18. His concern was not with knowledge in abstracto, but instead focused on the human being. For personalism (as it became known) human beings are not objects, but instead subjects that have free will, creative capacity, and conscience. This is how it was visualized, in the beginning of the law of people (XVI and XVII centuries), by the great Spanish jurists and theologians, Francisco de Vitoria (1480-1546), in his department in Salamanca, and Francisco Suárez (1548-1617, born in Granada), in his department in Coimbra, Portugal. Both always had present, as of the human being, the notion of common good, of the unit of human gender,12 promoting a universalistic vision of International Law. The human person, who has been given a conscience, understands himself as bearer of supreme value, beyond the individual. 19. The conception of personalism, as has become known in our time, has its roots in the thoughts and writings of authors such as Pascal (existential conscience), Goethe (the dynamic unit of spirit and matter), E. Kant (the fundamental importance of the human person), H. Bergson (memory and life),13 besides Max Scheler, Karl Jaspers, and Gabriel Marcel. Personalism of the XX century, visualizing the person as a living being, that builds itself, and bearer of the supreme value as such, - and not as an abstract entity, or a simple individual as part of a species, - came to form part of the contemporary jusnaturalista thinking and it enriched it.14 20. One of the great exponents of personalism in the last century was Emmanuel Mounier, who put his ideas in order and published them one year before his death in 1950, and who confronted its solidaristic personalism to selfish individualism as well as to ideological collectivism (including financial capital, which will become the owner of human lives); he considered Law as an “institutional guarantor of people”, and his conception of Law had in itself an unequivocal humanistic foundation, since it was based on human beings per se.15 For E. Mounier, personalism affirms the primacy of human beings over material needs and collective systems; he stated that humanism consisted in the awareness of a person within their social media and tending to that universal and the person’s spiritual development.16 21. Personalism opposes individualistic selfishness and maintains that, since one cannot find “spiritual and social salvation” in oneself, a person only exists with regard to others. Personalism states there is a unit of human gender (in space and time), being humanity one and undividable, and having the human gender one history and [reprint], pages 113, 122, 125, 127, and 134. . Cf., inter alia, v.g., Y. de la Brière, "Introduction", Vitoria et Suarez - Contribution des théologiens au Droit international moderne, Paris, Pédone, 1939, pages 5-12. 12 . For Henri Bergson, there is no perception that is not influenced by memores and the duration - v.g., of life – is the accumulated past that invades the present; cf. H. Bergson, Memória e Vida, São Paulo, Martins Fontes, 2006 [reed.], pages 2, 47, 86, 122-123, and 162. 13 . J.A. de la Torre Rangel, Iusnaturalismo, Personalismo y Filosofía de la Liberación - Una Visión Integradora, Sevilla, Edit. MAD/Colección Universitaria, 2005, pages 70-71, and cf. pages 65 and 68-69. 14 15 . Ibid., pp. 81, 86 y 95, y cf. pp. 62 y 113. . E. Mounier, Manifesto ao Serviço do Personalismo, Lisboa, Livr. Morais Edit., 1967, pp. 9-319. For the author, individualism, as well as money and materialism, separate one from the others. Personalism, instead, favors the personal realization of each person. The conquest of true spiritual freedom corresponds to each person; people enjoy the natural right of the spiritual equality. Ibid., pages 25, 27, 83-84, 96, 104, and 290. 16