Language, human animality and mystical praxis in María Zambrano

Abstract

In the following article, we will attempt to analyse the theme of animality as it is addressed in the thought of Spanish philosopher María Zambrano. Human animality understood as that possibility of immanent life represented above all by mystical praxis, in its unconditional adherence to the eternal flow of reality. We will therefore try to identify those places in Zambrano's work where this theme emerges decisively, particularly in the way the mystical poet is described (Filosofía y poesía, 1939) as the one who manages to experience the relationship between language and the world in a creative and vital manner and no longer as a deadly caesura. We will also try to show how the possibility of exploring this theme of human animality in Zambrano's work, as already mentioned especially from her interpretation of mystical praxis, can offer us new hermeneutic keys through which to think about some of the Malaga thinker's most important philosophical visions.