A Historical Survey of Evolution in the Concept and Status of “Man” Greek to Modern Times

Abstract

Study of human nature has been one of the most important questions to which man has come across. Right from the period when man started thinking rationally, because of his curious and enquiring nature, he meditated about Universe, existence and nature of Man and his ultimate reality. The religious tradition claims that when Man first came to earth, he knew the answer to these questions in the light of divine guidance. It declared “Man” as the crown of all the creations and all the other things are created to serve him. The civilizations that didn’t have the luxury of divine guidance developed mythological explanations. It were the Greeks who for the first time developed an intellectual discourse to answer the basic question about the reality of Man and the Universe. The medieval period was dominated by religious traditions. All these traditions, though different from one another, seem to agree to the point that Man is a special creation and the center of the Universe with some amount of divinity attributed to him. But after Renaissance, this view changed radically and the status of “Man” shrunk to an animal only who was thought-to-be guided by his own instincts and who was through and through a profane creation. This research aims at studying the concept of “Man” in different civilizations and explores the evolution of this concept from Greek to Modern times through analytical research method.