John Amos Comenius and his Philosophy of Man

• In Event: Philosophical Anthropology in the Renaissance

Abstract

This talk discusses Comenius’s philosophical view of man. In Comenius’s late writings, man is presented as a being determined by its own unique nature with an existential openness founded on a free and limitless will. Comenius defines man as a being that creates itself endlessly and in infinite ways and is endowed with the defining feature of the God-given mind, conceived of as a trinity of crucial dispositions: will, reason and agentive faculties. The will is set to be the central part of the mind. However, this concept is not characteristic for all writings by Comenius. In his earlier treatises, we can see that Comenius preferred reason over will. This talk will try to explain this inconsistency and also give an general overview of Comenius’s anthropology. Last but not least the talk aims to put Comenius‘s philosophy of man into context of Renaissance and Early modern philosophy.

Author

• Jan Čížek, Palacký University