Homo puniens: contributos para uma discussão antropológica segundo o simbolismo

Abstract

Philosophical anthropology presents us with images of man that generally emphasize his virtues such as knowing, working, teaching and playing, which constitutes a reduction in the anthropological horizon. Our hypothesis, however, is that punishment should occupy a privileged place in the anthropological investigation of man, as it allows us to understand him better. We will argue that we can identify presupposed punitive meanings, following a methodology of dialogue with other anthropological conceptions already established, but to conclude that an anthropology based on the symbolism of punishment can make many other productions of human culture understandable. The theoretical framework used will be the cultural anthropology found in Ernst Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms, for whom man is an animal symbolicum.