Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Homo Propheticus

1998; Springer Nature (Netherlands); Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-94-011-5149-8_13

2215-0080

Ugo Mifsud Bonnici,

Religion and Society Interactions

It began with the formal definition of homo sapiens, and went through the description of homo ludens, homo faber, homo ridens or cachinnans, to homo sapiens sapiens. In fact a very distinctive trait in man is that of surmising a future: homo propheticus. Man is not only a historian with a personal and a collective memory, man is also a seer. In the case of the past, mankind’s interest and wisdom is in the discovery of the truth. Very little can be done about the past except discovering it properly, and the ethical imperatives concern really the respect due to the truth. Regarding the future, there is a wealth of moral obligations, with perhaps a dearth of the possibilities of precise divination. Regarding the future we have responsibilities because we believe, more rightly than wrongly, that what the future will be, depends on us, individually and as a species.