of realities man, I repeat, does not multiply genetically except in a schematic mode. Which clearly means that in each member of the human phylum there are traits and characteristics which do not belong to the other members {63} of it, or to the rest of the members of the species. In other words, the members of the human phylum in one form or another are different. But an observation has to be made about this difference, namely, that the rest are not simply “different”. They are something else: the rest are “diverse”. They are different, but within the same phylum, that is, within the same species. The diverse members are different, but within the same version: they are di-verse: this is the di-versity. Diversity is different within the same version. A dog and a man are different, but not diverse. Diversity is not a merely numerical and qualitative distinction, but a distinction within the same species. And since men are animals of realities it turns out that one who is diverse from me is not only one who may have other characteristics, but moreover he is another animal of realities. This moment of reality is essential; without it there would be no human diversity in an express and formal way. Man is de suyo a diverse animal in the sense that belonging to the same species indeed constitutes, by this moment of reality, another “reality”, but another within the same species of reality.

This dimension I call the individual dimension. But that merely dimensional notion of the individual must not be confused with the general metaphysical notion of individuality. “Individual” can actually have several meanings. In the first place, individual is a characteristic proper to every reality as such. All reality is by itself something individual: to my way of thinking no {64} principle exists according to which the real is individualized. This individuality may have the characteristic of mere numerical singularity, or perhaps the character of a qualified individuality, a qualification according to which each reality is individual, but in its own mode. In the second place, there is an individuality proper only to personal realities qua realities; this is the individuality of “its ownness”. The person has his own mode of individuality which consists in being a reality formally his own and only his own. In these two senses individuality is a characteristic of reality as such, and hence, is a characteristic which concerns realities independently of the fact that there may be or not may be other realities. But there is a third sense, that according to which individuality is a characteristic which concerns the realities that exist, which are precisely and formally “others”, precisely and formally by its specific respectivity to these others: it is “this individual” not only as individual reality, but as diverse from other individuals. Since this individuality is the flowing back of other realities over each one of those of the same species, I call it the interpersonal individual dimension. In what does this consist more precisely?

Every man is his own and his being is to be I. But this I is determined as a proper mode with respect to the I's of other persons. And this mode has a most precise character: it is that dimension according to which the “I” is an “I” with respect to a “you”, to a “him or them”, etc. The I as worldly actuality of my substantive reality has this dimension with respect to other persons, which we call “each-being-thus” (ser-cada-cual): the I has the dimensional character of being “I”: it is the “each-quality” of the “I”. The its-ownness of the I is beyond any “each-quality”. While the I is the {65} worldly actuality of my personal reality, the I is the actuality of the human person with respect to other persons. This is the I as co-determined with respect to a you, and to a him. In this fashion “I” am absolute, but diversely. This is the individual dimension of the human person.

b) Second dimension. The re-flowing of the phyletic schema over each of the members of the phylum does not end here. The schema which I possess in myself —a moment not added to my reality, but a constitutive moment of it— is a schema in virtue of which my reality extends from itself towards others of the phylum who are alive. It is not a moment of interpersonal diversity, but a moment of the turning according to which my reality has extended from itself towards the various living beings of the phylum. This is a structural turning towards living in society. Indeed it is a structure which is rooted and emerges from the psycho-organic structures which I possess as a substantivity. This may require a further clarification.

Above all, I repeat, this living in society is the result of a turning towards another reality of the same phylum: there is no turning from a man towards a horse, for example. At best, man may freely incorporate into his own life other non-human animals, but no more than this. The living in society constituted genetically is a living in society with those other animals of reality as such: that is, the moment of reality formally belongs to living in society. I do not share living in society with others because they are bipeds, or have a certain face, etc.; I share living in society because they are biped “realities”, or “realities” with such a face, etc. There is living in society with others only insofar as they are realities. That is what is missing from the tame or domestic animals: these animals do not {66} share living in society with man insofar as he is a reality, but rather man incorporates them into his life inasmuch as they are real. And so, the living in society of a man with other men qua realities is what formally constitutes human society in the widest sense of the term, and also in its most radical meaning. The moment of reality is the essential character of all social human living in society. Animals certainly share living in society among themselves and form groups which are more or less coherent, ranging up to what has been improperly termed “animal societies”. However, these are not societies, but mere groupings founded in the signing character of certain animal stimuli. But this stimulo-signing character way of turning towards others is not social living in society, and is not society because it lacks the formality of reality. Social living in society is the result of psycho-organic structure, which is open to reality both in its suchness and in its formality of reality. This genetic turning of living in society by some men insofar as they are “real”, towards others, also as “real”, is the transition from animal grouping to human society. Because of this, not only the “natural” notes belong to societies, but also the notes which are “appropriated” as options when facing the real as real.

Since any animal of realities is a personal animal, it follows that this turning towards other men qua real is a turning of my person to the persons of all others. This turning may assume two forms. One is the turning towards the person of the other, but qua other. This is living in society of an “impersonal” character. The impersonal, actually, is a personal character: the animal is not and cannot be impersonal; it simply is a-personal. Human persons are living in society impersonally when each functions {67} only as “another”. And this is what strictly constitutes society. But a person can turn towards another, not just as another, but as a person. This living in society is not society: it is a different form of living in society, which I have termed “personal communion”.

Each animal of realities turned towards the reality of the other, realizes this turning as community. And in this community, each man who forms part of it is affected by the rest: this is the moment of the héxis, of the habitude of personal otherness. These three moments (turning, community, habitude) are founded one upon the other. Their radical unity is the total reality of the social, the human sociality.

Man has this character de suyo, that is to say, the sociality is a moment of human reality as such. Man is, then, a social animal. Therefore, it is a character which belongs to him due to his psycho-organic reality. Indeed, this structure of my psycho-organic reality determines a dimension of my substantive reality. The I, the you, etc., not only diversify themselves, but they co-determine themselves. I, insofar as it encompassess the determination of a you, is now no longer an individual you, but just the opposite, it is a common being. My being, my I, is not only individual but congenerically communal: this is the communality of the human being, of the I.

What is this “common being”? Here “common” does not mean “communicated” or “participated”, because communication or participation is founded on something prior: on a character of human reality as “being”: here it means its communality. It is the “being” itself which by its own disposition is intrinsically and formally common, prior to any participation. The possibility {68} of communication is the communality of the human being, of the I. The I is common as an I. My substantive reality is, as we said earlier, absolutely relative. We have seen that I am diversely absolute, I am an I. Now we must add that I am communally absolute. Man is communally absolute precisely in the measure in which schematically and phyletically he is, from himself, living in society with other men qua realities.

But this is not all.
c) Third dimension. The phylum, the species, is genetically prospective. A species could not be a species without being prospective. And it could also not be a species if this prospectivity were it not determined by a genetic factor. The prospectivity is others, not insofar as I am diverse from them, nor insofar as I am living in society with them, but insofar as I am going to determine the continuation of the species. This continuity has two aspects. One merely bio-genetic: a father engenders children, etc. And this bio-genetic moment is not the simple affirmation that each man may in fact have descendants, but a moment according to which the formally prospective is the phylum itself. However, this prospectivity has yet another different aspect, namely, that what is genetically determined is a person; that is to say, it has a formal moment of reality. Therefore, the otherness of real prospectivity, qua real, is its unity with the bio-genetic moment, and constitutes a third human dimension: History.

This is a radically and constitutively genetic dimension. If man did not have a biological genesis, one could not talk about history. However, this genetic transmission, {69} absolutely necessary in order to have history, is absolutely insufficient by itself. There is only history in man. The so-called “Natural History” is just a mere extrinsic denomination. The “historic” is not heredity. Neither is it evolution, because evolution proceeds by mutation, while history proceeds by invention, by an option of the being in reality. Man is an open essence and because of this, his forms of being in reality necessarily have to be elaborated. Therefore, history is not —as has been claimed so often— a prolongation of evolution; rather, both heredity and evolution are just moments of history, aspects of the bio-genetic moment. On the other hand, history is parádosis, tradition, delivery. Of what? Of the forms of being now in reality. History does not exist except where the process of genetic transmission concerns the forms of being in reality as reality. Genetic transmission is but the vector moment of tradition transmission. From this it follows that man, this animal of realities who is de suyo a diverse animal, and also de suyo a social animal, is, finally, also de suyo an “historical animal”.

What formally is this tradition? What is the formal character of man qua historical reality?

aa) Tradition is a “handing over” or a “delivery”. And it has a character essentially constituting and constitutive of the human substantive reality. But tradition, in order to be constitutive, must be founded upon the form of reality received from the progenitors: it is continuating. Without this, in each individual and in each society, history would begin at zero; that is, there would be no history. Finally, tradition delivers the {70} forms of reality to those who have been engendered: tradition is progressive. These three characters: constitutive, continuating and progressive are genetically linked. And in this sense a person himself is constituted by them: he is biographical. But concerning our problem here, the biographic falls within the concept of history.

Therefore, what, formally, is history? History is not a succession of viccisitudes, nor is it narrative and still less testimonial or documental narrative. Furthermore, it is not “meaning”. Tradition does not necessarily, and certainly not primarily, transmit the meaning of life. What it transmits, what it delivers, are the forms of being of the progenitors as possibilities of being in reality to and for the benefit of those who receive the history. The forms of being in reality, qua transmitted, are just possibilities. Because of this, the so-called “historical fact” is not a “fact” rigorously speaking. The “fact” always refers to the mere exercise of some acts; while possibilities are not an exercise, but something which is appropriated or rejected or substituted in order to be able to be exercised. That which is now made possible as such is not an act. It is what formally constitutes the ”event”. An event is the realization of appropriated possibilities, not the mere execution of an act. The historical is a form of being in reality, a form received as a principle of possibilities. But history is not mounted and reposing upon itself. It is but the history of human reality. How does the formally historical affect each person? History transmits, as I said, a principle of possibilities, and only of possibilities. What kind of possibilities are we dealing with?

First of all, it is not something usually referred to {71} as the possible in itself. In this sense, the possible is the non-contradictory. And this possible is then possible conceptually. But here I do not refer to the conceptually possible but to the really, physically possible. Physically, the possible is that which is “made possible” by something. And depending on how this “making possible” is constituted, we shall have different forms of possibility, which unfortunately have not been expressly and formally distinguished in philosophy. First, the possible is what is made possible by a potency, by a >i>dýnamis. This is the idea which comes from Aristotle: the possible is that which is potential. But, as I have already pointed out, “possible” sometimes means not the potential, but what is made possible by a faculty. Not every potency is capable of producing its act. Therefore potency and faculty are not the same. Sometimes they do not coincide. When this happens mere potency is not enough. For example, sentient intelligence is a faculty. Human intellection is possible; however, it is not made possible by mere intellective potency, but by the sentient intelligence. Only this latter is a faculty. The same occurs with sentiment (affecting sentiment) and with the will (tending will).

Sometimes something is made possible not only by potencies and faculties, but by that which in Spanish we call, using the plural, “the possibilities”. The possibilities make something possible by possibilitation. The Cro-Magnon man is, in potencies and faculties, as complete as the man of today. However, in contrast to us, he was unable to fly through the air because he lacked possibilities. This is what I have said is proper to history.

But formally there is a fourth sense of the possible. In order to execute acts it is not enough to have potencies and faculties, nor is it always enough to have {72} possibilities of execution. It is still necessary for certain objects and acts to be capable of being reached. For this it is necessary to have what we call “talents”. And what talents make possible in human reality is what we call “capacity”. Here are the four senses of the term and concept of “possible”: by potency, by faculty, by possibility and by capacity.

Capacities may be acquired and lost, and they are sometimes transmitted through tradition. The history of each person is ultimately capacitation. History is a positive or negative process of capacitation. Transmission through tradition is a moment of the person as capacitated.

bb) This granted, in what does human reality consist while “being” in an historical dimension?

History, by being prospective, by being transmission through tradition has a processual character. Then one might think that the historical is formally the temporal (I am not going to enter into a study of time as such). In a certain way it is, but only in a certain way, because the temporal does not qualify the historical process without any other factors. There can be and in fact there have been histories temporally independent among themselves. Therefore, time as such is formally plural; there have been different times, that is, independent of each other. Each historical process has its own time as a process. And in this “its” are two very precise characters.

First and foremost, time has a “figure”. There is a figure of time, different according to different histories. Only when the historical has been unified does it constitute a “universal” History with a more ample figure of its own. The figure of time has consequently been changed prospectively. Therefore, there is {73} a process of the figuration of time. Each phase of the figuration, as a phase, is what I will call a “zone of time”. All substantive realities, by virtue of being actually, belong to a particular temporal zone. And this zone has a character and a very precise name: age. Age is not just a question of chronometry, but a question of belonging to a temporal zone. For this reason all men who exist in the same age are not merely synchronic, but something more: they are contemporary.

Because of this, the temporal zone is not only a zone, but to contemporary-ness belongs another aspect: the temporal zone itself, as I have indicated, qua moment of the total temporal process. This is the “stature” of the times. The same action performed today and in the fifth century before Christ might not be identical because they have been performed at different statures of time. Prospectivity, then, gives two characters to time: figure and stature. The human realities of one integral historical process are not only contemporary among themselves, but are contemporary with respect to stature.

Therefore, now it is clear that what we may call its “temporeity” also belongs to the form of reality of the person and encompasses both figure and stature: this is the historic human reality of the I. The I is formally temporal.

The unity of reality and being, that is, the personal reality “being”, the I, is at one and the same time a diverse animal, a communal animal and a temporal animal. By virtue of his phyletic specifity, the animal of realities is “being” in accordance with his individuality, in accordance with his communality, and in accordance with his temporeity. These three moments constitute a unity, not conceptual, but physical: they constitutively and physically envelop the moment of reality.

{74} With this we have finished the first chapter of the study of human reality, namely, what it is to be man. Now we must proceed to the second chapter: how is one a man.