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How Can an Action Be Symbolical of an Entire Form of Life? Towards a Philosophical Anthropology of Forms of Life

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DOI: 10.23977/icrca.2019.016

Author(s)

Daniel Rueda Garrido

Corresponding Author

Daniel Rueda Garrido

ABSTRACT

In this article, the objective is to delimit the concept of form of life, a concept commonly used in various fields within the social sciences and in everyday life, but which has had few philosophical formulations in the history of thought. Although related to culture, the form of life is a more practical concept, associated exclusively with human praxis in society. Contrary to the more empiricist proposals, and relying on the symbolism defended by authors such as Cassirer, Sartre and Žižek, this paper argues that the most appropriate method for the study of forms of life is, on the one hand, the phenomenological, since, taken as a totality, the form of life can only be covered from a phenomenological distance that, in turn, leads to a critical reflection on the conditions of possibility of the actions that constitute it. And, on the other hand, it is the symbolic method that must complement the phenomenological attitude, since the understanding of the form of life requires an intellectual effort of decoding to be reconstructed as a symbolized totality through its actions as images-symbols

KEYWORDS

Form of life, Symbols, Cultural Phenomenology, Praxical and anthropological images, Sartre, Cassirer, Žižek

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