Mohamed Aziz Lahbabi’s ‘Realistic Personalism’: The Multidimensionality of the Human Person in a Muslim Context

What is it about?

Modern Moroccan philosophy starts with the thinking of Mohamed Aziz Lahbabi (1923-1993). For him, philosophy is not intended to create a system of ideas, but to describe human life in its modes of existence. Thus, he develops a fundamental anthropology which stresses the very importance of intersubjectivty for the personalisation process of the individual. Therefore, a description of all fields where the relationsships of the human Self with others take place is at the very heart of this philosophy: Time as history comes about when the Self experiences time as time shared with others, and realises that time goes on, becomes a flow. Horizons come about by the Self localising itself spatially in relationship to others. Language, communication come about solely through the encounter with others. The same can be said of our inner, mental life and our emotions. The Self, the person, transcends its own bounds in these relationships with others, goes beyond itself. The Other is thus omnipresent in the constitution of the person. The demand that arises in the context of the world of values that the person should fulfil himself more and more in a continuous process of transcending his own humanness has its origin in the process of transcending the boundaries of self that is triggered by others. But the encounter with the Other is not always unproblematic: The historical experiences of colonialism and patriarchalism show how depersonalizing structures can hinder the process of personalisation. That’s why Lahbabi’s “realistic personalism” is also a philosophy of commitment which tries to reveal and to overcome these degrading structures.

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