Henrique Vaz, Darwin and Cassirer: Being Human and Transcendence

Abstract

This article compares the approach of the Brazilian philosopher Henrique Vaz to the ones of Charles Darwin and Ernst Cassirer about human nature. Firstly, the text expounds Darwin’s ideas about human species in his The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), showing how the strictly biological approach is insightful in many respects, but becomes insufficient to understand humans in some other important points. Secondly, the article argues that those insufficiencies of Darwin’s theory may be overcome by the culture centered understanding of the human phenomenon held by Ernst Cassirer. Some other inadequacies are shown in Cassirer’s account, however, which can be resolved - preserving the virtues of both his and Darwin’s theories - by Henrique Vaz’s dialectic conception of humans as beings towards transcendence.