A series of philosophical currents whose common point is the defense of the person taken as the supreme value is nucleated under the label of “Personalism”. Some of its representatives are Manuel Mounier, Lacroix and Nédoncelle. It also includes Berdiaev, Martain, Ricoeur and existentialists such as Marcel, Le Senne, Lavelle and even Tehillard de Chardin and Buber.

Manuel Mounier (1905-1950)

He was a thinker committed to political and social action, drawing inspiration from Christianity and even anarchistutopia.

In his opinion, personalism emerged from the crisis of 1929, then some thought that evil was simultaneously economic and moral, and that it was situated in social structures and hearts. The remedy could not leave aside neither economic nor spiritual revolution.

The political program of the personalists (nucleated in the magazine Esprit) moved away from [ref: Marxism]] which was criticized by economicist and also from capitalism for giving it greater importance to “having” than to “being”, from [existentialism, criticized by individualist and spiritualism, for ingesting the real situation of the human being. The great enemy is, from this perspective, individualism. An alternative is proposed a model of personalistic and community society in which the person differs from the individual by being open to others, to the world and to God.

The personalism of Mounier develops his conception of the personal universe through the following structures:

    1. Incorporated existence: against naturalism and idealism
    1. Communication: against individualism and collectivism
    1. Intimacy: against pure conscience or cosification
    1. Conditional freedom: against determinism and absolute freedom
    1. Transcendence: against relativism or impersonal objectivism of values
    1. Action and compromise: against fatalism or delirium of action
por Graciela Paula Caldeiro