The Human Seeking Perfection

In my previous blog, I proposed that perfection was skill development aimed at some ideal. The next question to address is that of whom exactly it is that is seeking this perfection. At the risk of angering passionate animal lovers, I shall assume that only humans are capable of engaging in this pursuit. So what then does it mean to be human?

As far back as Boethius, Western philosophy has tried in vain to define the human. The tradition he initiated was one of searching for the critical trait or quality unique to and universal among humans. To most ancient philosophers it seemed simple enough: humans were the rational animal. But what is rationality? Modern research demonstrates that animals possess a wide range of rational abilities – causal reasoning, analogical reasoning, mathematical reasoning and so forth are all found (to some degree) in animal minds. A host of other mental traits have also been proposed as definitive of our species: self-awareness, free-will, morality, language, or episodic memory. It is no secret that by and large the “trait” approach to humanity has failed. Not only does it founder on the fact that many animals have been shown to possess, in some manner or form, all of the aforementioned traits; but many humans (most notably, infants and young children) do not possess them – yet we reflexively (and I think, justifiably) recoil from branding them “non-humans.”

But the very same science that seems to cloud our understanding of what it means to be human, provides the seeds of a more nuanced answer. While no single trait appears to be exclusively and universally human, a host of traits appear in greater degree and in more sophisticated form in the human than in any other animal. No creature has self-awareness, rationality, language, morality, or memory in equal form to humans. Moreover, it appears that all of these traits feed into a more general form of intellect: social skills. We humans use our exaggerated capacities of reason, self-awareness, language, morality, etc. to form deeper more intense relationships with other humans. Put bluntly: you can’t truly be human, alone. Other humans are required.

What Western thought has slowly (and maybe grudgingly) acknowledged has been understood for centuries among traditional cultures and many religious traditions for whom the human has always been a relational creature. For example, in most traditional African societies, personhood is not a biological endowment, but a state achieved through increased incorporation into a community; aptly reflected in the African proverb “I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am.” The community is the defining social reality and one’s relations within that community serve to define one’s very self.

Or consider how Homer depicts Odysseus when we first encounter him in book V of the Odyssey. We are told that he is “sitting on the shore, his eyes as ever wet with tears, life’s sweetness ebbing from him in longing for his home.” The shore is that of Calypso’s Island where he has been held for some time. He spends his days sitting “among rocks or sand, tormenting himself with tears, groans and anguish, gazing with wet eyes at the restless sea” – a pathetic shadow of the cunning hero of the Trojan War. Homer’s portrayal of Odysseus is more than just that of a weary wonderer longing for home. He is a man bereft of his very essence; something less than human. In the distance, he can see the smoke fires of his homeland Ithaca, bitterly reminding him of what he is not. He is not a king, nor a warrior, nor a husband or father. Those roles exist only within the context of his community. Separated from that community, he is nothing but a lonely, isolated man with no identity, no soul; no personhood. It is not rationality, free-will, self-awareness or any specific mental trait that makes Odysseus, Odysseus. It is Ithaca.

Source: google images

Thus, if we seek to perfect our skill at being human, we must seek it in community. Modern individualism too often degenerates into a desiccated narcissistic trap. We are the relational roles that we play in communion with family, friends, and colleagues, and it is only from within these deeply entangled webs of inter-dependence that we thrive and perfect our being.