Laín Entrlago: The relation structure of human beings

Abstract

Pedro Laín Entralgo's worldview was strongly influenced by both his biography and the historical context he lived. The passion for politic and social problems, for scientific knowledge, and for the whole Humanity, characterizes his personality. Trying to find a solution for human needs, he was for long time a political activist. However, after all he concludes that those are superficial ways for solving deep problems. At the end of the Second War and of the Spanish civil war, he dedicates to Medicine and to Philosophy. He creates a doctrinal system which is indeed a kind of ontology of human being, based on the concept of self-other relations as the origin of both the personal and the collective self. Focused on his particular notion of human being, Entralgo brings forward a notion of human dignity which may be useful to enlighten the dilemmas of contemporary Ethics and Bioethics.