The Link Between Nature and Culture: Guardini and Polo

Abstract

Since the beginning of the 20th Century, different anthropological approaches emphasizing one aspect of the human being have proliferated. This has contributed to greatly expand what we now about man, but has also contributed to loosing sight of the unity of all these findings. The knowledge method used by Romano Guardini is the ‘theory of contrast’. A contrast (Gegensatz) is a “special relation in which two elements exclude one another, though they remain bounded and, even, mutually assumed”. Body-emotional-spiritual life of a human being occurs between polar opposites or contrasts. Leonardo Polo, a Spaniard contemporary author proposes understanding the human person under the criterion set by hierarchical dualities. His hypothesis states that said two methods are very similar. This paper studies the relation nature-culture as seen by the two authors with the objective of showing that, when using a similar knowledge method, the conclusions reached are also similar. Both authors agree that culture cannot be understood without nature, as nature cannot be understood without culture either in what regards the human person.