Abstract

I argue that assumptions about human nature, even in light of Postmodernism, are unavoidable: any attempt to create a better world is grounded, implicitly or explicitly, in a conception of human. Philosophy should render explicit those conceptions and consider ways to evaluate them. Unsurprisingly, the concept of human essence has flourished in Latin American Liberation Philosophy: one cannot promote struggles that seek to liberate human beings without a conception of the "who" of liberation. The dissertation compares two bodies of thought important to Latin American liberation struggles of the 1960s--1980s, focusing on the vision of human essence present therein. First, I consider early Marx, focusing on the ideas of objectification and species-being to uncover Marx's implicit conception of human essence; I then look at how these ideas are related in a close reading of Marx's little known text, "Comments on James Mill." Secondly, I examine the Liberation Philosophy of Ignacio Ellacuria, the Salvadoran Jesuit assassinated in the infamous 1989 killings at the University of Central America. I look at his conception of human essence and how it grounds a metaphysical/ethical imperative for liberatory praxis. Finally, I compare Marx and Ellacuria in five related areas: their treatment of human nature, the dialectic, praxis, history, and the central role of the dispossessed in the realization of liberty. The dissertation concludes that Ellacuria moves beyond Marx in important and helpful ways: an explicit rendering of a philosophical anthropology thereby allowing an open and full discussion of the question of the who of liberation; a philosophical anthropology that permits us to respond to fears about essentialism and determinism and to put forth a robust notion of human liberty; an acknowledgment, while still recognizing the power and scope of the dialectic, that there are other forces also at work in reality that must be accounted for in a full and adequate rendering of who we are