History as a Path towards Dignity

An Essay on the Philosophy of History in Ellacuría, 20 Years after his Murder

Abstract

For Ignacio Ellacuría what is important in reality as such is not only to have meaning but “having to have meaning”. This apparent redundancy forms a circle of meanings that engages all the possibilities and the great responsibility that we bear as human beings. History is presented as the kingdom of freedom in a process of liberation in which the human’s capacities are developed and possibilities to appropriate those capacities open up to each individual. This is a path of creation and freedom, within the boundaries of the viable options of an epoch and a certain social body. History is, first, a tradente tradition which updates the possibilities that become reality through choice and are then incorporated through appropriation. The updating of possibilities together with the tradente tradition are two basic categories of history, but they do not exhaust it. What really happens when this giving of ways of being in reality as a process of possibilities takes place? Possibilities open the path towards human life and history when they are taken as a choice; when the choice is action and when action, in turn, is realization and, therefore, the creation of new possibilities. Tracing Ellacuría’s ideas entails taking on the commitment to search for more possibilities, to select those that seem to us ethically better, and to act in consequence. However, as the antithesis also exists, Ellacuría alerts us to the fact that we can close possibilities through our choices...