6 - Human Nature and Human Uniqueness

Summary

Homo sapiens is the only species that asks questions about its own existence, which means that we are self-interpreting animals. We humans have always been on a quest to know our own nature and to ask whether being human makes us significantly unique, qualitatively different from all other things, living and nonliving. Traditional philosophical traditions maintain that humans are special, and indeed, the highpoint of the natural world, while major religious traditions generally affirm human specialness based on our relation to the divine. In early modernity, however, the Galileo affair was seen as consolidating the “Copernican humiliation” of humanity; it initiated a great change in the way science understands the status of human beings, a change that has profoundly impacted philosophical and religious understandings.