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    Vitello’s Anthropology and Its Aristotelian Roots

    On May 28th-29th 2024 a conference titled Polish Philosophical Anthropology took place in Częstochowa. This event was organised by the Department of Philosophy, Jan Dlugosz University. It was another conference held in Częstochowa that aimed at shedding some new light on selected aspects of the history of philosophy in Poland.

    AΦR member, Tomasz Mróz, has participated in this conference with a paper devoted to the philosopher with whom all the histories of philosophy in Poland usually begin. It was Vitello, a 13th century scholar, who is well-known from his theory of demons as animals built from the four elements with air as a dominant factor. Vitello argued that the demons were superior physically and intellectually to all the other animals, including human beings. Human beings, consequently, could only be considered as an intermediary species between apes and demons. In this way Vitello, with the aid of Aristotle, demonstrated that human being can’t be regarded as a crowning creature in the terrestrial world. Let us add on the margin that Vitello took advantage of his expertise in philosophy, natural sciences, medicine and life’s experience to depict vividly various interactions between humans and demons, not all of which can be presented to the minors 😉