The Idea of Community in Dietrich von Hildebrand and Julián Marías

Dietrich von Hildebrand’s metaphysical investigation of the nature of community offers compelling insights into the formation of a community bound by specific values called virtus unitiva. But this is discussed with an ontological and axiological slant, which makes it difficult to understand how it bears on concrete reality. But Julián Marías’s philosophy proves to be a fertile ground for suggesting areas in which Hildebrand’s metaphysics of community may be incarnated in the here and now, specifically through the Marían notions of vigencia and convivencia. Values, which are at the center of Hildebrand’s philosophy, can in some way find their concretization in vigencias, which are the concrete realities that permeate the social fabric, and are therefore the latent values held by a community. In this way, vigencias can likewise help explain the contents and scope of a virtus unitiva, the unifying power that binds persons in a communio personarum. Through a mutual enrichment of these two philosophers’ ideas of community, the rich metaphysical insights articulated by Hildebrand, which have received less attention, can be brought to inform the community life lived by each one.