Metaphysical Anthropology

Book excerpt: In this penetrating exploration of human reality, written "in a single mental movement of almost sixteen unbroken months of work," Marias has produced the most personal and original--and quite possibly the most important--of his many books. Its theme is its greatest novelty: the discovery of the level of reality that represents the empirical structure of human life. Metaphysical Anthropology brings to full development the course of Marias's thought over a period of twenty years, and completes the interpretation of philosophical theory that began with his presentation of the philosophical past (History of Philosophy) and continued through his view of the theory of human life in its collective concreteness (The Social Structure). Metaphysical Anthropology will also appear in separate Spanish, Portuguese, and Brazilian editions, as well as in other major languages.