Cura or Aera Cura is the name of a

Roman goddess Roman mythology is the body of myths of ancient Rome as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans. One of a wide variety of genres of Roman folklore, ''Roman mythology'' may also refer to the modern study of these representat ...

who created the first

human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...

(homo) and whose name means "Care" or "Concern". In

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

Hyginus Gaius Julius Hyginus (; 64 BC – AD 17) was a Latin author, a pupil of the scholar Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus. He was elected superintendent of the Palatine library by Augustus according to Suetonius' ''De Grammatic ...

seems to have created both the

personification Personification occurs when a thing or abstraction is represented as a person, in literature or art, as a type of anthropomorphic metaphor. The type of personification discussed here excludes passing literary effects such as "Shadows hold their b ...

and story for his ''Fabulae'', poem 220.

Story of Cura

While crossing a river, Cura gathered clay and, engrossed in thought, began to mold it into a man. When she was thinking about what she had already made,

Jove Jupiter ( la, Iūpiter or , from Proto-Italic "day, sky" + "father", thus " sky father" Greek: Δίας or Ζεύς), also known as Jove ( gen. ''Iovis'' ), is the god of the sky and thunder, and king of the gods in ancient Roman religio ...

(Jupiter) arrived on the scene. Cura asked him to grant it ''spiritus'', "breath" or "spirit." He grants her request readily, but when she also asked to give her creation her own name, he forbade it, insisting that it had to carry his name. While the two were arguing,

Tellus Tellus is a Latin word meaning "Earth" and may refer to: * An alternative name for the planet Earth * Tellus of Athens, a citizen of ancient Athens who was thought to be the happiest of men * Tellus Mater or Terra Mater, the ancient Roman earth mo ...

(Earth) arose and wanted it to have her name because she had made her body available for it. The judgment is finally rendered by

Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; h ...

. He determines that since the ''spiritus'' was granted by Jove, he should have it in death; Tellus, or Earth, would receive the body she had given; because Cura, or Care, had been the creator, she would keep her creation as long as it lived. To resolve the debate, ''homo'', "human being," would be the name, because it was made from ''

humus In classical soil science, humus is the dark organic matter in soil that is formed by the decomposition of plant and animal matter. It is a kind of soil organic matter. It is rich in nutrients and retains moisture in the soil. Humus is the Lati ...

'', earth.

Interpretation

The story attracted the attention of

Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centur ...

, a modern philosopher, who observed, "The double sense of ''cura'' refers to care for something as concern, absorption in the world, but also care in the sense of devotion." Heidegger regards the fable as a "naive interpretation" of the philosophical concept that he terms

Dasein ''Dasein'' () (sometimes spelled as Da-sein) is the German word for 'existence'. It is a fundamental concept in the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Heidegger uses the expression ''Dasein'' to refer to the experience of being that is p ...

, "being-in-the-world" in Section 42 of ''Being and Time.'' Heidegger's use of this fable in casting the female ''Cura'' as creator has been seen as an inversion of the equivalent Christian myth, in which woman is created last, with the centrality of ''Cura'' as a challenge to the

Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...

concept of

self-sufficiency Self-sustainability and self-sufficiency are overlapping states of being in which a person or organization needs little or no help from, or interaction with, others. Self-sufficiency entails the self being enough (to fulfill needs), and a self-s ...

and "

atomization Atomization refers to breaking bonds in some substance to obtain its constituent atoms in gas phase. By extension, it also means separating something into fine particles, for example: process of breaking bulk liquids into small droplets. Atomizati ...

" of the individual.Katrin Froese, ''Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Daoist Thought: Crossing Paths In-between'' (SUNY Press, 2006), p. 18
online.
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References

External links

{{Wiktionary
History of the Notion of Care
Creator goddesses Roman goddesses Allegory Martin Heidegger

Story of Cura

Interpretation

See also

References

External links