Chapter 11: The Definition of Human Being
Chapter 11: The Definition of Human Being

Summary/Abstract: From ancient Greek times and through the Latin Age from Augustine to Poinsot, the human being was defined as a “rational animal”, animale rationale, linked, as animal, to the rest of nature, but separated, by reason, from nature’s control. Through reason, instead, the human animal was to be the master of nature. In modern times, this idea was carried to the extreme, in both directions. In the one direction, Descartes suggested that the use of reason consisted simply in thinking, and, in the other direction, that the reality of nature consisted simply in a world of bodies devoid of thought or feeling extended in space. To mark this supposedly clearer, distinctively modern, realization of the human condition Descartes rejected the classical definition of human being as rational animal and proposed that the true definition of the human being is a “ thinking thing”, res cogitans. The first and (as it turned out) last problem for this thinking thing was how to get beyond its own self to reach a knowledge of anything besides or outside of itself. Kant declared the problem insoluble but irrelevant, once we realize and accept the fact that it is the structure of our minds that makes things appear as they do. The nominalist view that relations are creatures of thought alone dove-tailed with this central Kantian doctrine, and together they formed the quintessence of modern philosophy.

• Details
• Contents