The human being is still one of the centers of attention and study at the present as he was in all the past ages. This happens because he gives meaning and direction to the reality. We wonder and clarify these two questions: who is the human being? And what is it? It is crucial to focus and manage our own life and the life of relationship.

The various perspectives and approaches in this study, (as unique living being, as a person, individual who expresses from the unity of body and soul, as nature, freedom, culture and history, as sociable being, as moral being, as a being who tends to happiness, experience the pain and death and wonders for the meaning of his life), must respect their unity. Because, otherwise, we would quarter our subject of study, claiming, for example, that is a body, or only soul; that is nature, or only freedom and culture (...). As mere reference, we can identify the arrogance to try to supplant the nature by culture, or the matter as the unique reality (materialism), or the freedom understood as absolute.

Current times can suppose an opportunity to overcome the committed mistakes due to ignorance or malice: nature of the beings and culture; freedom; human good; knowledge and technical; sociability; person and society; justice and common good; human development; (...).

Some of the misconceptions already had their time of experimentation, with the destructive consequences on the human being, nature and society. However, that does not mean that we are immune to reissue them from the senselessness or bad will.

There are those who, from their perception of current times, claim that the western world is experiencing "a phase of darkness". And, from the answers given to life, the family, science, research and technology, respect for nature, dignity of the human being, his good and meaning of existence, (...), will depend that it will be a time of barbarity, or not.

The experience and the facts, the knowledge and the rectitude of the will are showing us that expressions such as "progress", "quality of life", "paradise on earth" (...), are demanding us its revision, taking the human good, as indispensable.

José Arnal

Independent Forum Of Opinion

Barcelona.