What Makes Us Human?
It has nothing to do with being civilized.
What am I? This question determines how I live my life, how I give it meaning. “I” quickly becomes “we” as I recognize that there exist others in this world very much like me. I identify with those others the moment I use the word “human.” The definition of this word is the foundation of all religion and philosophy, all political theory, all morality.
What does it mean to be human? This question underlies each and every worldview — mine, yours, and everyone else’s. So it’s important for us to get it right, inasmuch as that is possible.
We are human yes, of course, but what makes us human? Some people say we are godlike, that a Supreme Being put us in this world to lord over the rest of creation. Others look to the creatures that share this planet with us for some clue as to what we are. How are we like and not like them?
Charles Darwin proved himself to be among the latter group when he wrote The Descent of Man. In that book he said:
“Those naturalists who admit the principle of evolution… will feel no doubt that all the races of man are descended from a single primitive stock.”
We have descended from so primitive a stock, in fact, that the boundary between animal and human is blurred. The godlike humans among…
