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Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J. (Portugalete, Biscay, Spain, November 9, 1930 – San Salvador, November 16, 1989) was a Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian who did important work as a professor and rector at the Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas" (UCA), a Jesuit university in El Salvador founded in 1965. Ignacio Ellacuría was a close friend and colleague of the scholars Ignacio Martín-Baró and Segundo Montes, all of whom were assassinated with Ellacuría by the Salvadoran army, along with three colleagues and two employees (see The murdered scholars of UCA). His work was defining for the shape UCA took in its first years of existence and the years to come. Ellacuría was also responsible for the development of formation programs for priests in the Jesuit Central American province. Ellacuría's academic work was an important contribution to "Liberation Philosophy". This school of philosophy stems from the work of Augusto Salazar Bondy (1925–1974) and Leopoldo Zea (1912–2004). It focuses on liberating the oppressed in order "to reach the fullness of humanity". Ellacuría was also a strong supporter and contributor to Liberation Theology. The political implications of Ellacuría's commitment to his ideas met strong opposition from the conservative religious and political forces in El Salvador. This opposition led to Ellacuría's murder by the Salvadoran army in 1989 at his residence in UCA along with five other fellow Jesuit priests and two employees. Their murder marked a turning point in the Salvadoran civil war (see History of El Salvador). On the one hand, it increased international pressures on the Salvadoran government to sign peace agreements with the guerrilla organisation FMLN. On the other, it helped make Ellacuría's ideas (until then known only in Latin America and Spain) become known worldwide. According to Cerutti (2006) there are different types of Latin American liberation philosophy. Ellacuría's thought represents one of the currents within this philosophical tradition. Ellacuría joined the Jesuits in 1947 and was commissioned to the Central American republic of El Salvador in 1948. He lived and worked there for much of his life until his bloody assassination in 1989. In 1958, Ellacuría studied theology with Vatican II theologian, Karl Rahner, S.J.in Innsbruck, Austria.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Ignacio Ellacuría )〕 He also lived in Ecuador and Spain. ==Philosophy== From the following references Ellacuría's philosophy takes as a starting point Xavier Zubiri's (1898–1983) critique of Western philosophy. For Zubiri, ever since Parmenides, Western thought separated sensing from intelligence. This error led to two results. The first one was what Zubiri called "the logification of intelligence" and the second one was what he called "the entification of reality". The "logification of intelligence" implied that intellect was reduced to logos. This view led philosophers to believe that what they called "Being" was the cause of reality, and this in turn, explained the confusion of metaphysics with ontology. Logification of intelligence excludes sensual, not so logical, functions of intelligence. Although Zubiri recognized descriptive logos and reason as important components of intelligence, he pointed out that intelligence did not reduce itself to them. For Zubiri intelligence was a unity with the modalities of sensual apprehension, logos and reason. The logification of intelligence led to the perception of reality as "Being" in a zone in space and time (as in Heidegger's Dasein) of identifiable entities with an essence, outside the human brain. This is what Zubiri called the "entification of reality". This perception sees reality as a particular form of "Being". Thereby, for Zubiri, "Being" had been "substantivised" by Western philosophy. For Zubiri, reality is paramount to Being, which is not a noun, but a verb. Being is a particular aspect of reality and not the other way around. Metaphysics studies reality and ontology studies being. Human beings' way of accessing reality is intelligence, not a logified one, but a "sentient intelligence" that is itself a part of reality. The senses, logic, reason, intuition and imagination are one and the same faculty, because each of these things determine one another. This faculty differences human beings from other species and has been achieved through evolution. Having a sentient intelligence implies having a conscience and the possibility to imagine new realities. These formulations are in themselves real by postulation. Realities by postulation can also be realized in other forms, because sentient intelligence has the ability to recognise the processual and structural character of reality. Therefore, human beings are able to influence it, and create and transcend the historical boundaries that have been reached. For Zubiri there is no need for a realist/anti-realist discussion on if there is or not a reality that is external and independent to human beings, or if reality is a bulk of internal illusions to human beings. It is both, but not in the sense critical realism pretends (where human beings are seen as a reality that can be separated from an objective outer reality). For Zubiri, human beings are imbedded in reality and cannot exist without it. They need air, food, water and other beings. The "outer" and objective world must also come inside human beings for them to continue existing. Sentient intelligence should be able to make sense of this existence in a way that allows human beings to realise their capabilities in the world. In this line of thinking, Ellacuría said human reality is unavoidably personal, social and historical. Biology and society are elements of history, which means that they are always in movement. But this should not be confused with historical materialism that says human beings are passive instruments of the forces of history. Human beings certainly inherit constraints constructed in the past but they always have the possibility to transcend them because of their sentient intelligence. Praxis is the name Ellacuría gives to reflected human action aimed at changing reality. Unlike other animals that can only respond mechanically to stimuli from outside, through sentient intelligence and praxis, human beings have to "realise" their existence. Individuals in dialectic interaction with society, have to make out what sort of Ego to have by using their sentient intelligence and this implies transcending inherited constraints. This means that progress in reality happens through a combination of physical, biological and "praxical" factors. Through praxis, human beings are able to realise a wider range of possibilities for action. In other words, one praxis can lead to a wider and more complete form of praxis. When this is so, praxis can be said to contribute to increase liberty, if liberty is defined as greater possibilities for action. According to Ellacuría, the existence of people that are marginalized from society implies that history and practice have not delivered a wider range of possibilities for realisation for every human being in the world. This situation has prevented these excluded people to realise their existence as human beings. Therefore, it is a situation that stands away from the fullness of humanity and the fullness of reality. But this situation can be changed. Ellacuría thought that before the evolution of humanity, the further development of historical reality took place only by physical and biological forces. But since the development of human beings, praxis can also contribute to realise historical reality. Since human beings have the possibility to reflect, it is philosophy's duty to exercise this ability to reflect in order to change reality and allow greater possibilities for individual realisation. This way of thinking finds its parallels in the 1990s in Martha Nussbaum's definition of human development as the increase in human capabilities for action and Amartya Sen's notion of development as freedom. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ignacio Ellacuría」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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