- Homo faber
Homo faber (
Latin for "Man the Smith" or "Man the Maker"; in reference to the biological name for man, "Homo sapiens " meaning "man the wise") is a concept articulated byHannah Arendt andMax Frisch . It refers tohuman s as controlling the environment throughtool s.Henri Bergson also referred to it in "The Creative Evolution" (1907), definingintelligence , in its original sense, as the "faculty to create artificial objects, in particular tools to make tools, and to indefinitely variate its makings."In Latin literature,
Appius Claudius Caecus uses this term in his "Sententiæ", referring to ability of man to control his destiny and what surrounds him: "Homo faber suae quisque fortunae" (“Every man is the artifex of his destiny”).Karl Marx refers to this concept using the quote byBenjamin Franklin about "man as the tool-making animal" in his "Das Kapital " [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm#4a][http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/Marx/MARXW3.HTML].In
anthropology , "homo faber" (as "the working man") is confronted with "homo ludens" (the "playing man," who is concerned with amusements, humor and leisure).It can be also used in opposition or juxtaposition to "deus faber" (god the creator, the making god), an archetype of which are the various gods of the forge.
"Homo Faber" is the title of an influential novel by the Swiss author
Max Frisch , published in1957 . The book was made into the film "Voyager" starringSam Shepard .Homo Faber is also one of the five IBMYP areas of interaction.
See also
*
Anthropology
*Philosophy
*Marxism
*List of alternative names for the human species External links
* [http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/faber Study guide about the novel "Homo Faber" by Max Frisch]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.