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What Does It Mean to Be Human

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The power of consciousness and thought, connections and relationships, self-awareness and identity, the pursuit of meaning and legacy, conclusion: embracing the human experience.

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What Does It Mean To Be Human? 300 Years of Definitions and Reflections

By maria popova.

Decades before women sought liberation in the bicycle or their biceps , a more rudimentary liberation was at stake. The book opens with a letter penned in 1872 by an anonymous author identified simply as “An Earnest Englishwoman,” a letter titled “Are Women Animals?” by the newspaper editor who printed it:

Sir, — Whether women are the equals of men has been endlessly debated; whether they have souls has been a moot point; but can it be too much to ask [for a definitive acknowledgement that at least they are animals?… Many hon. members may object to the proposed Bill enacting that, in statutes respecting the suffrage, ‘wherever words occur which import the masculine gender they shall be held to include women;’ but could any object to the insertion of a clause in another Act that ‘whenever the word “animal” occur it shall be held to include women?’ Suffer me, thorough your columns, to appeal to our 650 [parliamentary] representatives, and ask — Is there not one among you then who will introduce such a motion? There would then be at least an equal interdict on wanton barbarity to cat, dog, or woman… Yours respectfully, AN EARNEST ENGLISHWOMAN

The broader question at the heart of the Earnest Englishwoman’s outrage, of course, isn’t merely about gender — “women” could have just as easily been any other marginalized group, from non-white Europeans to non-Westerners to even children, or a delegitimized majority-politically-treated-as-minority more appropriate to our time, such as the “99 percent.” The question, really, is what entitles one to humanness.

But seeking an answer in the ideology of humanism , Bourke is careful to point out, is hasty and incomplete:

The humanist insistence on an autonomous, willful human subject capable of acting independently in the world was based on a very particular type of human. Human civilization had been forged in the image of the male, white, well-off, educated human. Humanism installed only some humans at the centre of the universe. It disparaged ‘the woman,’ ‘the subaltern’ and ‘the non-European’ even more than ‘the animal.’ As a result, it is hardly surprising that many of these groups rejected the idea of a universal and straightforward essence of ‘the human’, substituting something much more contingent, outward-facing and complex. To rephrase Simone de Beauvoir’s inspired conclusion about women, one is not born, but made , a human.

Bourke also admonishes against seeing the historical trend in paradigms about humanness as linear, as shifting “ from the theological towards the rationalist and scientific” or “ from humanist to post-humanist.” How, then, are we to examine the “porous boundary between the human and the animal”?

In complex and sometimes contradictory ways, the ideas, values and practices used to justify the sovereignty of a particular understanding of ‘the human’ over the rest of sentient life are what create society and social life. Perhaps the very concept of ‘culture’ is an attempt to differentiate ourselves from our ‘creatureliness,’ our fleshly vulnerability.

(Cue in 15 years of leading scientists’ meditations on “culture” .)

Bourke goes on to explore history’s varied definitions of what it means to be human, which have used a wide range of imperfect, incomplete criteria — intellectual ability, self-consciousness, private property, tool-making, language, the possession of a soul, and many more.

For Aristotle , writing in the 4th century B.C., it meant having a telos — an appropriate end or goal — and to belong to a polis where “man” could truly speak:

…the power of speech is intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and the unjust. And it is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, or just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a family and a state.

In the early 17th century, René Descartes , whose famous statement “Cogito ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”) implied only humans possess minds, argued animals were “automata” — moving machines, driven by instinct alone:

Nature which acts in them according to the disposition of their organs, as one sees that a clock, which is made up of only wheels and springs can count the hours and measure time more exactly than we can with all our art.

For late 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant , rationality was the litmus test for humanity, embedded in his categorical claim that the human being was “an animal endowed with the capacity of reason”:

[The human is] markedly distinguished from all other living beings by his technical predisposition for manipulating things (mechanically joined with consciousness), by his pragmatic predisposition (to use other human beings skillfully for his purposes), and by the moral predisposition in his being (to treat himself and others according to the principle of freedom under the laws.)

In The Descent of Man , Darwin reflected:

The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, is certainly one of degree and not of kind. We have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation, reason, etc., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals.

(For more on Darwin’s fascinating studies of emotion, don’t forget Darwin’s Camera .)

Darwin’s concern was echoed quantitatively by Jared Diamond in 1990s when, in The Third Chimpanzee , he wondered how the 2.9% genetic difference between two kids of birds or the 2.2% difference between two gibbons made for a different species, but the 1.6% difference between humans and chimpanzees makes a different genus.

In the 1930s, Bertrand Lloyd , who penned Humanitarianism and Freedom , observed a difficult paradox of any definition:

Deny reason to animals, and you must equally deny it to infants; affirm the existence of an immortal soul in your baby or yourself, and you must at least have the grace to allow something of the kind to your dog.

In 2001, Jacques Derrida articulated a similar concern:

None of the traits by which the most authorized philosophy or culture has thought it possible to recognize this ‘proper of man’ — none of them is, in all rigor, the exclusive reserve of what we humans call human. Either because some animals also possess such traits, or because man does not possess it as surely as is claimed.

Curiously, Bourke uses the Möbius strip as the perfect metaphor for deconstructing the human vs. animal dilemma. Just as the one-sided surface of the strip has “no inside or outside; no beginning or end; no single point of entry or exit; no hierarchical ladder to clamber up or slide down,” so “the boundaries of the human and the animal turn out to be as entwined and indistinguishable as the inner and outer sides of a Möbius strip.” Bourke points to Derrida’s definition as the most rewarding, calling him “the philosopher of the Möbius strip.”

Ultimately, What It Means to Be Human is less an answer than it is an invitation to a series of questions, questions about who and what we are as a species, as souls, and as nodes in a larger complex ecosystem of sentient beings. As Bourke poetically puts it,

Erasing the awe-inspiring variety of sentient life impoverishes all our lives.

And whether this lens applies to animals or social stereotypes , one thing is certain: At a time when the need to celebrate both our shared humanity and our meaningful differences is all the more painfully evident , the question of what makes us human becomes not one of philosophy alone but also of politics, justice, identity, and every fiber of existence that lies between.

HT my mind on books

— Published December 9, 2011 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2011/12/09/what-it-means-to-be-human-joanna-bourke/ —

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What does it mean to be human?

By Jon Farrar

What does it mean to be human? It’s a simple question, just a few short words, but it unwraps the bundle of complexity, contradictions, and mystery that is a human life.

It’s a question we have been asking for thousands of years. Priests and poets, philosophers and politicians, scientists and artists have all sought to answer this ultimate puzzle, but all fell short, never able to fully capture the vastness of the human experience.

Origin of Species book by Charles Darwin

More on Science

Some have come closer than others.

Charles Darwin had one of the greatest insights into the human condition that any of our species has had, changing thousands of years' of thought at the stroke of a pen, yet he had nothing to say about how we actually experience being human.

It would be another 50 years before an Austrian doctor began to talk about the hidden forces of the subconscious mind, but even Sigmund Freud couldn’t provide an adequate explanation for consciousness. In fact, to date, no-one has come close to describing the sheer magnificent wonder of being alive. The electric surge we feel when we kiss a lover, the deep stirring of the soul when we listen to Mozart’s Requiem, and the full flowing joy of laughing uncontrollably with our closest friends as we share a joke.

Being Human is a major new season launching on BBC Earth that aims to take us as closer to understanding who we are. Why do we behave the way we do? How do we live better? How did we get to now? What is our future?

Over the course of a year, we will take you by the hand and dive into these questions, exploring all corners of humanity with wide-eyed curiosity. We will look deep into the mind at what drives our behaviour, meet extraordinary humans who have unlocked the secrets of a long and healthy life, take a trip through 2000 years of civilisation, journey into the human body on our path to adulthood as we go from baby to baby-maker, experience the drama of extraordinary human rituals that hope to cheat death, and watch happens to our bodies in the hours, days, and months after we die.

We have brilliant series from world class programme makers coming up, full of incredible ideas at the leading edge of scientific thought. We want to make you think, but we also want to make you feel. Being Human will be a celebration of the human race. We want to make the hairs on the back of the neck stand up at the improbable good fortune of our own existence.

So what is our story? Let’s start with the facts. We are one species of primate that emerged from the dry savannahs of East Africa just over 100,000 years ago and began a migration that continues to today.

We weren’t the strongest animal, but we had an unusually large brain and held ourselves upright, giving us a high vantage to scan the distant horizon for enemies, and the freedom to use our hands for other purposes. Over time we began to fashion tools. These were primitive, but could tear through skin and muscle and gave us an advantage as we prowled our wild habitat for prey.

We might have continued our short life of hunting, savagery, and brutishness right through to today, but for one important development - language. Other animals could communicate, but we evolved astonishing vocal ability, able to create sounds that represented not just objects, but also concepts. We learned how to express ideas. We could speak of danger, hope, and love. We became storytellers, able to weave together common narratives about who we are and how we should live. From this point on the pace of change was electrifying.

Twelve thousand years ago, we learned how to domesticate plants and other animals for food, and were able to settle in one place. We became a social animal, building complex communities that become kingdoms, learning to trade with each other using a concept called money.

By 2500 years ago, a small group of humans in Southern Europe and the Middle East started to ask big questions about who we were. What is the best way to live? What is a good life? What does it mean to be human? How we responded to these questions is how we built our civilisation, art, and philosophy. Five hundred years ago, the scientific revolution began, allowing us to harness the resources of our planet to live longer and more productive lives.

Woman using voice assistant on smartphone in the rain

When the digital revolution began only 50 years ago, the world shrank. We became a global village, our hopes and dreams converted into an infinite stream of ones and zeroes echoing throughout cyberspace. Today, we stand astride the world as a god, with both the power to destroy our own planet and to create life.

We may even be the last of our species to be fully human as bio-technology and artificial intelligence begin to rip apart the very core of who we are. Indeed, our Being Human campaign is led by Sophia, an incredible lifelike robot who is developing her own intelligence. She looks human, she sounds human, but she cannot yet think or feel like a human. How many years until she is truly one of us? Or we are one of them?

Our story is remarkable. The greatest story ever told. And while it is the story of astonishing development for our species, it is also the tale of billions of individual lives echoing down the millennia, all of them full of hope and promise, fear and disappointment. As we discover more about reality, we continue our ascent into insignificance, becoming a vanishing footnote in space and time, a speck of dust in the vastness of the universe. But to be human is to be at the centre of our own universe, to experience life in all its colours and all its potential. This is what we want to celebrate with Being Human - the awe of being alive and the thrill of discovering what it means to be us, the greatest wonder in the world.

Inspiration

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What does it mean to be human? An essay

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Cyborg Persons or Selves

Aleksandra Lukaszewicz

It would be natural to commence the book dedicated to 'cyborg persons' with broad references to post- and transhumanism. This of course will happen on the following pages, because it is impossible to discuss issues regarding the redefinition of 'human person' without the perspective developed by these branches of contemporary reflection in humanities. Yet I do not consider them as a necessary departing point, because the topic in question is of greater significance than should be confined to one field. Technological enhancement – developments in genetic engineering, artificial intelligence and robotics, and so forth – are processes that are currently happening; we should not be blindsided by them, wondering when they will knock at our door. The question that follows is: how should we refer to the new entities starting to appear among 'us' humans, and what is the significance of redefining of our relationship with these entities (with which we're already familiar, as various parts of 'nature')? Trying to approach that subject we encounter philosophical, sociological, and legal understandings of what it means to be a person – definitions which have never before needed to specify a 'human person'; these are the layers in which we should see a person as existing and operating. Therefore, my principal reference, helping me to rethink the notion of a person in such a way that it may include non-humans (especially cyborg persons) is Joseph Margolis. Particularly helpful to my reasoning is his idea of defining a human person or self as an artefactual individual emergent from the process of hybrid evolution (intertwined nature and culture, due to invention and mastery of language), and everything that this entails with developments of culture and technology (Margolis 2017, pp. 39-62). The stripping of a human person from his assumed, probably 'divine' (or 'of divine provenance') nature or essence, as Margolis does, is bold but bright – not reducing the human world to mere matter, nor blindly accepting neo-Darwinism, but also not accepting religious or transcendental demands. Cultural realism as proposed by Margolis (Margolis 2010, p. 134) seems to be a better weighted version of ontology as proposed by Roman Ingarden (famous pupil of Edmund Husserl) recognizing three ontological realms: material, ideal, and cultural. The entities existing on a cultural level considered by Ingarden were artworks, predominantly novels and sometimes sculptures (Ingarden 1958; 1966). Influenced by his master's transcendentalism and in spite of the discussion on idealism and realism between them, Ingarden claimed that there is an ultimate truth, a correct perception and an objectively correct judgment of aesthetical values of an artwork which have Intentional characteristic – and so he believed that there is one and only one correct form of valuing each artwork (Ingarden 1966). Margolis makes claims much broader than Ingarden's, because he describes the cultural realm as embracing institutions, practices, meanings, ideas, art, languages, and technology. Radically unlike Ingarden, he encloses this in post-Darwinian evolutionary perspective and historical relativism (Margolis 1995). In this realm exists a person, who is an enlanguaged creature involved in an historical social and political life, comparable in ontology to an artwork, because artworks are also enlanguaged entities, artefactual and interpretable, evolving in relation to their matter (Margolis 1999). The way Margolis presents human persons – as artefactual, enlanguaged, and hybrid, having no natural environment and therefore no natural source for any set of norms and rules other than that which is collectively invented, shared, and transformed historically (what he calls “sittlich”) – opens up for the inclusion of cyborgs into the classification of persons. It also opens for consideration the possibilities of cyborgian ethics and politics, because normativity – as Margolis explains – is not rooted in any transcendental setting but rather always contingent and relational. Contemporary discussions on cyborgs and the ethical, social, and political issues that accompany them – currently happening in various places across the world – could benefit from turning to Margolis' philosophy in the process of redefining our ideas of a person, his/her/its/their autonomy, responsibility, and freedom, as well as for imagining possible practical applications in science and politics. It is important to regard some recent occurrences increasing the issue's urgency, such as the presentation of the 'Transhumanist Bill of Rights' to the US Capitol in Washington, D.C. in 2017 by a representative of the Transhumanist Party in favor of life extension and space exploration; or the recognition of Sophie, a humanoid robot produced by Hanson Robotics company from Hong Kong, as an official citizen of Saudi Arabia in 2017. Sophie is the first humanoid to be accepted as a citizen of any country and this has led to discussion on the kind of rights that status brings about, such as whether Sophie can marry, or vote, or if she were intentionally switched off – would that be murder? However I cannot address all the subjects and problems appearing in conjunction with rapidly developing technology, so I limit myself predominantly to the idea of the 'cyborg', a being embodied in a technologically enhanced human form, who by means of online technology implemented in the body has different kinds of perception, cognition, practices, patterns, habits, and/or methods of communicating in comparison to someone embodied in an unaltered human form. Cyborgs are not science fiction, neither they are completely artificial entities as Sophie; there are those on the spectrum between us and robots and androids. 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Claiming that citizenship and legal rights should not be limited to one kind of biological being, Fuller proposes that we should resign from theological argumentation and its understanding of 'human' as the unique, Abrahamic figure, and instead take an evolutionary approach. In order to test 'human citizenship' he proposes a Turing Test 2.0, in “attempt to capture the full complexity of the sorts of beings that we would have live among us as equals” (Fuller, 2015, p. 81). This kind of proposal has extraordinary effect – according to this line of thinking: “some animals and androids may come to be eligible for citizenship, while some humans may lose their citizenship, perhaps even in the course of their own lifetime” (Fuller 2013, p. 2). 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Technological artefacts that only twenty years ago were but evocative objects have now become ordinary presences in our life: from artificial implants to mass cosmetic surgery and body manipulation, from new forms of permanent media interconnection to interaction with artificial intelligences. Hence a number of new crucial questions arise, related to our living together in the age of post-humanism. Nowadays, when technology is no longer a tool, or even just an environment, but is wearable and incorporated, and can act retroactively on the very structure of the organism, what are the main challenges we have to face, and the main narratives for making sense of this new human condition? In the tradition of the journal, this special issue addresses the topic from different theoretical perspectives and disciplinary fields. Contributions are divided in three sections: 1) The post-human condition: living in a brave new world'. The essays in this section embrace different ambits relevant to the public sphere and our life together, such as politics, work, religion, fashion, literature. 2) Bodies in question/questioning bodies: here the main focus is on the redefinition of the ableism-disability relationship (and the resulting problematic redefinition of 'ableism' itself) in the light of the typical post-human question of healing-enhancement. 3) Representations/Imaginaries: here the focus is on the way in which the topos of enhancement has been dealt with by fictional and non fictional texts over time, from early television to cinema up to web series. Cosa significa essere umani nell'era dove una tecnologia pervasiva e sempre più 'incorporata' ha eroso il confine tra natura e cultura? Come le nuove possibilità di potenziamento ridefiniscono l'idea stessa di normalità? Quali implicazioni sul nostro vivere insieme? Come porre, se è il caso, la questione del limite? Quali forme narrative concorrono alla costruzione degli immaginari su questi temi? Nella tradizione della rivista, il monografico affronta questo intreccio di questioni a partire da diverse prospettive e diversi ambiti disciplinari. I contributi sono suddivisi in tre sezioni che riguardano alcuni cambiamenti significativi nella sfera pubblica, la ridefinizione dell'idea di 'normalità' relativamente al corpo, gli immaginari legati al tema del 'potenziamento'.

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Biljana Kochoska Taneska

"The times are changing and so are the people. This always was and always shall be. We are currently witnessing one of the biggest leaps in history in terms of changes in the social environment, influenced by the exponential development of information technology. Social space is changing fast, and with the growth of new media, new features are added to real space and people’s perception of it. What was once called cyberspace is slowly invading real physical space and so, by merging these two, the entire living environment is changing. This goes beyond just a slight shift in the perception of social and/or organizational changes in people’s life: it is a change in the way life is lived on a daily basis. This paper focuses on the changes people are facing in their everyday life, into the realm of the mediated world. It shows how, with the rapid development of informational and communication technologies, the cyberspace is merging with the real space, thus creating a new living environment which consequently changes people’s behaviour. Augmented reality becomes the real reality and people are constantly living in a life-mix of the two worlds (analogue and digital), which are gradually becoming one. this research also presents a perspective on the future development of information and communication technologies, along with current improvements in the field which enabling this. This future is called the Internet of things, and presents a place where everyone and everything is constantly connected, updated, tracked down and located. Such a future depends not only on the technology but also on acceptance by people, so an overview of current changes in people’s behavior, bringing them closer to this acceptance, is presented. Finally, the research draws a parallel between some instances of human behavior in the wave of the new mediated environment and the characterising features of the cyborg definition."

Tama Leaver

Artificial Culture is an examination of the articulation, construction, and representation of "the artificial" in contemporary popular cultural texts, especially science fiction films and novels. The book argues that today we live in an artificial culture due to the deep and inextricable relationship between people, our bodies, and technology at large. While the artificial is often imagined as outside of the natural order and thus also beyond the realm of humanity, paradoxically, artificial concepts are simultaneously produced and constructed by human ideas and labor. The artificial can thus act as a boundary point against which we as a culture can measure what it means to be human. Science fiction feature films and novels, and other related media, frequently and provocatively deploy ideas of the artificial in ways which the lines between people, our bodies, spaces and culture more broadly blur and, at times, dissolve. Building on the rich foundational work on the figures of the cyborg and posthuman, this book situates the artificial in similar terms, but from a nevertheless distinctly different viewpoint. After examining ideas of the artificial as deployed in film, novels and other digital contexts, this study concludes that we are now part of an artificial culture entailing a matrix which, rather than separating minds and bodies, or humanity and the digital, reinforces the symbiotic connection between identities, bodies, and technologies.

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CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Ollivier Dyens

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Ioana Cerasella Chis

With the ever-quickening development of NBICS technologies (Nano, Bio, Info, Cogno, and Synthetic) there is a plethora of ethical, sociological and political issues which need to be addressed in relation to how they affect our understanding of ‘the human’ and of ‘being’. Following Martin Heidegger’s thought, this paper explores the ambiguity of technology: the way in which modern technology limits humans’ potential to reveal themselves as authentic beings, with a particular focus on the impact of the cochlear implant and bionic ear on deaf people. The ‘ontological difference’ in Heidegger’s work will be laid out to enable us to focus on the ontological question, namely, what it means to be human, or a being-towards-death. Further, this paper seeks to analyse the (im)possibility that cybernetic enhancements of the ontic (the human body) can change the meaning of the ontological (of Being, [deaf-]Dasein), or the way in which one embraces death. Contrary to Heidegger’s conception of Being and death, the main focus of transhumanists is to actively engage with death and life enhancement, which, it will be seen, raises questions about their authenticity. Nonetheless, Critical Disability scholars point to ethical concerns: the bionic ear substantively alters and threatens deaf culture, Sign Languages and the meaning of ‘optimal life’ and dis/ability. There is no doubt that the cochlear implant/bionic ear is aporetic: it represents an augmentation of human ability, but it is also a threat, when used instrumentally to establish a hierarchy of abilities and an aesthetic of oppression.

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What Does It Mean to Be Human? What Are the Ethical and Social Implications of This Definition? Essay

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For ages, philosophers, poets, novelists, dramatists, and several literati have attempted to device their own definition of humanism and what it means to be human. The humanism of sixteenth century defined it to be the process of learning, discourse, and reasoning.

Poets during the Elizabethan renaissance have created extraordinary, thought provoking works that explores human nature and the human desire. Often dubbed as the golden age for love sonnets, this essay dwells into the definition of human nature delineated by the three great poets of the time – Christopher Marlowe, Phillip Sydney, and Edmund Spenser.

The sixteenth century works analyzed in the essay are Amoretti by Edmund Spenser, Astrophil and Stella by Philip Sidney, and the poem “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” by Christopher Marlowe. These works are analyzed to unravel the humanist philosophy that the three poets explained.

For example, according to Marlowe, humans feel the beauty of the nature and get a pleasure from observing such the nature as “valleys, groves, hills, and fields, woods or creepy mountain yields” . Thus, being able to feel the beauty is very important .

Philip Sidney provides an insight into what the poet believed to be humanness in his poem Astrophil and Stella . Sydney shows the presence of love as an individual theme and how it helps in addressing challenges of life . For Edmund Spenser, to be human also meant to be free. The poet states that humans should not “suffer tyranny”.

He notes that it is very important for a human to be free and this freedom . I believe the study of these three poems help in understanding the various aspects of humanism as portrayed in the sixteenth century literature. These three poems provide a complete answer to the questions.

The three poets believe to be a human is to understand the beauty of nature and imagine life. However, it is difficult to overlook the ethical and moral issues associated with the definition of humanism that these three poets present. This essay undertakes an assessment of the philosophy of humanism that Marlowe, Sydney, and Spenser present through their poems and the ethical issues pertaining to the definition they present.

According to Philip Sydney, poetry holds the power to move righteous individuals and create virtuous action . Sydney’s philosophy was based on the Horatian formula that the main purpose of poetry was not to delight, but to teach. Most of the renaissance poets emphasized and realized the discursive power of poetry.

Sydney even stressed it to the extent that poetry held a greater discursive and tutorial power and object than philosophy or history. The sonnet sequence that we study for this essay, Sydney’s Astrophil and Stella , is one of the finest specimens of Elizabethan love sonnets.

In this sonnet sequence, Sydney presents the dialectic processes and the literary effect of the poem. In the first sonnet of the sequence, Sydney poses and answers the rhetorical question of the importance of art as an inspiration to good writing. The very beginning of the sonnet describes the steps to inspire literary writing through art:

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show

That she (dear She) might take some pleasure of my pain:

Pleasure might cause her read; reading might make her know,

Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain;

This presents the climax presented in a rhetorical form to the readers. In latter sonnets, Sydney presents the logical structure and creates a distinction between the agent and the action. The opening sonnet of Sydney also presents the overall subject that the sonnet sequence deals with. The poem is an exclamation of a lover to his beloved and the aim of the sonnets is to express his feelings in the best possible way to this beloved.

The aim is to move her heart with the description of his love-stricken condition. Overall, Astrophil looks for the conventional topics that lovers of the sixteenth century would feel necessary to steal his lady’s heart. Nevertheless, to his dismay, the expressions that Astrophil presents are all ill fitted, and hence he finds himself in a quandary of ideas impregnated with painful details of his present state.

Sydney follows the sixteenth century tradition of presenting humanistic ideas in this poem. He questions rhetoric as a form of humanistic art. The overall story of the sonnet sequence is that of Phip a young gentleman from the country who falls in love with Stella, a proud girl born into aristocracy.

However, Stella refuses to accept his love and marries a rich man. This dejection makes him go through a series of heartache and “coltish gyres”. In the end he realizes that all the aristocratic snobbery is just a hindrance to his talent and ends the sequence with “Leave me, O Love which reachest but to dust” .

Astrophil and Stella precisely describes the sequence of the ideas of humanism preached by the sixteenth century literati. Sydney in this sonnet sequence presents an anatomy of love that experiments with human emotions and reaches out for the unattainable love.

Further, the poem itself explicates the importance of reading the classics, embracing the teachings through literature, and gaining in knowledge: “studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain, / Oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow” .

The poem explicates that the older generation of poets should be read and the new generation of poets should be also be read to expand on the meaning of live and love as presented in the third line of the first sonnet: “Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know” (1).

Similar understanding of literature and knowledge is expanded in sonnet 71 of Astrophil and Stella:

Who will in fairest book of Nature know

How Virtue may best lodg’d in beauty be;

Let him but learn of Love to read in thee,

Stella, those fair lines, which true goodness, show.

So while thy beauty draws the heart to love,

As fast thy virtue bends that love to good:

“ But ah,” Desire still cries, “give me some food.”

The first four lines of the sonnet are an expression of human emotion but also stresses on the discourse and learning of knowledge. The stress that Sydney places is on the concept of learning and acquiring of knowledge.

Further, it should be noted that in the first sonnet as well as in sonnet number 74, Sydney stresses on the fact that one should not emulate the past: “Some do I hear of poets’ fury tell, / But (God wot) wot not what they mean by it: / And this I swear by blackest brook of hell,/ I am no pick-purse of another’s wit.”

However, Sydney himself draws from classic tales and clichés to describe his verse, he advices against the use of previous knowledge and create knowledge of their own. He stresses on gaining true knowledge through the exploration of one’s own art and emotions. This accentuates the importance of learning to humanism defined by Sydney.

The approach adopted by Christopher Marlowe was slightly different from that of Sir Philip Sydney in terms of approach to new learning. In his poem “The Passionate Shepard to His Love” Marlowe adopts hard pastoralism to counter the prevalent trend of poetic expression of soft pastoral life.

In a way, this poem is an exposition into the politics of depiction of pastoral life in sixteenth century and prior literature on the subject. In this poem, he expresses the hardships of pastoral life and the discomforts that the different cycles of nature provides to human existence are described in the poem: “the flowers doe fade, and wanton fields / To wayward winter reckoning yeeldes”.

The aim of the poet is to present a story of two lovers as well as fill the sonnet with mythological lore . These “mythological shards” helps the readers to understand the various social layers of the society that is described in the poem. It helps in identifying the readers with the world the poet describes in the poem.

For instance, the very first stanza of the poem initiates the process of deifying the mistress of the Shepard who will eventually be transformed into a goddess in the final stanza.

However, there are certain constraints encapsulating this change, and the magical powers that will be bestowed on the lovers: “Come live with me and be my love, / And we will all the pleasures prove / That valleys, groves, hills, and fields, / Woods, or steepy mountain yields.”.

The presence of Nature in Marlowe’s poems is stressed upon with the emphasis on words like “hills”, “groves”, “Valleys”, “woods”, etc. The description of the landscape emphasizes on the presence of Nature on human life. Nature is shown in a greater than life figure in Marlowe’s poems. This logically makes the readers believe in the connection between love, human life, and nature.

Leiter points out “Love for Marlowe’s human beings results in a projection of human vitality into nature as though she had expanded in sympathetic imitation of the lovers’ “living and loving.”” . The pastoral imagery described throughout the poem establishes the image of the Shepard’s lover as the floral goddess.

The poem emphasizes on the passion of human beings that ahs been depicted through the pastoral imagery of the sixteenth century literature. The humanism that Marlowe preaches has found its inclusivity in the power of Nature. The emphasis that Marlowe presents in the poem is to “love” and “live”.

The strategy that the poet employs is to make love and life work its way through the pastoral landscape and feel its presence in the embrace of nature. Hence, for Marlowe, these pastoral images have metamorphosed the pastoral images into love. This is why his maiden love metamorphoses as a nature Goddess.

The poem initially begins with an expression of love to the Shepard’s beloved, and then engages in the description of the rustic landscape of pastoral life. The Shepard’s expression of love in the poem, however, remains vague, and Marlowe replaces the popular description of a lover’s lament with the pastoral description of nature. The description of the rustic nature is emphasized in the beginning of the poem:

And we will sit upon the rocks,

Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,

By shallow rivers to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses

And a thousand fragrant posies,

A cap of flowers, and a kirtle

Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

The poem begins with valleys and hills and transforms into the modern life in beds and table in the second half of the poem. The poem essentially takes a round trip of the countryside and the readers have been transformed from the various facets of country life to the mundane life of city.

The poem exudes in pastoral innocence as a stark contrast to the excesses of courtly world. The rustic pleasures of the shepherd described in the poem, stands as a stark contrast to the aristocratic sports.

The Amoretti has often been considered as an autobiographical account of Edmund Spenser’s love eulogies to Elizabeth Boyle. The poem holds references to Spencer’s ideas of Christian marriage and doctrines related to the gender relations that are considered proper according to the sixteenth century society. The main themes that the sonnet sequence expresses are that of love, liberty, and loss.

The sonnet sequence begins with a “complete series of artistic products” . Spenser definitely uses a literary type language with little artistic variation. In the poem, Spenser stresses on divine, platonic love as a form of human nature. The human passion described by Spenser in the poem transforms into platonic love.

The poem stresses on human love, joy, and misery is seen as analogues to divine love. The poem creates an analogue of human love and divine love and thus, creates a discourse on education through love and redemption through faith.

The Augustine church believed that carnal desire was the ugliest form of human corruption and love should be established between mind and heart and not between bodies. This Augustine belief created a shift in the previous understanding of love and carnal desire as expressed through previous literature.

Spenser’s poetry stressed on the tension between the two concepts of love – platonic and carnal. In Amoretti , Spencer presents the tension between the process of courtship and the wills as a contest between the two lovers and not a process of mutual acceptance of love:

Happy ye leaves when as those lilly hands,

Which hold my life in their dead doing might

Shall handle you and hold in loves soft bands,

Lyke captives trembling at the victors sight.

In the beginning of the poem, his mistress completely helplessly enthralls the narrator; however, by the second stanza, the narrator describes the mutuality of the two lovers in the poem. As the sonnet progresses, Spenser re-creates the narrator’s mistress, who is transformed from a creation of the poet to a status of a demi-goddess.

In the 35 th and 83 rd sonnets of Amoretti , the mistress is transformed and first becomes an “Angel” and then is described as God: “my soules long lacked foode, my heavens blis” (Spencer 77). In Amoretti 22, Spencer presents the divinity of love.

He stresses on the holy presence in human love: “This holy season, fit to fast and pray, / Men to devotion ought to be inclin’d” . Spencer further states that the praying and fasting is for his “sweet” mistress: “For my sweet saint some service fit will find” . Further, in the 68 th sonnet of Amoretti Spencer describes Easter as a lesson that lovers need to draw from the life of Christ and uses a stylistic ruse on his mistress.

Essentially the episode of crucifixion becomes as metaphor for erotic love that creates a vehicle for love. Thus, the love presented by Spenser is one that denotes resurrection rather than passion. Thus, Spenser presents the carnal love as a cause of human failure and degradation. Platonic love is considered by Spenser as a means to achieve divine embrace and shun away the humanistic weaknesses.

Amoretti presents a strong statement of the Augustinian concept of love and human nature is described as one that is corrupt and usually urges for the baser desires of the flesh. However, Spencer stresses on his Augustinian discourse of a love that is above the carnal needs of humans and embraces spiritual love.

The humanistic poets of the sixteenth century usually modeled their writing on the pastoral writing in the beginning of the sixteenth century in order to differentiate themselves from the country discourses.

The pastoral mode of poetry adopted by humanist poets like Sir Phillip Sydney, Edmund Spenser, and Christopher Marlowe therefore stresses on the English humanist education through lyrical print. These works usually emphasized on the economy and temperance of life, and the pastoral features dismissed the formal features associated with the verses.

Further, these writings also delineated the irrelevance of studious learning and acquiring of knowledge. Thus, all the three poems has a hero who belongs to the simple, ordinary folk of the time like the country gentleman in Astrophil and Stella and the shepherd in the Passionate Shepherd . Ethics can be disassociated with the humanist philosophy as the former rejects the naturalistic philosophy.

The humanists delineated little ethical question. The ethical question has not been questioned even in the poems presented by the three poets. However, they showed a strong sense of disassociation from the prevalent societal structure in sixteenth century England.

Works Cited

Benson, Robert G. “Elizabeth as Beatrice: A Reading of Spenser’s “Amoretti.” The South Central Bulletin 32.4 (1972): 184-188. Print.

Brown, Ted. “Metapoetry in Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti.” Philological Quarterly 82.4 (2003): 401-417. Print.

Leiter, Louis H. “Deification through Love: Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”.” College English 27.6 (1966): 444-449. Print.

Lewalski, Barbara K. “How Poetry Moves Readers: Sidney, Spenser, and Milton.” University of Toronto Quaterly (2011): 756-768.

Marlowe, Christopher. The Passionate Shepherd to His Love. 2005. Web.

Sinfield, Alan. “Sidney and Astrophil.” Studies in English Literature 20.1 (1980): 25-41. Print.

Spenser, Edmund. The Complete Works in Verse and Prose, London: Spenser society, 1882. Print.

Sydney, Phylip. Astrophel and Stella, London: Thomas Newman, 2010. Print.

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IvyPanda. (2019, April 22). What Does It Mean to Be Human? What Are the Ethical and Social Implications of This Definition? https://ivypanda.com/essays/what-does-it-mean-to-be-human-what-are-the-ethical-and-social-implications-of-this-definition-essay/

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THE BIG IDEAS

What Does It Mean to Be Human? Don’t Ask

We don’t see the problem with our self-importance because our narcissism is so complete.

By Martha C. Nussbaum

Ms. Nussbaum is a philosopher.

Over time, the idea of “being human” has surely meant — and will continue to mean — many things. There is and has never been just one answer. But surely one thing it ought to involve today is the ability to recognize that the question itself is a problem.

We humans are very self-focused. We tend to think that being human is somehow very special and important, so we ask about that, instead of asking what it means to be an elephant, or a pig, or a bird. This failure of curiosity is part of a large ethical problem.

The question, “What is it to be human?” is not just narcissistic, it involves a culpable obtuseness. It is rather like asking, “What is it to be white?” It connotes unearned privileges that have been used to dominate and exploit. But we usually don’t recognize this because our narcissism is so complete.

We share a planet with billions of other sentient beings, and they all have their own complex ways of being whatever they are. All of our fellow animal creatures, as Aristotle observed long ago, try to stay alive and reproduce more of their kind. All of them perceive. All of them desire. And most move from place to place to get what they want and need. Aristotle proposed that we should strive for a common explanation of how animals, including human animals, perceive, desire and move.

We know Aristotle as a philosopher, but he also was a great biologist who studied shellfish and other creatures large and small. He encouraged his students not to turn away from studying animals that don’t seem glamorous, since there is something wonderful in all of them, not least the sheer fact that they all strive for continued life.

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What does it mean to be Human Essay | Essay on What does it mean to be Human for Students and Children

February 13, 2024 by Prasanna

What does it mean to be Human Essay: The aim of people’s life might vary from person to person, but what unites every human is what it means to be themselves; to be human is to be the protagonist of your universe and experience life in all its colours and potential.

The feeling of being alive, the thrill of experiencing tomorrow, to be able to perceive ourselves is the greatest wonder of the world. What makes us humans is to be able to celebrate humanity.

You can also find more Essay Writing articles on events, persons, sports, technology and many more.

Long and Short Essays on What does it mean to be Human for Students and Kids in English

We are providing students with essay samples on a long essay of 500 words and a short essay of 150 words on what does it mean to be human for reference.

Long Essay on What does it mean to be Human 500 Words in English

Long Essay on What does it mean to be Human is usually given to classes 7, 8, 9, and 10.

What Does It Mean To Be Human? Before answering this question, it is essential to know what is meant by ‘humanity’. The quality of being humane; benevolence, a sense of compassion and sensitivity that is characteristic to the human race is ‘humanity’. All humans are sensitive, even if it is deep-rooted. ‘Humanity’ is what makes us more human than ‘heredity’.

Humans have minds, emotions, the ability to communicate, to perceive, to empathize, their creative capacity, unique to their creation. It is to one’s potential that they define what it means to be human to them. To be human is to have the freedom of whoever one wants to be but behind the bars of humanity. Living life to its fullest, fulfilling the responsibilities given, discovering oneself through the journey of life, boils down to what it means to be human.

A dream or a passion that pushes people through obstacles in life is what keeps them grounded to being a human. Often can one notice the spark in the eyes of a person when speaking about their dreams and aims, the thrill in one’s voice when they talk about love, any pursuit that gives hope for tomorrow is the backbone of our lives.

‘Emotions’ are a vivid attribute to humans. Humans can communicate through their emotions in the most genuine way. To laugh out loud when happy, to cry out in the raw when hurt, to shout and strain our voices when angry, to be able to feel our hearts warming up from a touch of love, to feel the pain of others, to have a sense of commitment is what keeps us from losing the human in us.

Being human means being imperfect and harbour both strength and weaknesses in us. To be human is to be flawed, being stressed under pressure, to want to give up at some point, be tired but then at the end of the day to reflect on yourself. Having beliefs, cultures, interests makes a person unique to themselves, celebrating ourselves keeps humanity stuck to us. From back in times, humans have evolved to become a modern man today. Developing over time has only helped us realize what it means to be human, the infinite capacities that are within us and how we can only strive to make the future better.

Robert Frost is a poet well known to depict his outlook on human life through his poems like “stopping by the woods on a snowy evening”, “birches” and many more, where he is in a constant debate between escapism and reality. Even though he would love to live in an elusive dream, all of his poems conclude with him accepting his responsibilities before becoming a slave to his fantasies. This debate is what makes us human. Humans can question their motives, make a mature decision, accept life with all its shortcomings as well as surprises, be happy with their achievement, and realize that they have to attend to their responsibilities at any cost.

Short Essay on What does it mean to be Human 150 Words in English

Short Essay on What does it mean to be Human is usually given to classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

We all have a dream. Big or small, a goal, ranging from sleeping under the stars to owning a company, is valid and crucial because a dream is what makes us who we are. Every day might not be the same. At times we could be crying on the bed for the whole day, and be motivated for work the next day.

The fact that s our every day is uncertain, every day we can learn to feel a different way, every moment we are curious of the next moment all to fulfil our dreams is what makes us human.

To be human has a million answers to it, depending on how one pursues their life, but what forms the base of humanity are the morals that keep people grounded, teaches them to respect and carves in them the ability to make mature decisions and face the consequences. To be human is to be yourself and live your life to the fullest.

10 Lines on What does it mean to be Human in English

To be human is to have the freedom to be yourself.
The quality of being humane is firmly attached to being a human.
Act of war, violence or harm robs us of our humanity and thus makes one question the human inside them.
To be human comes along with recognizing, accepting and walking along with one’s strength and weakness.
One should fulfil all their responsibilities as human.
It is important to be true to one’s dreams. Humans are known for their dreams and passions and strive for it.
To be human means to learn from mistakes and grow every day.
Being human is learning to make choices and prioritize tasks.
Loving ourselves and self-awareness is the key attributes in human possession.
Living life to fullest without regrets and knowing where our morals limit us should is the human psyche.

FAQ’s on What does it mean to be Human Essay

Question 1. What is the moral of all humans?

Answer: The moral of all human is to perceive humanity.

Question 2. How are humans different than other species?

Answer: Besides biological differences, humans have the knowledge of time and a more developed concept of life and various goals and responsibilities in it.

Question 3. How can as humans we understand each other better?

Answer: Communication is the key to evolve understanding. Humans have developed their own speech over decades and are best able to communicate and understand each other using it, and sometimes via emotions.

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Philosophy Thoughts

What does it mean to be human, an introductory essay.

‘What does it mean to be human’ is a difficult question to answer for a short essay like the one you are currently reading. It is probably an even worse subject to begin with as the first publication of a Substack. An introductory essay to a forum such as this would include something light-hearted and jovial. We need to get to know each other, right? It should probably begin with a funny story about a random historical event that only students of philosophy know about, but one which is accessible. Like in the 1800s when the ‘famous’ Schlegel brothers, who were both significant figures in the German Romantic movement, fell in love with each other’s wives and eventually swapped. We can only speculate about the events leading up to that moment, but hey, they were called romantics for a reason…See a story like that gives us a chance to laugh and chuckle together. An ice breaker, I believe it is called.

But what fun would that be. The question remains unanswered so why not try a tackle it. Why not start with an incredibly complex and sophisticated query for the first of many short essays that should probably resign themselves to less complicated discourse. I mean really. People that are smarter and more talented than me have written volumes on this question. And besides my self-effacing tendencies, which are just ways of coping with insecurities if I am being honest with all you strangers out there. Besides all of that, who even wants to hear what a philosopher has to say these days? There are scientists that answer perplexing and intriguing questions, right? They do those science things that are concrete and empirical. They invent cool stuff and make our lives better, so why do we want to hear from a philosopher, especially from one who doesn’t do any of those things?

Thanks for reading Philosophy Thoughts! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Valid points, all of them.

Let’s shift focus here for a moment and just ignore all of the valid rationalizations being presented in what lies above. Let me tell you a little about myself and why I am interested in this question, besides the obvious reason like the fact that ‘I am a human and want to know about myself’—or at least I think I’m human. As the oracle says—“Know thyself,” right. Anyways, I’ve used this question as the foundation for my less than stellar academic career in philosophy and religion. For well over a decade now, I’ve discovered as many ways of answering the question, if not more, as the years I’ve been trying to answer it. I’ve been seduced by a lot of different perspectives from defining us as creatures of desire to rational animals, to beings created in the image of the divine, and even to story tellers that build narratives laden with meaning and ‘Truth’ and, most of the time, inaccurate memories of events that act as the foundation of those narrative constructions, so forth and so on. Blah. Blah. Blah. All the answers I’ve encountered, and the dozens that I left out for the sake of brevity, provide very determinate scopes for being human. Determinate.

‘Determinate’ is a very interesting word. Perhaps, as interesting as the question that I am pondering in this essay. Out of curiosity I asked ChatGPT to define it because sometimes the colloquial, or regular, use of a word does not have the same meaning when it is used in the academic language game known as philosophy—I know you know that, but I thought I would make sure we are all on the same page, or at least that I am on the same page with me. Here is the response I received back from ChatGPT:

“It is an adjective that means having exact limits or boundaries, being definite, or being capable of being determined or decided. For example, in mathematics, "determinate" is used to describe a square matrix that has a nonzero determinant, indicating that it is invertible or non-singular. Additionally, "determinate" can be used more broadly in various contexts to refer to something that is precise or clearly defined.”

I am going to make a decision as the author of this essay, a creative decision (I believe that’s what they call it). I am going to leave out the portions I don’t like in that ChatGPT response (i.e., cherry-picking). Obviously, as a scholar in the humanities I am going to leave out the parts about math…I don’t do numbers and they don’t do me, so we’ve agreed to part ways and give each other a comfortable COVID amount of distance—six precise feet for safety.

Anyways, ‘determinate’—boundaries, capable of being decided, precise and clearly defined—these are my favorite words from the AI response. They appropriately convey the meaning of ‘determinate’ that comes to mind when considering the aforementioned question. Ultimately, what I have found in my research is that we crave this outcome. We inhabitants of the West have been largely shaped by the delightful satisfaction that precision and clearly defined determinations bring—I call it certainty. I think we can attribute this phenomenon to the scientific method. Whatever your thoughts about science, it has staying power in Western culture—and truly around the world—because it gets results. It provides certainty in what is otherwise an ‘uncertain’ world. Now, science doesn’t always get the results we want or expect but that isn’t really all that important to it. The method doesn’t care what ‘I think’ or what ‘I believe’—it is a method. It can’t think or believe; it just ‘methods’.

Hold on…ok, yes, ChatGPT has confirmed that ‘methods’ is incorrectly used in that sentence. What would we do without them—the LLMs I mean. Ok, let’s focus.

So, the scientific method is just that—a method. It is not self-enacting, nor is ‘it’ a being that can take action. The almighty user of the method, in my estimation, gets addicted to clear and precise outcomes. Now don’t get me wrong more often than not the outcomes are negative. Meaning that the scientific method reveals that the original hypothesis is wrong (negative) more than it reveals that it is correct (positive) but knowing what isn’t true is still a determinative outcome.

Basically, what I am saying is that our world, our culture, the culture of Western Civilization has been habituated by this method to expect that everything—questions, hypotheses, theses, phenomena, etc.—can be determined. That is to say that we can precisely and clearly define anything and everything—given enough time. So, in time, we will be able to answer the question at the top of this essay. Nothing left will be uncertain…end of query.

But is that all there really is to say about the subject? If I am being honest, I’ve intentionally been leading you down a very specific line of reasoning, leaning into the idea that you—like me—are steeped in the Western intellectual tradition, whether you care to admit it or not. So, like me, you have probably felt a craving for the intellectual certainty that comes with determinate things and ideas. But the truth is that this was all leading up to a more balanced answer, one that I think can be freeing and also terrifying. That answer can easily be summed up by the term ‘indeterminate’. So, we have the determinate and now the indeterminate to contend with also. Let’s refer back to the almighty ChatGPT….“Indeterminate is an adjective that describes something that is not precisely determined, settled, or fixed…[skipping math stuffffff, ok here we are]…Overall, ‘indeterminate’ suggests a lack of definiteness or finality.” There it is. Indeterminacy.

There are determinate things that possess clear and specific qualities or characteristics. For example, you might be black or brown or white. Or maybe you are tall relative to others. Or maybe your eyes are brown. Your hair is long. You breathe oxygen. You can walk. These are all easily defined and clearly definite statements about a person. And then there are indeterminate things like your sense-of-humanity, freedom, justice, love, and hope to name just three. I am only mentioning this because our world is full of determination. We are bombarded with an overwhelming, though warranted, sense of confidence in what we, as a society and individually, can definitively and clearly define because of the success and power of the scientific method. But we tend to take very specific determinations and generalize to the point that they no longer represent the world around us clearly. I get it. The headline ‘One study shows this, but since it is only one study, we can’t be sure if it is true, so if you’re interested in learning about this subject, great, but ultimately nothing in this article can be confirmed until further research is done’ doesn’t sell magazines or news articles. Even if that longwinded title is more accurate and truthful, you may never hear a lot of things that we aren’t sure about. And there is a lot more that we don’t understand than what we do understand.

Anyways, it is my belief that humans contain some sense of indeterminacy that juxtaposes all of what we know about ourselves—the world too—and in future essays I will go into detail about why I think this point is important and provide more demonstrative examples to defend my thesis. But for now, just mull it over. Let it sink in that you may not be as precisely and clearly defined as the media, work, friends, family, the government, and everyone else might think or want you to be. The things you do, the reasons you have, the emotions, the thoughts, the actions you take…can lack an absolute definiteness or finality. Perhaps, that isn’t so bad. Rest in the indeterminacy. Does it put you at ease? Does it give you anxiety? Maybe both? But here is the secret—you’re not alone. There are a whole bunch of us out here still trying to answer this question: what does it mean to be human?

More thoughts coming soon. It was nice to meet you!

Echoes some of my thoughts below.

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Human characteristics: what does it mean to be human.

Part of what it means to be human is how we became human. Over a long period of time, as early humans adapted to a changing world, they evolved certain characteristics that help define our species today.

This section of our website focuses on several human characteristics that evolved over the past 6 million years. As you explore the scientific evidence for these characteristics, you will discover that these traits did not emerge all at once or in any one species. There were important milestones along the way. For example, early humans began walking upright before they began making tools. A rapid increase in brain size occurred before early humans began using symbols to communicate. And all of these traits emerged before humans began domesticating plants and animals.

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Walking Upright

The earliest humans climbed trees and walked on the ground. This flexibility helped them get around in diverse habitats and cope with changing climates.

Tools & Food

Early humans butchered large animals at least 2.6 million years ago. By at least 500,000 years ago, early humans made wooden spears and used them to kill large animals.

As early humans spread to different environments, they evolved body shapes that helped them survive in hot and cold climates. Changing diets also led to changes in body shape.

a fossil endocast from a Homo erectus skull

As early humans faced new environmental challenges and evolved bigger bodies, they evolved larger and more complex brains.

Social Life

Sharing food, caring for infants, and building social networks helped our ancestors meet the daily challenges of their environments.

Assyrian blue Lapis Lazuli Cylinder Seal and Clay Impression beside each other

Language & Symbols

From pigments to printing presses, symbols changed the way humans lived and provided new ways to cope with an unpredictable world.

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Humans Change the World

Within just the past 12,000 years, our species, Homo sapiens , made the transition to producing food and changing our surroundings. We have been so successful that we have inadvertently created a turning point in the history of life on Earth.

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What Does It Mean to Be Human?

First Online: 09 May 2018

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Thomas Teo 3

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the Theory and History of Psychology ((PSTHP))

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Ontological discussions in psychology include the meaning of being human , how psychological competencies contribute to that debate, and how implicit and explicit theories of human nature in the past and present impact psychological theory and practice. Tracing classical theories of human nature, consequences for the science and practice of psychology are debated. Critical theories of human nature are identified and it is argued that at specific points of history particular theories of human nature have dominated, which is not a random phenomenon, but reflects developments in society. Psychologization as well as the fact that many theoretical reflections in academia are based on Western theories, and are hence Western-centric, are discussed. From a critical perspective, the exclusionary dimensions of theories of human nature are presented, drawing on posthuman ideas.

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In the following reflections on human nature, I use a theoretical rather than a historical approach.

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Teo, T. (2018). What Does It Mean to Be Human?. In: Outline of Theoretical Psychology. Palgrave Studies in the Theory and History of Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59651-2_3

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A Brief But Spectacular take on what it means to be human

Steve Goldbloom Steve Goldbloom

Mira Kittner Mira Kittner

Katie Hodgman Katie Hodgman

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Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/brief/478586/yuval-noah-harari

Yuval Noah Harari is a professor renowned for his broad and thought-provoking perspectives on human history. Harari, who is the bestselling author of "Sapiens," recently released a new volume of this work for younger readers. He gives his Brief But Spectacular take on what it means to be human.

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Geoff Bennett:

Yuval Noah Harari as a professor of history who is renowned for his broad and thought-provoking perspectives on human history.

Harari, who is the bestselling author of "Sapiens," recently released a new volume of this work called "Unstoppable Us" for younger readers. Tonight, he shares his Brief But Spectacular take on what it means to be human.

Yuval Noah Harari, Author, "Unstoppable Us": I think it's more difficult to write for kids than for adults.

When you write about complicated stuff,and you are actually not sure what you want to say, then, with adults, you can just cover yourself by talking with these very long, complicated sentences. With kids, it doesn't work. You need to speak very clearly. And, for that, you really need to think deeply, to know, what do you actually want to say?

When I was a kid, I asked these big questions about life, I mean, what are we doing here, what is this all about? And I think what struck me the most is not that the adults often had no answers, is that they were not concerned about the fact that they really don't understand the world.

In a way, I wrote "Unstoppable Us" to answer at least some of the questions that really bothered me when I was 10 or 12. How did we get here? If you look at any major human achievement, it is always based on large-scale cooperation. You want to build pyramids, you want to fly to the moon, you want to create an atom bomb, you want to build a health care system, you always need thousands of people cooperating together.

And we are the only mammals that can do that. How do we do that? By inventing and believing fictional stories. You can't do that with chimps. Humans, unfortunately, are — we are very smart, but, despite our wisdom, we keep doing some very stupid things.

We know that nuclear weapons could destroy the whole of human civilization. We know that now artificial intelligence can escape our control, and yet we keep on producing it. The three, I think, biggest challenges that face humankind today in the 21st century are ecological collapse, disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence and the threat of nuclear war.

The one thing everybody needs to know about A.I. is that it's the first technology in history that can make decisions by itself and can create new ideas by itself. It's often compared to previous technological breakthroughs like the printing press or the atom bomb.

It's completely different. Printing presses could not decide what book to print. Atom bombs could not decide by themselves which cities to destroy. But A.I. can do that. The dedication of the book says that our ancestors made the world what it is, and we can now decide what it will become.

The main message of the book and also in the title, "Unstoppable Us," is that humans, all humans are the most powerful entity on the planet, and we should own it. We should acknowledge our immense power, because only then we can also take responsibility for what we are doing with this power.

My name is Yuval Noah Harari, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on what it means to be human.

And you can find additional Brief But Spectacular episodes online at PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief.

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What It Means to Be a Human Person

It is time we get clear about the ontology of personhood..

Posted December 10, 2021 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

Christian Smith's excellent book, "What is a Person?," clearly spells out an ontology of human persons for sociology.
The Unified Theory gives a clear ontology of the mental that directly aligns with Smith's view of human persons.
There is now a clear bridge from psychology into sociology that clarifies the ontology of both mental behavior and human persons.

A central feature of the Unified Theory of Knowledge (UTOK) is that it affords us a way to scientifically frame the ontology of the mental (see here for this argument in detail). Via the Tree of Knowledge System, it shows how "mental evolution" began with the evolution of animals with nervous systems and complex active bodies during the Cambrian Explosion approximately 550,000,000 years ago. In addition, it clearly defines the mental behaviors of "minded animals" as consisting of sensory-motor looping functions that allow animals to develop paths of behavior investment via recursive relevance realization that produce a functional effect on the animal-environment relationship. Moreover, via the Map of Mind 1,2,3 , UTOK specifies why there are three domains of mental behavioral processes that must be differentiated, both ontologically and epistemologically.

The domain of Mind 1 refers to the domain of covert neurocognitive processes (Mind 1a ) that regulate the overt mental behavioral activities that are observable to others (Mind 1b ). Mind 2 refers to the subjective conscious experience of being in the world and it is only directly observable from the inside, that is from the subjective perspective of the animal. Mind 3 is present in human persons and refers to the self-conscious justification processes that take place within the individual's subjective field of experience (Mind 3a ) or between people in the form of verbal expressions to others (Mind 3b ).

Getting clear about the ontology of the mental is necessary to solve the problem of psychology. And this is a necessary step to link psychology to the social sciences. Indeed, it is at the intersection between psychology and the social sciences (as well as humanities and philosophy ) that we find one of the most central problems in the academy, which pertains to the question of what is a person? This question is directly taken up in Professor Christian Smith’s excellent work, What Is a Person? Rethinking Humanity, Social Life and the Moral Good From the Person Up .

Smith tackles this perspective from the vantage point of critical realism and personalism. Critical realism is the philosophy of science developed by the visionary Roy Bhaskar It can be thought of as developing a synthetic, " metamodern " philosophical position that effectively bridges between modernist scientific traditions that emphasize analytic truth claims and postmodern critical positions that emphasize the social construction of knowledge. That is, critical realism effectively works to clarify both the process by which humans socially construct knowledge (i.e., epistemology) and the scientific reality of nature as stratified levels of complexity (i.e., ontology). Smith combines this with personalism, which he acknowledges is less easy to summarize as a clear statement. He characterized personalism as a broad school of thought and collection of thinkers that enables us to emphasize the reality of human lived experience and human dignity. Smith puts the issue as follows:

The central idea in personalism that is relevant for my argument is deceptively simple. This is the belief that human beings are persons.

At first, this might sound silly as it seems self-evident and thus might appear to be akin to saying something like dogs are canines. But it is not. In fact, it is very consequential because persons are a particular kind of thing . Indeed, a central insight from UTOK’s analysis of the mental and the difference between animal-mental behavior and human mental behavior is the conclusion that humans are both primates and persons.

The question thus emerges regarding what Christian means by a person. Through a long series of detailed and powerful arguments, Christian delineates how personhood has emerged in evolutionary and social history and consists of a long list of intersecting capacities. Ultimately, he comes to define persons as follows:

By person I mean a conscious, reflective, embodied, self-transcending center of subjective experience, durable identity , moral commitment, and social communication who—as the efficient cause of his or her own responsible actions and interactions—exercises complex capacities for agency and intersubjectivity in order to develop and sustain his or her own communicable self in loving relationships with other personal selves and the nonpersonal world.

Smith’s analysis of the ontology of human persons is remarkably consistent with UTOK’s analysis of the ontology of the mental, from the animal into the human, and then into the emergence of the Culture-Person plane of existence. Indeed, I have argued repeatedly that the key to understanding humans from a scientific perspective grounded in a coherent ontology is to see them as primates that are organized by the two metatheories of Behavioral Investment Theory and the Influence Matrix and as persons, which is framed by Justification Systems Theory. Justification Systems Theory provides a framework for understanding the emergence of the domain of Mind 3 and the Culture-Person plane of existence. It aligns remarkably well with Smith’s analysis.

Importantly, Smith is a sociologist, not a psychologist. Indeed, his book has almost no psychology in it at all. Rather the book positions his argument for the ontology of human persons in relationship to other traditions in sociology, such as social constructionist traditions, network structuralist positions, and variable aggregate analyses. As such, we have a strong, independent, convergent argument, when the two positions are placed side by side.

According to the UTOK, the Enlightenment failed to produce a clear framework for understanding the proper relationships between matter and mind and science and social knowledge. This is called the Enlightenment Gap . It resides at that center of our modern state of chaotic fragmented pluralism. This gap means that we cannot go from our relatively coherent knowledge in the physical and biological sciences into the psychological and social sciences. Although he did not directly call it as such, the gap was nevertheless very well seen by Edward O. Wilson in his important book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge . He described it as follows (p. 126):

We know that virtually all of human behavior is transmitted by culture. We also know that biology has an important effect on the origin of culture and its transmission. The question remaining is how biology and culture interact, and in particular how they interact across all societies to create the commonalities of human nature. What, in the final analysis, joins the deep, mostly genetic history of the species as a whole to the more recent cultural histories of far-flung societies? That, in my opinion, is the nub of the relationship between the two cultures. It can be stated as a problem to be solved, the central problem of the social sciences and the humanities, and simultaneously one of the great remaining problems of the natural sciences. At present time no one has a solution. But in the sense that no one in 1842 knew the true cause of evolution and in 1952 no one knew the nature of the genetic code, the way to solve the problem may lie within our grasp.

Another way of saying this is that the Enlightenment left us with a gap in scientifically understanding the ontological evolution of the animal mental into human persons and modern societies. This is why we cannot clearly trace the ontological trail from biology into the animal mind into a clear map of human mental behavior and the assemblages of societies.

UTOK’s frame affords us a way to bridge and resolve the Enlightenment Gap. Most importantly, it affords a coherent naturalistic ontology for the animal-mental into the culture-person plane of existence. Put differently, via its unified theory of psychology, UTOK bridges the gap from ethology and cognitive-behavioral neuroscience into human psychology. This "human psychology" sits at the base of the social sciences and frames human mental behavior.

What is so encouraging about Christian Smith’s work is that it shows how we can pick up the baton of understanding from human psychology and place it directly at the base of sociology, and from there advance into the social sciences that study large-scale social systems. Success in this means that the stage is being set for our capacity to resolve the Enlightenment Gap. This will enable us to start moving toward a second Enlightenment that gives rise to a scientific understanding of a coherent naturalistic ontology that is well situated to revitalize the human soul and spirit in the 21st century.

Gregg Henriques, Ph.D. , is a professor of psychology at James Madison University.

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In an Age of Ubiquitous AI, What Does It Mean to Be Human?

The artificial intelligence explosion is making people rethink what makes us unique. Call it the AI Effect.

July 18, 2023

Illustration of a brain that is half artificial, half human, with interconnected gears coming out of the left artificial side, and hands with intertwined string coming out of the right human side.

If our sense of identity is threatened by AI, will we change our criteria for what it means to be human? | Sarah McKinney

Artificial intelligence has made stunning leaps in the past year. Algorithms are now doing things — like designing drugs, writing wedding vows, negotiating deals, creating illustrations, composing music — that have always been the sole prerogative of humans.

There’s been plenty of giddy speculation about the economic implications of all this. (AI will make us wildly productive! AI will steal our jobs!) Yet the advent of sophisticated AI raises another big question that’s received far less attention: How does this change our sense of what it means to be human? In the face of ever more intelligent machines, are we still… well, special ?

“Humanity has always seen itself as unique in the universe,” says Benoît Monin , a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business. “When the contrast was to animals, we pointed to our use of language, reason, and logic as defining traits. So what happens when the phone in your pocket is suddenly better than you at these things?”

Monin and Erik Santoro , then a PhD candidate in social psychology at Stanford, began talking about this a few years ago, when a program called AlphaGo was trouncing the world’s top players in the complex strategy game Go. What intrigued them was how people reacted to the news.

“We noticed that when they discussed these milestones, people often seemed defensive,” says Santoro, who earned his PhD this spring and will soon begin a postdoc at Columbia University. “The talk would gravitate to what the AI couldn’t yet do, as if we wanted to reassure ourselves that nothing had really changed.”

Quote In a world of ubiquitous and capable AI, interpersonal skills will likely be increasingly sought after by employers. Attribution Benoît Monin

And with each new advance, Monin adds, came the refrain, “Oh, that’s not real intelligence, it’s just mimicry and pattern matching” — ignoring the fact that humans also learn by imitation, and we have our own share of faulty heuristics, biases, and shortcuts that fall well short of objective reasoning.

This suggested that if humans felt threatened by the new technologies, it was about more than the security of their paychecks. Perhaps people were anxious about something more deeply personal: their sense of identity and their relevance in the grand scheme of things.

The Rise of the Machines

There’s a well-established model in psychology called social identity theory. The idea is that humans identify with a chosen in-group and define themselves in contrast to out-groups. It’s that deep-rooted us-versus-them instinct that drives so much social conflict.

“We thought, maybe AI is a new reference group,” Monin says, “especially since it’s presented as having human-like traits.” He and Santoro wondered: If people’s sense of uniqueness is threatened, will they try to distinguish themselves from their new rivals by changing their criteria for what it means to be human — in effect, by moving the goalposts?

To find out, Santoro and Monin drew up a list of 20 human attributes, 10 of which we currently share with AI. The other 10 were traits they felt are distinctive to humans.

20 Human Attributes

Shared with ai.

Doing computations
Using language
Implementing rules
Forecasting the future
Using logic
Communicating
Recognizing faces
Remembering things
Sensing temperatures
Detecting sounds

Distinctive to Humans

Having culture
Holding beliefs
Having a sense of humor
Being moral
Being spiritual
Having desires
Feeling happy
Feeling love
Having a personality
Having relationships

They surveyed 200 people on how capable they thought humans and AI were on each trait. The respondents rated humans as more capable on all 20 traits, but the gap was small on the shared traits and quite large on the distinctive ones — as expected.

Now for the main test: The researchers split around 800 people into two groups. Half read an article titled “The Artificial Intelligence Revolution,” while a control group read a piece on the remarkable attributes of trees. Then, returning to the list of 20 human attributes, the test subjects were asked to rate “how essential” each one is to being human.

Sure enough, people who read about AI scored distinctively human attributes like personality, morality, and relationships as more essential than did those who read about trees. Confronted with AI’s advances, people’s sense of human nature narrowed to emphasize the traits that machines do not have. Monin and Santoro dubbed this the AI Effect .

Human Resources

To rule out other explanations, they ran several more experiments. In one, participants were simply told that AI was improving. “Same result,” Monin says. “Every time we mentioned advances in AI, we got this bump in importance for distinctive human attributes.”

Surprisingly, participants didn’t downplay the traits shared by humans and AI, as the researchers had predicted they would. “So even if humans are no longer the best at logic, they didn’t say logic is less central to human nature,” Santoro notes.

Of course, artificial intelligence isn’t exactly like an invading tribe with foreign manners — after all, we created it to be like us. (Neural networks, for example, are inspired by the architecture of the human brain.) But there is an irony here: The cognitive skills and ingenuity that made AI possible are now the very ground on which machines are surpassing us. And as the findings of the present research suggest, that may lead us to put more value on other traits.

It’s also worth noting that those cognitive skills still command high status and pay. Could that change if soft skills like warmth and empathy, the ability to nurture growth in others, are valued more highly? Will lawyers and quants be paid less, while teachers and caregivers receive more respect and money?

“That’s certainly a possible implication of our work,” Monin says. “There’s a whole slew of competencies that not only won’t be taken over by AI but that people are going to value more and more. In a world of ubiquitous and capable AI, interpersonal skills will likely be increasingly sought after by employers.”

Meanwhile, he says, the AI Effect is likely growing. “Since we conducted this research, the real world has overtaken anything we could have imagined. It’s been a constant barrage of information about new achievements in AI. So whatever we saw in our little version in the lab is probably already happening at a much broader scale in society.”

For media inquiries, visit the Newsroom .

Explore More

Invisible matchmakers: how algorithms pair people with opportunities, co-intelligence: an ai masterclass with ethan mollick, oh, the humanity how relating to robots may change us, editor’s picks.

The AI Effect: People Rate Distinctively Human Attributes as More Essential to Being Human after Learning about Artificial Intelligence Advances Erik Santoro Benoît Monin

October 14, 2022 How to Survive the A.I. Revolution A human-centered approach to artificial intelligence envisions a future where people and machines are collaborators, not competitors.

June 29, 2023 AI Can Coach You to Lose Weight. But a Human Touch Still Helps. New research finds that AI-powered fitness coaching is more effective when users interact with real people.

February 23, 2023 Why We See Rescue Robots as Helpers, Not Heroes How to design a robot that not only responds to disasters but inspires humans to help each other?

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IMAGES

What It Means To Be Human Essay Example
What does it mean to be Human Essay
What does it mean to be Human Essay
(DOC) What does it mean to be human? An essay
What It Means to Be Human Essay Example
What does it mean to be Human Essay

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What Does It Mean to Be Human: [Essay Example], 632 words
Conclusion: Embracing the Human Experience. In conclusion, the question of what it means to be human encapsulates the richness, complexity, and beauty of the human experience. From consciousness and relationships to self-awareness and the pursuit of meaning, our journey as humans is characterized by our capacity for thought, emotion, connection ...
What Does It Mean to Be Human?
Its linguistic meaning is 'the place where I am when I utter the word "here".'. If 'human' means 'my own natural kind,' then referring to a being as human boils down to the ...
Shelley's Frankenstein: What It Means to Be Human Essay
Frankenstein, a ground-breaking novel by Mary Shelley published in 1818, raises important questions about what it means to be human. Mary Shelley was inspired to write the book in response to the questions arising from growing interactions between indigenous groups and European colonialists and explorers. While the native people the Europeans ...
What Does It Mean To Be Human? 300 Years of ...
Last year, we explored what it means to be human from the perspectives of three different disciplines — philosophy, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology — and that omnibus went on to become one of the most-read articles in Brain Pickings history. But the question at its heart is among the most fundamental inquiries of existence, one that has puzzled, tormented, and inspired humanity for ...
What does it mean to be human?
As we discover more about reality, we continue our ascent into insignificance, becoming a vanishing footnote in space and time, a speck of dust in the vastness of the universe. But to be human is to be at the centre of our own universe, to experience life in all its colours and all its potential. This is what we want to celebrate with Being ...
What does it mean to be human? An essay
In this essay I will argue that researching into what it means to 'be human' is a quite complex task, because of the varied theoretical concepts involved in this idea. In order to support my statement, I will give examples of how 'Blade Runner' and relate this to different theoretical frameworks I will discuss across the essay.
What Does It Mean to Be Human? What Are the Ethical and ...
Poets during the Elizabethan renaissance have created extraordinary, thought provoking works that explores human nature and the human desire. Often dubbed as the golden age for love sonnets, this essay dwells into the definition of human nature delineated by the three great poets of the time - Christopher Marlowe, Phillip Sydney, and Edmund Spenser.
A Brief History of the Future: What It Means to Be Human
What does it take to "be human," anyway? These questions are at the heart of " A Brief History of the Future ," a unique PBS documentary series hosted by renowned futurist Ari Wallach. Ari ...
What Does It Mean to Be Human? Don't Ask
The question, "What is it to be human?" is not just narcissistic, it involves a culpable obtuseness. It is rather like asking, "What is it to be white?". It connotes unearned privileges ...
PDF What does it mean to be human?
Property is indeed human power, for better and for ills. It is also the context in which unique capacities for reading the mind of others evolved as a by-product of the human ways of sharing resources. Sharing and reciprocity are cornerstones of the human niche, hence of the human psyche.
What does it mean to be Human Essay
What does it mean to be Human Essay: The aim of people's life might vary from person to person, but what unites every human is what it means to be themselves; to be human is to be the protagonist of your universe and experience life in all its colours and potential. The feeling of being alive, the thrill of experiencing tomorrow, to be able to perceive ourselves is the greatest wonder of the ...
What does it mean to be human?
An Introductory Essay. Raymond. Feb 14, 2024. 'What does it mean to be human' is a difficult question to answer for a short essay like the one you are currently reading. It is probably an even worse subject to begin with as the first publication of a Substack. An introductory essay to a forum such as this would include something light ...
Human Characteristics: What Does it Mean to be Human
Part of what it means to be human is how we became human. Over a long period of time, as early humans adapted to a changing world, they evolved certain characteristics that help define our species today. This section of our website focuses on several human characteristics that evolved over the past 6 million years. As you explore the scientific ...
PDF What Does It Mean to Be Human?
ns to live in a class society. Marx not only believed that consciousness is embedded in society, but he also proposed a few theoretical principles regarding what it mea. s to be human (see Teo, 2011). First, we are individuals only to the degree that society enables us to be individuals; mental life is societally mediated, and.
A Brief But Spectacular take on what it means to be human
Apr 15, 2024 6:25 PM EDT. Yuval Noah Harari is a professor renowned for his broad and thought-provoking perspectives on human history. Harari, who is the bestselling author of "Sapiens," recently ...
What It Means to Be a Human Person
The central idea in personalism that is relevant for my argument is deceptively simple. This is the belief that human beings are persons. At first, this might sound silly as it seems self-evident ...
PDF What It Means to Be Human
This book aims to ofer such a new path forward for public bioethics, rooted in what it means to be and lourish as a human being, in light of what and who we really are. Public bioethics is fundamentally concerned with human vulnerability, dependence, frailty, and finitude. It is about pro creation, pregnancy, babies, wasting illness ...
PDF "What Does It Mean To Be Human?"
The human being, therefore, does not have a soul, but is a soul or human being. This appears to be the stress of the Hebrew grammar of Genesis 2:7 "and the man became a living being," not "soul" as in the King James Version. This has become the emphasis in much of recent evangelical theological anthropology.
Sylvia Wynter : What Does It Mean to Be Human?
This essay focuses on Sylvia Wynter's explorations of Frantz Fanon's concept of sociogenesis and links it to her ethical interrogation of the concept of Human and Humanity—from the European Renaissance to contemporary investigations of biotechnology and neurophysiology.
In an Age of Ubiquitous AI, What Does It Mean to Be Human?
There's a well-established model in psychology called social identity theory. The idea is that humans identify with a chosen in-group and define themselves in contrast to out-groups. It's that deep-rooted us-versus-them instinct that drives so much social conflict. "We thought, maybe AI is a new reference group," Monin says ...
What Does It Mean to Be Human Essay
What Does It Mean To Be Human. film Ghost in the Shell produced by Mamoru Oshii in 1995 is set in the future where cyborgs co-exist with humans. It follows an organization called Public Security Section 9, specifically a cyborg called Motoko Kusanagi. As the film progresses, Kusanagi begins to question what it means to be alive and what it ...
What It Means To Be Human Essay Example
What It Means to Be Human. Final Essay "The purpose of human life is to love and serve others and to be loved and served by them. " Dr. Dallas Willard, Ohio State University Of the many mysteries that surprise and delight us, surely the process by which a human being is created is the most common and compelling.