what does it mean to be human philosophy essay

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? 7 famous philosophers answer

What does it mean to be human? Such a fundamental question to our existence.

This question tends to arise in the face of a moral dilemma or existential crisis, or when trying to find yourself .

What’s more, it’s usually followed by more questions:

What separates us from other species? What is it that drives us to do what we do? What makes us unique?

The answers are never straightforward. Even at this age of modernity and intellectual freedom, we may not be close to any concrete answers. For centuries, the world’s philosophers have made it their work to find them.

Yet the answers remain as diverse and inconclusive as ever.

What does it truly mean to be human ?

Read ahead to find out how 7 of the world’s most famous philosophers answer this question.

“If a human being is a social creature, then he can develop only in the society.”

Karl Marx is known for writing the Communist Manifesto alongside philosopher and social scientist Friedrich Engels. He was among the foremost advocates of communism in 19th century Europe.

Although he is famous for his socialism, he remains one of the most prominent modern philosophical thinkers. Aside from sparking a vast set of social movements during his time, he has managed to shape the world’s views on capitalism, politics, economics, sociology – and yes, even philosophy.

What are his views on human nature?

“All history is nothing but a continuous transformation of human nature.”

Marx believed that human nature is hugely shaped by our history. He believed that the way we view things – morality, social construct , need fulfillment – is historically contingent in much the same ways our society is.

Of course, his theory on human nature also suggests that humanity’s progress is hindered by capitalism, particularly about labor. As long as we objectify our ideas and satisfy our needs, labor will express our human nature and changes it as well.

“All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance and obscurity, is to be skeptical, or at least cautious; and not to admit of any hypothesis, whatsoever; much less, of any which is supported by no appearance of probability.”

David Hume was an empiricist . He believed that all human ideas have roots from sense impressions. Meaning, even if we imagine a creature that does not exist, your imagination of it still consists of things you’ve sensed in the real world. 

Why is this relevant to being human?

According to Hume, in order to arrange these impressions, we use different mental processes that are fundamentally part of being human. These are Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause and Effect.

“‘Tis evident, that all the sciences have a relation, more or less, to human nature … Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, are in some measure dependent on the science of Man.”

Hume further believes that our own perception of truth, each of us, no matter how different, exists.  When humans seek truth, they come into moments of realization. Small moments of realization lead to a sense of happiness of fulfillment. Big moments of realization, one the other hand, are truly what makes us human. 

To Hume, It is when we experience these crucial consciousness-altering experiences, that we can finally say, with certainty, what it means to be human.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. The world is everything that is the case.”

There is, perhaps, no other modern philosopher as deeply enigmatic as Ludwig Wittgenstein. His philosophy can be turned sideways, and you’ll still find it both authoritative and obscure.

His philosophy about humanity can be interpreted in many ways. But the gist is still compelling. Let’s digest what he thinks from his one and only book Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus  (1921.)

What it means to be human, for Wittgenstein, is our ability to  think consciously.  We are active, embodied speakers. Before we communicate, we first need to have something to communicate with. We have to create and distinguish true and false thoughts about the world around us, to be able to  think  about things – combinations of things.

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These conscious combinations of thoughts is what Wittgenstein calls  “states of affairs.”

“The world is the totality of facts, not of things”

To be human is to think – true, false – it does not truly matter.

Friedrich Nietzsche

“The hour-hand of life. Life consists of rare, isolated moments of the greatest significance, and of innumerably many intervals, during which at best the silhouettes of those moments hover about us. Love, springtime, every beautiful melody, mountains, the moon, the sea-all these speak completely to the heart but once, if in fact they ever do get a chance to speak completely. For many men do not have those moments at all, and are themselves intervals and intermissions in the symphony of real life.”

Friedrich Nietzsche – yet another revolutionary philosopher. He is best known for his book,  Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits. 

Amongst other philosophers who write unpalatable and obscure ideologies, Nietzche is witty, eloquent, and brutally honest. And even poetic. He is a philosopher who scrutinizes human nature, while offering concrete advice on how to deal with it.

What does he think about humanity and what it means?

“The advantages of psychological observation. That meditating on things human, all too human (or, as the learned phrase goes, “psychological observation”) is one of the means by which man can ease life’s burden; that by exercising this art, one can secure presence of mind in difficult situations and entertainment amid boring surroundings; indeed, that from the thorniest and unhappiest phases of one’s own life one can pluck maxims and feel a bit better thereby.”

For Nietzsche, our awareness gives meaning to humanity. We are capable of what he calls psychological observations,  the ability to see things from an analytical perspective. With this, we, as humans, can control the narrative of our existence.

“For all good and evil, whether in the body or in human nature, originates … in the soul, and overflows from thence, as from the head into the eyes.”

You really didn’t think we’d skip Plato in this list, did you? After all, there’s his  Theory of Human Nature.

Plato believed in souls.

He believed that humans have both immaterial mind (soul) and material body . That our souls exist before birth and after death. And it is composed of 1. reason ; 2. appetite (physical urges); and will (emotion, passion, spirit.)

For Plato, the soul is the source for everything we feel – love, anguish, anger, ambition, fear. And most of our mental conflict as humans are caused by these aspects not being in harmony.

“Man – a being in search of meaning.”

Plato also believed that human nature is  social.  At our core, we are not self-sufficient. We need others. We derive satisfaction from our social interactions. That in truth, we derive meaning from our relationships.

Immanuel Kant

“Intuition and concepts constitute… the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.”

Immanuel Kant is widely regarded as one of the most influential western philosophers of all time. His ideologies were about religion, politics, and eternal peace. But most importantly, he was a philosopher of human autonomy.

Kant believed that as humans, we are determined and capable of knowledge, and the ability to act on it, without depending on anyone else, even religion or some divine intervention.

Humans’ perception of knowledge, according to him, are “sensory states caused by physical objects and events outside the mind, and the mind’s activity in organizing these data under concepts …”

Hence, Kant believes that we interact with the world  based on our perception of it.  We are human because of our reason. Like other species, we do things, we act. But unlike them, we give reasons for our actions. And that, for Kant, is essentially what it means to be human.

“All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.”

Thomas Aquinas

“We can’t have full knowledge all at once. We must start by believing; then afterwards we may be led on to master the evidence for ourselves.”

Like Plato, Thomas Aquinas was a dualist , who believed that human beings have both a body and a soul.

But unlike Kant who believed it is our intellect that gives us meaning, Aquinas believed the reverse. For him, we absorb knowledge through our sense, and the intellect processes it later, and more gradually, through our human experiences.

Aquinas believed that we are the only beings in existence, that can perceive both matter and spirit. We don’t just exist in this world – we can interpret it, scrutinize it, derive meaning from it, and make decisions about it. It is our intellect that transcends us from simply existing, to actually doing with freedom, with limitless imagination.

What do  you  think?

You don’t need to be a philosopher to come to your own conclusions. For you, what does it mean to be human? Is it compassion, empathy, logic, our consciousness?

In this world of technology, social media, and advanced scientific discoveries, it’s important to keep asking this crucial question. Don’t let all the noise distracting you from reflection – why do we exist? What does it all even mean? What can we bring into this marvelous existence? Let us know by joining in on the discussion below.

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What Does It Mean to Be Human?

We can’t turn to science for an answer..

Posted May 16, 2012 | Reviewed by Matt Huston

What does it mean to be human? Or, putting the point a bit more precisely, what are we saying about others when we describe them as human? Answering this question is not as straightforward as it might appear. Minimally, to be human is to be one of us, but this begs the question of the class of creatures to which “us” refers.

Can’t we turn to science for an answer? Not really. Some paleoanthropologists identify the category of the human with the species Homo sapiens , others equate it with the whole genus Homo , some restrict it to the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens , and a few take it to encompass the entire hominin lineage. These differences of opinion are not due to a scarcity of evidence. They are due to the absence of any conception of what sort of evidence can settle the question of which group or groups of primates should be counted as human. Biologists aren’t equipped to tell us whether an organism is a human organism because “human” is a folk category rather a scientific one.

Some folk-categories correspond more or less precisely to scientific categories. To use a well-worn example, the folk category “water” is coextensive with the scientific category “H2O.” But not every folk category is even approximately reducible to a scientific one. Consider the category “weed.” Weeds don’t have any biological properties that distinguish them from non-weeds. In fact, one could know everything there is to know biologically about a plant, but still not know that it is a weed. So, at least in this respect, being human is more like being a weed than it is like being water.

If this sounds strange to you, it is probably because you are already committed to one or another conception of the human (for example, that all and only members of Homo sapiens are human). However, claims like “an animal is human only if it is a member of the species Homo sapiens ” are stipulated rather than discovered. In deciding that all and only Homo sapiens are humans, one is expressing a preference about where the boundary separating humans from non-humans should be drawn, rather than discovering where such a boundary lays.

If science can’t give us an account of the human, why not turn to the folk for an answer?

Unfortunately, this strategy multiplies the problem rather than resolving it. When we look at how ordinary people have used the term “human” and its equivalents across cultures and throughout the span of history, we discover that often (maybe even typically) members of our species are explicitly excluded from the category of the human. It’s well-known that the Nazis considered Jews to be non-human creatures ( Untermenschen ), and somewhat less well-known that fifteenth-century Spanish colonists took a similar stance towards the indigenous inhabitants of the Caribbean islands, as did North Americans toward enslaved Africans (my 2011 book Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others , gives many more examples). Another example is provided by the seemingly interminable debate about the moral permissibility of abortion, which almost always turns on the question of whether the embryo is a human being.

At this point, it looks like the concept of the human is hopelessly confused. But looked at in the right way, it’s possible to discern a deeper order in the seeming chaos. The picture only seems chaotic if one assumes that “human” is supposed to designate a certain taxonomic category across the board (‘in every possible world’ as philosophers like to say). But if we think of it as an indexical expression – a term that gets its content from the context in which it is uttered – a very different picture emerges.

Paradigmatic indexical terms include words like “now,” “here,” and “I.” Most words name exactly the same thing, irrespective of when, where, and by whom they are uttered. For instance, when anyone anywhere correctly uses the expression ‘the Eiffel Tower,’ they are naming one and the same architectural structure. In contrast, the word “now” names the moment at which the word is uttered, the word “here” names the place where it is uttered, and the word “I” names the person uttering it. If I am right, the word “human” works in much the same way that these words do. When we describe others as human, we are saying that they are members of our own kind or, more precisely, members of our own natural kind.

What’s a natural kind? The best way to wrap one’s mind around the notion of natural kinds is to contrast them with artificial kinds. Airplane pilots are an artificial kind, as are Red Sox fans and residents of New Jersey, because they only exist in virtue of human linguistic and social practices, whereas natural kinds (for example, chemical elements and compounds, microphysical particles, and, more controversially, biological species) exist ‘out there’ in the world. Our concepts of natural are concepts that purport to correspond to the structural fault-lines of a mind-independent world. In Plato’s vivid metaphor, they ‘cut nature at its joints.’ Weeds are an artificial kind, because they exist only in virtue of certain linguistic conventions and social practices, but pteridophyta (ferns) are a natural kind because, unlike weeds, their existence is insensitive to our linguistic conventions.

Philosophers distinguish the linguistic meaning of indexical expressions from their content. The content of an indexical is whatever it names. For example, if you were to say ‘I am here’, the word ‘here’ names the spot where you are sitting. 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 assertion that the other is a member of the natural kind that the speaker believes herself to be. This goes a long way towards explaining why a statement of the form ‘x is human,’ in the mouth of a biologist might mean ‘x is a member of the species Homo sapiens ’ while the very same statement in the mouth of a Nazi might mean ‘x is a member of the Aryan race.’ That's what it means to be human.

David Livingstone Smith, Ph.D ., is professor of philosophy at the University of New England.

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Shelley’s Frankenstein: What It Means to Be Human Essay

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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 encountered exhibited human characteristics, the Europeans generally viewed them as inferior and less intelligent. Therefore, at that time, there was an unending debate about whether non-European ethnicities belonged to the same species as Europeans. The contestation was largely influenced by the Enlightenment led by the philosopher David Hume, who argued that there were different species of people and non-European species were “naturally inferior to the whites” (Lee 265). As a result, the native people were positioned beneath the line dividing humans from animals. This essentially meant they would only be subjects of slavery and oppression. However, Shelly’s Frankenstein runs counter to this theory and challenges the rigid notion of being a human based on a synthetic creature made of dead bodies. The book reveals what it means to be human through the creature’s actions.

When Frankenstein was released, many people were mesmerized by stories of “wild” native tribes in distant lands. Lee (267) states that during that time, the native people were judged only based on their appearance and way of life. However, going by Shelly’s progressive and broader definition, anyone would qualify to be called a human being in their own right. Shelly’s illustration even included the “savages” that her contemporaries looked down upon. Shelly uses the classic example of a creature that could survive on a vegetarian diet and climb mountains relatively easily. Her depiction of the creature through Victor Frankenstein shows that he is innately tied to the natural world (Shelley 85). However, the horrific responses he receives from others, including his creator, causes him to live in exile away from the European culture and dwell in the woods.

Furthermore, the creature’s looks make it obvious that it is not European. It stands at “nearly eight feet tall,” is far taller than the average European, and has “yellow skin” and “straight black lips” (Shelley 59). Even though a European developed him, his physical distinctiveness “the work of muscles and arteries beneath” set him apart from others (Shelley 59). Because he has been cast out of society due to his appearance, the creature is not a party to the social contract of the Enlightenment, a tacit agreement between all members of a country to protect each other’s basic rights. When the creature meets others, they fail in their duty to protect his human rights as a group, and later in the book, he murders in retaliation. The pervasive Enlightenment conception of the social contract generates an abstract divide between “civilized man” and “natural man” (Lee 275). The contract allows man to transition out of his “state of nature” and into modern society. That is why most Europeans, the moment Frankenstein was published, would not have understood how deeply connected to nature the creature or many indigenous peoples were.

Notwithstanding the deep connection to nature, the creature is human and characterized by an emotional and often compassionate personality. Despite his young age, he is almost as emotional and just as eloquent as his creator. When Felix, a young farmer whose home he stays in for a while, attacks him, he refrains from retaliation and saves a young girl only from being shot by her male companion. He frequently exhibits more moral “human” behavior than those he meets (Shelley 130). In both instances, he exhibits kindness and mercy and is unjustly assaulted by humans who misjudge him. At one time, the creature gets confronted, causing an aggressive, malicious, and vengeful reaction. However, the creature exemplifies intense guilt at the novel’s conclusion, which characterizes humanity. The creature’s depiction as physically non-European, self-educated, and yet unquestionably human can be applied to the indigenous people in nations like South America that European explorers frequently encountered. The indigenous people were characterized by their lifestyle and appearance rather than their inherent intelligence or upbringing. They can only exist in the natural world because they are not mostly allowed to live in European culture.

In conclusion, Shelley used her book, Frankenstein, to show what it means to be human through the creature’s actions. She broadens the definition of humanity by creating a progressive vision that enables those deemed less human to be regarded as completely human. The creature’s actions, when confronted, act as a caution against the risks of treating other people with indignity. Shelley’s story urges the reader to allow everyone to prove themselves before judging them based on their appearance. She advocates for fair treatment by drawing comparisons between the creature and its existence in nature and indigenous peoples worldwide, both forms of the “other.” As shown by the creature’s actions, anyone could end up becoming what is unfairly expected of them if they are not given an equal chance because of the psychological harm caused by the way they have been treated. In the end, the discovery that both the indigenous and the creature are human but are not perceived as such in civilization exposes the flaws in the prejudiced yet obscured view of humanity held by the Enlightenment.

Works Cited

Lee, Seogkwang. “ Humanity in Monstrous Form: Reading Mary Shelley Frankenstein .” The Journal of East-West Comparative Literature , vol. 49, 2019, pp. 261–85, Web.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus . Legend Press, 2018.

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What Philosophy & Anthropology Can Tell Us About Being Human

In this article, Dr. Brian Morris — Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London — focuses on how philosophers (Immanuel Kant, in particular, and various schools of thought like existentialism, post-modernism, Marxism, Pragmatism, etc.) and anthropologists have approached the question “what is the human being?” 

While, indubitably, this article looks at this question largely through an anthropological lens, both perspectives are valuable and can inform one another.  In fact, Kant — perhaps most well-known for his work in moral philosophy — was (along with Rousseau, Herder, Ferguson, and others) a founding ancestor of anthropology, describing it as the study or science of humankind.  His fundamental question, “what is the human being?” inevitably intertwined the sorts of questions and lines of inquiry common in both fields. 

What is Anthropology?

Morris defines anthropology as a discipline with a ‘dual heritage’ that combines humanism and naturalism and whose insights were drawn from both the Enlightenment and Romanticism periods.  “In many ways,” he says, “it is an inter-discipline, held together by placing an emphasis on ethnographic studies, which involve a close experiential encounter with a particular way of life or culture .”

 In terms of method, [anthropology] combines scientific explanations of social and cultural phenomena with hermeneutics or biosemiotics. Yet although certain people write of some great divide or schism within anthropology, it has always had, in spite of its diversity, a certain unity of vision and purpose. It employs a universal perspective that places humans firmly within nature. Anthropology has therefore always placed itself at the interface between the humanities and the natural sciences, especially evolutionary biology. – Dr. Brian Morris

According to Morris, anthropology offers an extremely valuable perspective on Kant’s fundamental question about humankind , in large part because it “can offer a cultural critique of much of Western culture and philosophy, while at the same time emphasizing our shared humanity (Kant), thus enlarging our sense of moral community .”

What Does it Mean to Be Human?

Conceptions about what it means to be human vary dramatically across cultures and even within cultures .  Within the Western intellectual tradition, for example, the human being is defined and conceptualized in countless and often contrasting ways.  The essentialist response, the dualist response, and the triadic ontology response (offered by Kant) are just three examples.  Broadly speaking:

• Essentialism tends to define the human subject or self in terms of a single essential attribute. 
• Dualism defines the human subject or self as being split in some fashion. For example, mind and body (according to Descartes) are in some way categorically separate from each other.
• Kant’s Triadic Ontology defines the human subject or self in (as the name suggests) three ways — as a universal human being (mensch), as a unique self (selbst), and as a social being, a member of a particular group of people

While Ockham’s Razor would suggest that we take the simplest approach possible….and not muddy the waters unnecessarily…the human being does indeed seem to be a very muddy creature.  ( Note:  Ockham’s Razor is still applicable here…it just means that “the simplest approach possible” is complex…and muddy).

To quote Morris: “Throughout the twentieth century, many scholars, within diverse intellectual traditions…developed a more integrated approach to the understanding of the human subject, recognizing, like Kant, the need to develop a more complex model of the subject.”

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The Meaning of Life

Many major historical figures in philosophy have provided an answer to the question of what, if anything, makes life meaningful, although they typically have not put it in these terms (with such talk having arisen only in the past 250 years or so, on which see Landau 1997). Consider, for instance, Aristotle on the human function, Aquinas on the beatific vision, and Kant on the highest good. Relatedly, think about Koheleth, the presumed author of the Biblical book Ecclesiastes, describing life as “futility” and akin to “the pursuit of wind,” Nietzsche on nihilism, as well as Schopenhauer when he remarks that whenever we reach a goal we have longed for we discover “how vain and empty it is.” While these concepts have some bearing on happiness and virtue (and their opposites), they are straightforwardly construed (roughly) as accounts of which highly ranked purposes a person ought to realize that would make her life significant (if any would).

Despite the venerable pedigree, it is only since the 1980s or so that a distinct field of the meaning of life has been established in Anglo-American-Australasian philosophy, on which this survey focuses, and it is only in the past 20 years that debate with real depth and intricacy has appeared. Two decades ago analytic reflection on life’s meaning was described as a “backwater” compared to that on well-being or good character, and it was possible to cite nearly all the literature in a given critical discussion of the field (Metz 2002). Neither is true any longer. Anglo-American-Australasian philosophy of life’s meaning has become vibrant, such that there is now way too much literature to be able to cite comprehensively in this survey. To obtain focus, it tends to discuss books, influential essays, and more recent works, and it leaves aside contributions from other philosophical traditions (such as the Continental or African) and from non-philosophical fields (e.g., psychology or literature). This survey’s central aim is to acquaint the reader with current analytic approaches to life’s meaning, sketching major debates and pointing out neglected topics that merit further consideration.

When the topic of the meaning of life comes up, people tend to pose one of three questions: “What are you talking about?”, “What is the meaning of life?”, and “Is life in fact meaningful?”. The literature on life's meaning composed by those working in the analytic tradition (on which this entry focuses) can be usefully organized according to which question it seeks to answer. This survey starts off with recent work that addresses the first, abstract (or “meta”) question regarding the sense of talk of “life’s meaning,” i.e., that aims to clarify what we have in mind when inquiring into the meaning of life (section 1). Afterward, it considers texts that provide answers to the more substantive question about the nature of meaningfulness (sections 2–3). There is in the making a sub-field of applied meaning that parallels applied ethics, in which meaningfulness is considered in the context of particular cases or specific themes. Examples include downshifting (Levy 2005), implementing genetic enhancements (Agar 2013), making achievements (Bradford 2015), getting an education (Schinkel et al. 2015), interacting with research participants (Olson 2016), automating labor (Danaher 2017), and creating children (Ferracioli 2018). In contrast, this survey focuses nearly exclusively on contemporary normative-theoretical approaches to life’s meanining, that is, attempts to capture in a single, general principle all the variegated conditions that could confer meaning on life. Finally, this survey examines fresh arguments for the nihilist view that the conditions necessary for a meaningful life do not obtain for any of us, i.e., that all our lives are meaningless (section 4).

1. The Meaning of “Meaning”

2.1. god-centered views, 2.2. soul-centered views, 3.1. subjectivism, 3.2. objectivism, 3.3. rejecting god and a soul, 4. nihilism, works cited, classic works, collections, books for the general reader, other internet resources, related entries.

One of the field's aims consists of the systematic attempt to identify what people (essentially or characteristically) have in mind when they think about the topic of life’s meaning. For many in the field, terms such as “importance” and “significance” are synonyms of “meaningfulness” and so are insufficiently revealing, but there are those who draw a distinction between meaningfulness and significance (Singer 1996, 112–18; Belliotti 2019, 145–50, 186). There is also debate about how the concept of a meaningless life relates to the ideas of a life that is absurd (Nagel 1970, 1986, 214–23; Feinberg 1980; Belliotti 2019), futile (Trisel 2002), and not worth living (Landau 2017, 12–15; Matheson 2017).

A useful way to begin to get clear about what thinking about life’s meaning involves is to specify the bearer. Which life does the inquirer have in mind? A standard distinction to draw is between the meaning “in” life, where a human person is what can exhibit meaning, and the meaning “of” life in a narrow sense, where the human species as a whole is what can be meaningful or not. There has also been a bit of recent consideration of whether animals or human infants can have meaning in their lives, with most rejecting that possibility (e.g., Wong 2008, 131, 147; Fischer 2019, 1–24), but a handful of others beginning to make a case for it (Purves and Delon 2018; Thomas 2018). Also under-explored is the issue of whether groups, such as a people or an organization, can be bearers of meaning, and, if so, under what conditions.

Most analytic philosophers have been interested in meaning in life, that is, in the meaningfulness that a person’s life could exhibit, with comparatively few these days addressing the meaning of life in the narrow sense. Even those who believe that God is or would be central to life’s meaning have lately addressed how an individual’s life might be meaningful in virtue of God more often than how the human race might be. Although some have argued that the meaningfulness of human life as such merits inquiry to no less a degree (if not more) than the meaning in a life (Seachris 2013; Tartaglia 2015; cf. Trisel 2016), a large majority of the field has instead been interested in whether their lives as individual persons (and the lives of those they care about) are meaningful and how they could become more so.

Focusing on meaning in life, it is quite common to maintain that it is conceptually something good for its own sake or, relatedly, something that provides a basic reason for action (on which see Visak 2017). There are a few who have recently suggested otherwise, maintaining that there can be neutral or even undesirable kinds of meaning in a person’s life (e.g., Mawson 2016, 90, 193; Thomas 2018, 291, 294). However, these are outliers, with most analytic philosophers, and presumably laypeople, instead wanting to know when an individual’s life exhibits a certain kind of final value (or non-instrumental reason for action).

Another claim about which there is substantial consensus is that meaningfulness is not all or nothing and instead comes in degrees, such that some periods of life are more meaningful than others and that some lives as a whole are more meaningful than others. Note that one can coherently hold the view that some people’s lives are less meaningful (or even in a certain sense less “important”) than others, or are even meaningless (unimportant), and still maintain that people have an equal standing from a moral point of view. Consider a consequentialist moral principle according to which each individual counts for one in virtue of having a capacity for a meaningful life, or a Kantian approach according to which all people have a dignity in virtue of their capacity for autonomous decision-making, where meaning is a function of the exercise of this capacity. For both moral outlooks, we could be required to help people with relatively meaningless lives.

Yet another relatively uncontroversial element of the concept of meaningfulness in respect of individual persons is that it is logically distinct from happiness or rightness (emphasized in Wolf 2010, 2016). First, to ask whether someone’s life is meaningful is not one and the same as asking whether her life is pleasant or she is subjectively well off. A life in an experience machine or virtual reality device would surely be a happy one, but very few take it to be a prima facie candidate for meaningfulness (Nozick 1974: 42–45). Indeed, a number would say that one’s life logically could become meaningful precisely by sacrificing one’s well-being, e.g., by helping others at the expense of one’s self-interest. Second, asking whether a person’s existence over time is meaningful is not identical to considering whether she has been morally upright; there are intuitively ways to enhance meaning that have nothing to do with right action or moral virtue, such as making a scientific discovery or becoming an excellent dancer. Now, one might argue that a life would be meaningless if, or even because, it were unhappy or immoral, but that would be to posit a synthetic, substantive relationship between the concepts, far from indicating that speaking of “meaningfulness” is analytically a matter of connoting ideas regarding happiness or rightness. The question of what (if anything) makes a person’s life meaningful is conceptually distinct from the questions of what makes a life happy or moral, although it could turn out that the best answer to the former question appeals to an answer to one of the latter questions.

Supposing, then, that talk of “meaning in life” connotes something good for its own sake that can come in degrees and that is not analytically equivalent to happiness or rightness, what else does it involve? What more can we say about this final value, by definition? Most contemporary analytic philosophers would say that the relevant value is absent from spending time in an experience machine (but see Goetz 2012 for a different view) or living akin to Sisyphus, the mythic figure doomed by the Greek gods to roll a stone up a hill for eternity (famously discussed by Albert Camus and Taylor 1970). In addition, many would say that the relevant value is typified by the classic triad of “the good, the true, and the beautiful” (or would be under certain conditions). These terms are not to be taken literally, but instead are rough catchwords for beneficent relationships (love, collegiality, morality), intellectual reflection (wisdom, education, discoveries), and creativity (particularly the arts, but also potentially things like humor or gardening).

Pressing further, is there something that the values of the good, the true, the beautiful, and any other logically possible sources of meaning involve? There is as yet no consensus in the field. One salient view is that the concept of meaning in life is a cluster or amalgam of overlapping ideas, such as fulfilling higher-order purposes, meriting substantial esteem or admiration, having a noteworthy impact, transcending one’s animal nature, making sense, or exhibiting a compelling life-story (Markus 2003; Thomson 2003; Metz 2013, 24–35; Seachris 2013, 3–4; Mawson 2016). However, there are philosophers who maintain that something much more monistic is true of the concept, so that (nearly) all thought about meaningfulness in a person’s life is essentially about a single property. Suggestions include being devoted to or in awe of qualitatively superior goods (Taylor 1989, 3–24), transcending one’s limits (Levy 2005), or making a contribution (Martela 2016).

Recently there has been something of an “interpretive turn” in the field, one instance of which is the strong view that meaning-talk is logically about whether and how a life is intelligible within a wider frame of reference (Goldman 2018, 116–29; Seachris 2019; Thomas 2019; cf. Repp 2018). According to this approach, inquiring into life’s meaning is nothing other than seeking out sense-making information, perhaps a narrative about life or an explanation of its source and destiny. This analysis has the advantage of promising to unify a wide array of uses of the term “meaning.” However, it has the disadvantages of being unable to capture the intuitions that meaning in life is essentially good for its own sake (Landau 2017, 12–15), that it is not logically contradictory to maintain that an ineffable condition is what confers meaning on life (as per Cooper 2003, 126–42; Bennett-Hunter 2014; Waghorn 2014), and that often human actions themselves (as distinct from an interpretation of them), such as rescuing a child from a burning building, are what bear meaning.

Some thinkers have suggested that a complete analysis of the concept of life’s meaning should include what has been called “anti-matter” (Metz 2002, 805–07, 2013, 63–65, 71–73) or “anti-meaning” (Campbell and Nyholm 2015; Egerstrom 2015), conditions that reduce the meaningfulness of a life. The thought is that meaning is well represented by a bipolar scale, where there is a dimension of not merely positive conditions, but also negative ones. Gratuitous cruelty or destructiveness are prima facie candidates for actions that not merely fail to add meaning, but also subtract from any meaning one’s life might have had.

Despite the ongoing debates about how to analyze the concept of life’s meaning (or articulate the definition of the phrase “meaning in life”), the field remains in a good position to make progress on the other key questions posed above, viz., of what would make a life meaningful and whether any lives are in fact meaningful. A certain amount of common ground is provided by the point that meaningfulness at least involves a gradient final value in a person’s life that is conceptually distinct from happiness and rightness, with exemplars of it potentially being the good, the true, and the beautiful. The rest of this discussion addresses philosophical attempts to capture the nature of this value theoretically and to ascertain whether it exists in at least some of our lives.

2. Supernaturalism

Most analytic philosophers writing on meaning in life have been trying to develop and evaluate theories, i.e., fundamental and general principles, that are meant to capture all the particular ways that a life could obtain meaning. As in moral philosophy, there are recognizable “anti-theorists,” i.e., those who maintain that there is too much pluralism among meaning conditions to be able to unify them in the form of a principle (e.g., Kekes 2000; Hosseini 2015). Arguably, though, the systematic search for unity is too nascent to be able to draw a firm conclusion about whether it is available.

The theories are standardly divided on a metaphysical basis, that is, in terms of which kinds of properties are held to constitute the meaning. Supernaturalist theories are views according to which a spiritual realm is central to meaning in life. Most Western philosophers have conceived of the spiritual in terms of God or a soul as commonly understood in the Abrahamic faiths (but see Mulgan 2015 for discussion of meaning in the context of a God uninterested in us). In contrast, naturalist theories are views that the physical world as known particularly well by the scientific method is central to life’s meaning.

There is logical space for a non-naturalist theory, according to which central to meaning is an abstract property that is neither spiritual nor physical. However, only scant attention has been paid to this possibility in the recent Anglo-American-Australasian literature (Audi 2005).

It is important to note that supernaturalism, a claim that God (or a soul) would confer meaning on a life, is logically distinct from theism, the claim that God (or a soul) exists. Although most who hold supernaturalism also hold theism, one could accept the former without the latter (as Camus more or less did), committing one to the view that life is meaningless or at least lacks substantial meaning. Similarly, while most naturalists are atheists, it is not contradictory to maintain that God exists but has nothing to do with meaning in life or perhaps even detracts from it. Although these combinations of positions are logically possible, some of them might be substantively implausible. The field could benefit from discussion of the comparative attractiveness of various combinations of evaluative claims about what would make life meaningful and metaphysical claims about whether spiritual conditions exist.

Over the past 15 years or so, two different types of supernaturalism have become distinguished on a regular basis (Metz 2019). That is true not only in the literature on life’s meaning, but also in that on the related pro-theism/anti-theism debate, about whether it would be desirable for God or a soul to exist (e.g., Kahane 2011; Kraay 2018; Lougheed 2020). On the one hand, there is extreme supernaturalism, according to which spiritual conditions are necessary for any meaning in life. If neither God nor a soul exists, then, by this view, everyone’s life is meaningless. On the other hand, there is moderate supernaturalism, according to which spiritual conditions are necessary for a great or ultimate meaning in life, although not meaning in life as such. If neither God nor a soul exists, then, by this view, everyone’s life could have some meaning, or even be meaningful, but no one’s life could exhibit the most desirable meaning. For a moderate supernaturalist, God or a soul would substantially enhance meaningfulness or be a major contributory condition for it.

There are a variety of ways that great or ultimate meaning has been described, sometimes quantitatively as “infinite” (Mawson 2016), qualitatively as “deeper” (Swinburne 2016), relationally as “unlimited” (Nozick 1981, 618–19; cf. Waghorn 2014), temporally as “eternal” (Cottingham 2016), and perspectivally as “from the point of view of the universe” (Benatar 2017). There has been no reflection as yet on the crucial question of how these distinctions might bear on each another, for instance, on whether some are more basic than others or some are more valuable than others.

Cross-cutting the extreme/moderate distinction is one between God-centered theories and soul-centered ones. According to the former, some kind of connection with God (understood to be a spiritual person who is all-knowing, all-good, and all-powerful and who is the ground of the physical universe) constitutes meaning in life, even if one lacks a soul (construed as an immortal, spiritual substance that contains one’s identity). In contrast, by the latter, having a soul and putting it into a certain state is what makes life meaningful, even if God does not exist. Many supernaturalists of course believe that God and a soul are jointly necessary for a (greatly) meaningful existence. However, the simpler view, that only one of them is necessary, is common, and sometimes arguments proffered for the complex view fail to support it any more than the simpler one.

The most influential God-based account of meaning in life has been the extreme view that one’s existence is significant if and only if one fulfills a purpose God has assigned. The familiar idea is that God has a plan for the universe and that one’s life is meaningful just to the degree that one helps God realize this plan, perhaps in a particular way that God wants one to do so. If a person failed to do what God intends her to do with her life (or if God does not even exist), then, on the current view, her life would be meaningless.

Thinkers differ over what it is about God’s purpose that might make it uniquely able to confer meaning on human lives, but the most influential argument has been that only God’s purpose could be the source of invariant moral rules (Davis 1987, 296, 304–05; Moreland 1987, 124–29; Craig 1994/2013, 161–67) or of objective values more generally (Cottingham 2005, 37–57), where a lack of such would render our lives nonsensical. According to this argument, lower goods such as animal pleasure or desire satisfaction could exist without God, but higher ones pertaining to meaning in life, particularly moral virtue, could not. However, critics point to many non-moral sources of meaning in life (e.g., Kekes 2000; Wolf 2010), with one arguing that a universal moral code is not necessary for meaning in life, even if, say, beneficent actions are (Ellin 1995, 327). In addition, there are a variety of naturalist and non-naturalist accounts of objective morality––and of value more generally––on offer these days, so that it is not clear that it must have a supernatural source in God’s will.

One recurrent objection to the idea that God’s purpose could make life meaningful is that if God had created us with a purpose in mind, then God would have degraded us and thereby undercut the possibility of us obtaining meaning from fulfilling the purpose. The objection harks back to Jean-Paul Sartre, but in the analytic literature it appears that Kurt Baier was the first to articulate it (1957/2000, 118–20; see also Murphy 1982, 14–15; Singer 1996, 29; Kahane 2011; Lougheed 2020, 121–41). Sometimes the concern is the threat of punishment God would make so that we do God’s bidding, while other times it is that the source of meaning would be constrictive and not up to us, and still other times it is that our dignity would be maligned simply by having been created with a certain end in mind (for some replies to such concerns, see Hanfling 1987, 45–46; Cottingham 2005, 37–57; Lougheed 2020, 111–21).

There is a different argument for an extreme God-based view that focuses less on God as purposive and more on God as infinite, unlimited, or ineffable, which Robert Nozick first articulated with care (Nozick 1981, 594–618; see also Bennett-Hunter 2014; Waghorn 2014). The core idea is that for a finite condition to be meaningful, it must obtain its meaning from another condition that has meaning. So, if one’s life is meaningful, it might be so in virtue of being married to a person, who is important. Being finite, the spouse must obtain his or her importance from elsewhere, perhaps from the sort of work he or she does. This work also must obtain its meaning by being related to something else that is meaningful, and so on. A regress on meaningful conditions is present, and the suggestion is that the regress can terminate only in something so all-encompassing that it need not (indeed, cannot) go beyond itself to obtain meaning from anything else. And that is God. The standard objection to this relational rationale is that a finite condition could be meaningful without obtaining its meaning from another meaningful condition. Perhaps it could be meaningful in itself, without being connected to something beyond it, or maybe it could obtain its meaning by being related to something else that is beautiful or otherwise valuable for its own sake but not meaningful (Nozick 1989, 167–68; Thomson 2003, 25–26, 48).

A serious concern for any extreme God-based view is the existence of apparent counterexamples. If we think of the stereotypical lives of Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa, and Pablo Picasso, they seem meaningful even if we suppose there is no all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good spiritual person who is the ground of the physical world (e.g., Wielenberg 2005, 31–37, 49–50; Landau 2017). Even religiously inclined philosophers have found this hard to deny these days (Quinn 2000, 58; Audi 2005; Mawson 2016, 5; Williams 2020, 132–34).

Largely for that reason, contemporary supernaturalists have tended to opt for moderation, that is, to maintain that God would greatly enhance the meaning in our lives, even if some meaning would be possible in a world without God. One approach is to invoke the relational argument to show that God is necessary, not for any meaning whatsoever, but rather for an ultimate meaning. “Limited transcendence, the transcending of our limits so as to connect with a wider context of value which itself is limited, does give our lives meaning––but a limited one. We may thirst for more” (Nozick 1981, 618). Another angle is to appeal to playing a role in God’s plan, again to claim, not that it is essential for meaning as such, but rather for “a cosmic significance....intead of a significance very limited in time and space” (Swinburne 2016, 154; see also Quinn 2000; Cottingham 2016, 131). Another rationale is that by fulfilling God’s purpose, we would meaningfully please God, a perfect person, as well as be remembered favorably by God forever (Cottingham 2016, 135; Williams 2020, 21–22, 29, 101, 108). Still another argument is that only with God could the deepest desires of human nature be satisfied (e.g., Goetz 2012; Seachris 2013, 20; Cottingham 2016, 127, 136), even if more surface desires could be satisfied without God.

In reply to such rationales for a moderate supernaturalism, there has been the suggestion that it is precisely by virtue of being alone in the universe that our lives would be particularly significant; otherwise, God’s greatness would overshadow us (Kahane 2014). There has also been the response that, with the opportunity for greater meaning from God would also come that for greater anti-meaning, so that it is not clear that a world with God would offer a net gain in respect of meaning (Metz 2019, 34–35). For example, if pleasing God would greatly enhance meaning in our lives, then presumably displeasing God would greatly reduce it and to a comparable degree. In addition, there are arguments for extreme naturalism (or its “anti-theist” cousin) mentioned below (sub-section 3.3).

Notice that none of the above arguments for supernaturalism appeals to the prospect of eternal life (at least not explicitly). Arguments that do make such an appeal are soul-centered, holding that meaning in life mainly comes from having an immortal, spiritual substance that is contiguous with one’s body when it is alive and that will forever outlive its death. Some think of the afterlife in terms of one’s soul entering a transcendent, spiritual realm (Heaven), while others conceive of one’s soul getting reincarnated into another body on Earth. According to the extreme version, if one has a soul but fails to put it in the right state (or if one lacks a soul altogether), then one’s life is meaningless.

There are three prominent arguments for an extreme soul-based perspective. One argument, made famous by Leo Tolstoy, is the suggestion that for life to be meaningful something must be worth doing, that something is worth doing only if it will make a permanent difference to the world, and that making a permanent difference requires being immortal (see also Hanfling 1987, 22–24; Morris 1992, 26; Craig 1994). Critics most often appeal to counterexamples, suggesting for instance that it is surely worth your time and effort to help prevent people from suffering, even if you and they are mortal. Indeed, some have gone on the offensive and argued that helping people is worth the sacrifice only if and because they are mortal, for otherwise they could invariably be compensated in an afterlife (e.g., Wielenberg 2005, 91–94). Another recent and interesting criticism is that the major motivations for the claim that nothing matters now if one day it will end are incoherent (Greene 2021).

A second argument for the view that life would be meaningless without a soul is that it is necessary for justice to be done, which, in turn, is necessary for a meaningful life. Life seems nonsensical when the wicked flourish and the righteous suffer, at least supposing there is no other world in which these injustices will be rectified, whether by God or a Karmic force. Something like this argument can be found in Ecclesiastes, and it continues to be defended (e.g., Davis 1987; Craig 1994). However, even granting that an afterlife is required for perfectly just outcomes, it is far from obvious that an eternal afterlife is necessary for them, and, then, there is the suggestion that some lives, such as Mandela’s, have been meaningful precisely in virtue of encountering injustice and fighting it.

A third argument for thinking that having a soul is essential for any meaning is that it is required to have the sort of free will without which our lives would be meaningless. Immanuel Kant is known for having maintained that if we were merely physical beings, subjected to the laws of nature like everything else in the material world, then we could not act for moral reasons and hence would be unimportant. More recently, one theologian has eloquently put the point in religious terms: “The moral spirit finds the meaning of life in choice. It finds it in that which proceeds from man and remains with him as his inner essence rather than in the accidents of circumstances turns of external fortune....(W)henever a human being rubs the lamp of his moral conscience, a Spirit does appear. This Spirit is God....It is in the ‘Thou must’ of God and man’s ‘I can’ that the divine image of God in human life is contained” (Swenson 1949/2000, 27–28). Notice that, even if moral norms did not spring from God’s commands, the logic of the argument entails that one’s life could be meaningful, so long as one had the inherent ability to make the morally correct choice in any situation. That, in turn, arguably requires something non-physical about one’s self, so as to be able to overcome whichever physical laws and forces one might confront. The standard objection to this reasoning is to advance a compatibilism about having a determined physical nature and being able to act for moral reasons (e.g., Arpaly 2006; Fischer 2009, 145–77). It is also worth wondering whether, if one had to have a spiritual essence in order to make free choices, it would have to be one that never perished.

Like God-centered theorists, many soul-centered theorists these days advance a moderate view, accepting that some meaning in life would be possible without immortality, but arguing that a much greater meaning would be possible with it. Granting that Einstein, Mandela, and Picasso had somewhat meaningful lives despite not having survived the deaths of their bodies (as per, e.g., Trisel 2004; Wolf 2015, 89–140; Landau 2017), there remains a powerful thought: more is better. If a finite life with the good, the true, and the beautiful has meaning in it to some degree, then surely it would have all the more meaning if it exhibited such higher values––including a relationship with God––for an eternity (Cottingham 2016, 132–35; Mawson 2016, 2019, 52–53; Williams 2020, 112–34; cf. Benatar 2017, 35–63). One objection to this reasoning is that the infinity of meaning that would be possible with a soul would be “too big,” rendering it difficult for the moderate supernaturalist to make sense of the intution that a finite life such as Einstein’s can indeed count as meaningful by comparison (Metz 2019, 30–31; cf. Mawson 2019, 53–54). More common, though, is the objection that an eternal life would include anti-meaning of various kinds, such as boredom and repetition, discussed below in the context of extreme naturalism (sub-section 3.3).

3. Naturalism

Recall that naturalism is the view that a physical life is central to life’s meaning, that even if there is no spiritual realm, a substantially meaningful life is possible. Like supernaturalism, contemporary naturalism admits of two distinguishable variants, moderate and extreme (Metz 2019). The moderate version is that, while a genuinely meaningful life could be had in a purely physical universe as known well by science, a somewhat more meaningful life would be possible if a spiritual realm also existed. God or a soul could enhance meaning in life, although they would not be major contributors. The extreme version of naturalism is the view that it would be better in respect of life’s meaning if there were no spiritual realm. From this perspective, God or a soul would be anti-matter, i.e., would detract from the meaning available to us, making a purely physical world (even if not this particular one) preferable.

Cross-cutting the moderate/extreme distinction is that between subjectivism and objectivism, which are theoretical accounts of the nature of meaningfulness insofar as it is physical. They differ in terms of the extent to which the human mind constitutes meaning and whether there are conditions of meaning that are invariant among human beings. Subjectivists believe that there are no invariant standards of meaning because meaning is relative to the subject, i.e., depends on an individual’s pro-attitudes such as her particular desires or ends, which are not shared by everyone. Roughly, something is meaningful for a person if she strongly wants it or intends to seek it out and she gets it. Objectivists maintain, in contrast, that there are some invariant standards for meaning because meaning is at least partly mind-independent, i.e., obtains not merely in virtue of being the object of anyone’s mental states. Here, something is meaningful (partially) because of its intrinsic nature, in the sense of being independent of whether it is wanted or intended; meaning is instead (to some extent) the sort of thing that merits these reactions.

There is logical space for an orthogonal view, according to which there are invariant standards of meaningfulness constituted by what all human beings would converge on from a certain standpoint. However, it has not been much of a player in the field (Darwall 1983, 164–66).

According to this version of naturalism, meaning in life varies from person to person, depending on each one’s variable pro-attitudes. Common instances are views that one’s life is more meaningful, the more one gets what one happens to want strongly, achieves one’s highly ranked goals, or does what one believes to be really important (Trisel 2002; Hooker 2008). One influential subjectivist has recently maintained that the relevant mental state is caring or loving, so that life is meaningful just to the extent that one cares about or loves something (Frankfurt 1988, 80–94, 2004). Another recent proposal is that meaningfulness consists of “an active engagement and affirmation that vivifies the person who has freely created or accepted and now promotes and nurtures the projects of her highest concern” (Belliotti 2019, 183).

Subjectivism was dominant in the middle of the twentieth century, when positivism, noncognitivism, existentialism, and Humeanism were influential (Ayer 1947; Hare 1957; Barnes 1967; Taylor 1970; Williams 1976). However, in the last quarter of the twentieth century, inference to the best explanation and reflective equilibrium became accepted forms of normative argumentation and were frequently used to defend claims about the existence and nature of objective value (or of “external reasons,” ones obtaining independently of one’s extant attitudes). As a result, subjectivism about meaning lost its dominance. Those who continue to hold subjectivism often remain suspicious of attempts to justify beliefs about objective value (e.g., Trisel 2002, 73, 79, 2004, 378–79; Frankfurt 2004, 47–48, 55–57; Wong 2008, 138–39; Evers 2017, 32, 36; Svensson 2017, 54). Theorists are moved to accept subjectivism typically because the alternatives are unpalatable; they are reasonably sure that meaning in life obtains for some people, but do not see how it could be grounded on something independent of the mind, whether it be the natural or the supernatural (or the non-natural). In contrast to these possibilities, it appears straightforward to account for what is meaningful in terms of what people find meaningful or what people want out of their lives. Wide-ranging meta-ethical debates in epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language are necessary to address this rationale for subjectivism.

There is a cluster of other, more circumscribed arguments for subjectivism, according to which this theory best explains certain intuitive features of meaning in life. For one, subjectivism seems plausible since it is reasonable to think that a meaningful life is an authentic one (Frankfurt 1988, 80–94). If a person’s life is significant insofar as she is true to herself or her deepest nature, then we have some reason to believe that meaning simply is a function of those matters for which the person cares. For another, it is uncontroversial that often meaning comes from losing oneself, i.e., in becoming absorbed in an activity or experience, as opposed to being bored by it or finding it frustrating (Frankfurt 1988, 80–94; Belliotti 2019, 162–70). Work that concentrates the mind and relationships that are engrossing seem central to meaning and to be so because of the subjective elements involved. For a third, meaning is often taken to be something that makes life worth continuing for a specific person, i.e., that gives her a reason to get out of bed in the morning, which subjectivism is thought to account for best (Williams 1976; Svensson 2017; Calhoun 2018).

Critics maintain that these arguments are vulnerable to a common objection: they neglect the role of objective value (or an external reason) in realizing oneself, losing oneself, and having a reason to live (Taylor 1989, 1992; Wolf 2010, 2015, 89–140). One is not really being true to oneself, losing oneself in a meaningful way, or having a genuine reason to live insofar as one, say, successfully maintains 3,732 hairs on one’s head (Taylor 1992, 36), cultivates one’s prowess at long-distance spitting (Wolf 2010, 104), collects a big ball of string (Wolf 2010, 104), or, well, eats one’s own excrement (Wielenberg 2005, 22). The counterexamples suggest that subjective conditions are insufficient to ground meaning in life; there seem to be certain actions, relationships, and states that are objectively valuable (but see Evers 2017, 30–32) and toward which one’s pro-attitudes ought to be oriented, if meaning is to accrue.

So say objectivists, but subjectivists feel the pull of the point and usually seek to avoid the counterexamples, lest they have to bite the bullet by accepting the meaningfulness of maintaining 3,732 hairs on one’s head and all the rest (for some who do, see Svensson 2017, 54–55; Belliotti 2019, 181–83). One important strategy is to suggest that subjectivists can avoid the counterexamples by appealing to the right sort of pro-attitude. Instead of whatever an individual happens to want, perhaps the relevant mental state is an emotional-perceptual one of seeing-as (Alexis 2011; cf. Hosseini 2015, 47–66), a “categorical” desire, that is, an intrinsic desire constitutive of one’s identity that one takes to make life worth continuing (Svensson 2017), or a judgment that one has a good reason to value something highly for its own sake (Calhoun 2018). Even here, though, objectivists will argue that it might “appear that whatever the will chooses to treat as a good reason to engage itself is, for the will, a good reason. But the will itself....craves objective reasons; and often it could not go forward unless it thought it had them” (Wiggins 1988, 136). And without any appeal to objectivity, it is perhaps likely that counterexamples would resurface.

Another subjectivist strategy by which to deal with the counterexamples is the attempt to ground meaningfulness, not on the pro-attitudes of an individual valuer, but on those of a group (Darwall 1983, 164–66; Brogaard and Smith 2005; Wong 2008). Does such an intersubjective move avoid (more of) the counterexamples? If so, does it do so more plausibly than an objective theory?

Objective naturalists believe that meaning in life is constituted at least in part by something physical beyond merely the fact that it is the object of a pro-attitude. Obtaining the object of some emotion, desire, or judgment is not sufficient for meaningfulness, on this view. Instead, there are certain conditions of the material world that could confer meaning on anyone’s life, not merely because they are viewed as meaningful, wanted for their own sake, or believed to be choiceworthy, but instead (at least partially) because they are inherently worthwhile or valuable in themselves.

Morality (the good), enquiry (the true), and creativity (the beautiful) are widely held instances of activities that confer meaning on life, while trimming toenails and eating snow––along with the counterexamples to subjectivism above––are not. Objectivism is widely thought to be a powerful general explanation of these particular judgments: the former are meaningful not merely because some agent (whether it is an individual, her society, or even God) cares about them or judges them to be worth doing, while the latter simply lack significance and cannot obtain it even if some agent does care about them or judge them to be worth doing. From an objective perspective, it is possible for an individual to care about the wrong thing or to be mistaken that something is worthwhile, and not merely because of something she cares about all the more or judges to be still more choiceworthy. Of course, meta-ethical debates about the existence and nature of value are again relevant to appraising this rationale.

Some objectivists think that being the object of a person’s mental states plays no constitutive role in making that person’s life meaningful, although they of course contend that it often plays an instrumental role––liking a certain activity, after all, is likely to motivate one to do it. Relatively few objectivists are “pure” in that way, although consequentialists do stand out as clear instances (e.g., Singer 1995; Smuts 2018, 75–99). Most objectivists instead try to account for the above intuitions driving subjectivism by holding that a life is more meaningful, not merely because of objective factors, but also in part because of propositional attitudes such as cognition, conation, and emotion. Particularly influential has been Susan Wolf’s hybrid view, captured by this pithy slogan: “Meaning arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness” (Wolf 2015, 112; see also Kekes 1986, 2000; Wiggins 1988; Raz 2001, 10–40; Mintoff 2008; Wolf 2010, 2016; Fischer 2019, 9–23; Belshaw 2021, 160–81). This theory implies that no meaning accrues to one’s life if one believes in, is satisfied by, or cares about a project that is not truly worthwhile, or if one takes up a truly worthwhile project but fails to judge it important, be satisfied by it, or care about it. A related approach is that, while subjective attraction is not necessary for meaning, it could enhance it (e.g., Audi 2005, 344; Metz 2013, 183–84, 196–98, 220–25). For instance, a stereotypical Mother Teresa who is bored by and alienated from her substantial charity work might have a somewhat significant existence because of it, even if she would have an even more significant existence if she felt pride in it or identified with it.

There have been several attempts to capture theoretically what all objectively attractive, inherently worthwhile, or finally valuable conditions have in common insofar as they bear on meaning in a person’s life. Over the past few decades, one encounters the proposals that objectively meaningful conditions are just those that involve: positively connecting with organic unity beyond oneself (Nozick 1981, 594–619); being creative (Taylor 1987; Matheson 2018); living an emotional life (Solomon 1993; cf. Williams 2020, 56–78); promoting good consequences, such as improving the quality of life of oneself and others (Singer 1995; Audi 2005; Smuts 2018, 75–99); exercising or fostering rational nature in exceptional ways (Smith 1997, 179–221; Gewirth 1998, 177–82; Metz 2013, 222–36); progressing toward ends that can never be fully realized because one’s knowledge of them changes as one approaches them (Levy 2005); realizing goals that are transcendent for being long-lasting in duration and broad in scope (Mintoff 2008); living virtuously (May 2015, 61–138; McPherson 2020); and loving what is worth loving (Wolf 2016). There is as yet no convergence in the field on one, or even a small cluster, of these accounts.

One feature of a large majority of the above naturalist theories is that they are aggregative or additive, objectionably treating a life as a mere “container” of bits of life that are meaningful considered in isolation from other bits (Brännmark 2003, 330). It has become increasingly common for philosophers of life’s meaning, especially objectivists, to hold that life as a whole, or at least long stretches of it, can substantially affect its meaningfulness beyond the amount of meaning (if any) in its parts.

For instance, a life that has lots of beneficence and otherwise intuitively meaning-conferring conditions but that is also extremely repetitive (à la the movie Groundhog Day ) is less than maximally meaningful (Taylor 1987; Blumenfeld 2009). Furthermore, a life that not only avoids repetition but also ends with a substantial amount of meaningful (or otherwise desirable) parts seems to have more meaning overall than one that has the same amount of meaningful (desirable) parts but ends with few or none of them (Kamm 2013, 18–22; Dorsey 2015). Still more, a life in which its meaningless (or otherwise undesirable parts) cause its meaningful (desirable) parts to come about through a process of personal growth seems meaningful in virtue of this redemptive pattern, “good life-story,” or narrative self-expression (Taylor 1989, 48–51; Wong 2008; Fischer 2009, 145–77; Kauppinen 2012; May 2015, 61–138; Velleman 2015, 141–73). These three cases suggest that meaning can inhere in life as a whole, that is, in the relationships between its parts, and not merely in the parts considered in isolation. However, some would maintain that it is, strictly speaking, the story that is or could be told of a life that matters, not so much the life-story qua relations between events themselves (de Bres 2018).

There are pure or extreme versions of holism present in the literature, according to which the only possible bearer of meaning in life is a person’s life as a whole, and not any isolated activities, relationships, or states (Taylor 1989, 48–51; Tabensky 2003; Levinson 2004). A salient argument for this position is that judgments of the meaningfulness of a part of someone’s life are merely provisional, open to revision upon considering how they fit into a wider perspective. So, for example, it would initially appear that taking an ax away from a madman and thereby protecting innocent parties confers some meaning on one’s life, but one might well revise that judgment upon learning that the intention behind it was merely to steal an ax, not to save lives, or that the madman then took out a machine gun, causing much more harm than his ax would have. It is worth considering how far this sort of case is generalizable, and, if it can be to a substantial extent, whether that provides strong evidence that only life as a whole can exhibit meaningfulness.

Perhaps most objectivists would, at least upon reflection, accept that both the parts of a life and the whole-life relationships among the parts can exhibit meaning. Supposing there are two bearers of meaning in a life, important questions arise. One is whether a certain narrative can be meaningful even if its parts are not, while a second is whether the meaningfulness of a part increases if it is an aspect of a meaningful whole (on which see Brännmark 2003), and a third is whether there is anything revealing to say about how to make tradeoffs between the parts and whole in cases where one must choose between them (Blumenfeld 2009 appears to assign lexical priority to the whole).

Naturalists until recently had been largely concerned to show that meaning in life is possible without God or a soul; they have not spent much time considering how such spiritual conditions might enhance meaning, but have, in moderate fashion, tended to leave that possibility open (an exception is Hooker 2008). Lately, however, an extreme form of naturalism has arisen, according to which our lives would probably, if not unavoidably, have less meaning in a world with God or a soul than in one without. Although such an approach was voiced early on by Baier (1957), it is really in the past decade or so that this “anti-theist” position has become widely and intricately discussed.

One rationale, mentioned above as an objection to the view that God’s purpose constitutes meaning in life, has also been deployed to argue that the existence of God as such would necessarily reduce meaning, that is, would consist of anti-matter. It is the idea that master/servant and parent/child analogies so prominent in the monotheist religious traditions reveal something about our status in a world where there is a qualitatively higher being who has created us with certain ends in mind: our independence or dignity as adult persons would be violated (e.g., Baier 1957/2000, 118–20; Kahane 2011, 681–85; Lougheed 2020, 121–41). One interesting objection to this reasoning has been to accept that God’s existence is necessarily incompatible with the sort of meaning that would come (roughly stated) from being one’s own boss, but to argue that God would also make greater sorts of meaning available, offering a net gain to us (Mawson 2016, 110–58).

Another salient argument for thinking that God would detract from meaning in life appeals to the value of privacy (Kahane 2011, 681–85; Lougheed 2020, 55–110). God’s omniscience would unavoidably make it impossible for us to control another person’s access to the most intimate details about ourselves, which, for some, amounts to a less meaningful life than one with such control. Beyond questioning the value of our privacy in relation to God, one thought-provoking criticism has been to suggest that, if a lack of privacy really would substantially reduce meaning in our lives, then God, qua morally perfect person, would simply avoid knowing everything about us (Tooley 2018). Lacking complete knowledge of our mental states would be compatible with describing God as “omniscient,” so the criticism goes, insofar as that is plausibly understood as having as much knowledge as is morally permissible.

Turn, now, to major arguments for thinking that having a soul would reduce life’s meaning, so that if one wants a maximally meaningful life, one should prefer a purely physical world, or at least one in which people are mortal. First and foremost, there has been the argument that an immortal life could not avoid becoming boring (Williams 1973), rendering life pointless according to many subjective and objective theories. The literature on this topic has become enormous, with the central reply being that immortality need not get boring (for more recent discussions, see Fischer 2009, 79–101, 2019, 117–42; Mawson 2019, 51–52; Williams 2020, 30–41, 123–29; Belshaw 2021, 182–97). However, it might also be worth questioning whether boredom is sufficient for meaninglessness. Suppose, for instance, that one volunteers to be bored so that many others will not be bored; perhaps this would be a meaningful sacrifice to make. Being bored for an eternity would not be blissful or even satisfying, to be sure, but if it served the function of preventing others from being bored for an eternity, would it be meaningful (at least to some degree)? If, as is commonly held, sacrificing one’s life could be meaningful, why not also sacrificing one’s liveliness?

Another reason given to reject eternal life is that it would become repetitive, which would substantially drain it of meaning (Scarre 2007, 54–55; May 2009, 46–47, 64–65, 71; Smuts 2011, 142–44; cf. Blumenfeld 2009). If, as it appears, there are only a finite number of actions one could perform, relationships one could have, and states one could be in during an eternity, one would have to end up doing the same things again. Even though one’s activities might be more valuable than rolling a stone up a hill forever à la Sisyphus, the prospect of doing them over and over again forever is disheartening for many. To be sure, one might not remember having done them before and hence could avoid boredom, but for some philosophers that would make it all the worse, akin to having dementia and forgetting that one has told the same stories. Others, however, still find meaning in such a life (e.g., Belshaw 2021, 197, 205n41).

A third meaning-based argument against immortality invokes considerations of narrative. If the pattern of one’s life as a whole substantially matters, and if a proper pattern would include a beginning, a middle, and an end, it appears that a life that never ends would lack the relevant narrative structure. “Because it would drag on endlessly, it would, sooner or later, just be a string of events lacking all form....With immortality, the novel never ends....How meaningful can such a novel be?” (May 2009, 68, 72; see also Scarre 2007, 58–60). Notice that this objection is distinct from considerations of boredom and repetition (which concern novelty ); even if one were stimulated and active, and even if one found a way not to repeat one’s life in the course of eternity, an immortal life would appear to lack shape. In reply, some reject the idea that a meaningful life must be akin to a novel, and intead opt for narrativity in the form of something like a string of short stories that build on each other (Fischer 2009, 145–77, 2019, 101–16). Others, though, have sought to show that eternity could still be novel-like, deeming the sort of ending that matters to be a function of what the content is and how it relates to the content that came before (e.g., Seachris 2011; Williams 2020, 112–19).

There have been additional objections to immortality as undercutting meaningfulness, but they are prima facie less powerful than the previous three in that, if sound, they arguably show that an eternal life would have a cost, but probably not one that would utterly occlude the prospect of meaning in it. For example, there have been the suggestions that eternal lives would lack a sense of preciousness and urgency (Nussbaum 1989, 339; Kass 2002, 266–67), could not exemplify virtues such as courageously risking one’s life for others (Kass 2002, 267–68; Wielenberg 2005, 91–94), and could not obtain meaning from sustaining or saving others’ lives (Nussbaum 1989, 338; Wielenberg 2005, 91–94). Note that at least the first two rationales turn substantially on the belief in immortality, not quite immortality itself: if one were immortal but forgot that one is or did not know that at all, then one could appreciate life and obtain much of the virtue of courage (and, conversely, if one were not immortal, but thought that one is, then, by the logic of these arguments, one would fail to appreciate limits and be unable to exemplify courage).

The previous two sections addressed theoretical accounts of what would confer meaning on a human person’s life. Although these theories do not imply that some people’s lives are in fact meaningful, that has been the presumption of a very large majority of those who have advanced them. Much of the procedure has been to suppose that many lives have had meaning in them and then to consider in virtue of what they have or otherwise could. However, there are nihilist (or pessimist) perspectives that question this supposition. According to nihilism (pessimism), what would make a life meaningful in principle cannot obtain for any of us.

One straightforward rationale for nihilism is the combination of extreme supernaturalism about what makes life meaningful and atheism about whether a spiritual realm exists. If you believe that God or a soul is necessary for meaning in life, and if you believe that neither is real, then you are committed to nihilism, to the denial that life can have any meaning. Athough this rationale for nihilism was prominent in the modern era (and was more or less Camus’ position), it has been on the wane in analytic philosophical circles, as extreme supernaturalism has been eclipsed by the moderate variety.

The most common rationales for nihilism these days do not appeal to supernaturalism, or at least not explicitly. One cluster of ideas appeals to what meta-ethicists call “error theory,” the view that evaluative claims (in this case about meaning in life, or about morality qua necessary for meaning) characteristically posit objectively real or universally justified values, but that such values do not exist. According to one version, value judgments often analytically include a claim to objectivity but there is no reason to think that objective values exist, as they “would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe” (Mackie 1977/1990, 38). According to a second version, life would be meaningless if there were no set of moral standards that could be fully justified to all rational enquirers, but it so happens that such standards cannot exist for persons who can always reasonably question a given claim (Murphy 1982, 12–17). According to a third, we hold certain beliefs about the objectivity and universality of morality and related values such as meaning because they were evolutionarily advantageous to our ancestors, not because they are true. Humans have been “deceived by their genes into thinking that there is a distinterested, objective morality binding upon them, which all should obey” (Ruse and Wilson 1986, 179; cf. Street 2015). One must draw on the intricate work in meta-ethics that has been underway for the past several decades in order to appraise these arguments.

In contrast to error-theoretic arguments for nihilism, there are rationales for it accepting that objective values exist but denying that our lives can ever exhibit or promote them so as to obtain meaning. One version of this approach maintains that, for our lives to matter, we must be in a position to add objective value to the world, which we are not since the objective value of the world is already infinite (Smith 2003). The key premises for this view are that every bit of space-time (or at least the stars in the physical universe) have some positive value, that these values can be added up, and that space is infinite. If the physical world at present contains an infinite degree of value, nothing we do can make a difference in terms of meaning, for infinity plus any amount of value remains infinity. One way to question this argument, beyond doubting the value of space-time or stars, is to suggest that, even if one cannot add to the value of the universe, meaning plausibly comes from being the source of certain values.

A second rationale for nihilism that accepts the existence of objective value is David Benatar’s (2006, 18–59) intriguing “asymmetry argument” for anti-natalism, the view that it is immoral to bring new people into existence because doing so would always be on balance bad for them. For Benatar, the bads of existing (e.g., pains) are real disadvantages relative to not existing, while the goods of existing (pleasures) are not real advantages relative to not existing, since there is in the latter state no one to be deprived of them. If indeed the state of not existing is no worse than that of experiencing the benefits of existence, then, since existing invariably brings harm in its wake, it follows that existing is always worse compared to not existing. Although this argument is illustrated with experiential goods and bads, it seems generalizable to non-experiential ones, including meaning in life and anti-matter. The literature on this argument has become large (for a recent collection, see Hauskeller and Hallich 2022).

Benatar (2006, 60–92, 2017, 35–63) has advanced an additional argument for nihilism, one that appeals to Thomas Nagel’s (1986, 208–32) widely discussed analysis of the extremely external standpoint that human persons can take on their lives. There exists, to use Henry Sidgwick’s influential phrase, the “point of view of the universe,” that is, the standpoint that considers a human being’s life in relation to all times and all places. When one takes up this most external standpoint and views one’s puny impact on the world, little of one’s life appears to matter. What one does in a certain society on Earth over 75 years or so just does not amount to much, when considering the billions of temporal years and billions of light-years that make up space-time. Although this reasoning grants limited kinds of meaning to human beings, from a personal, social, or human perspective, Benatar both denies that the greatest sort of meaning––a cosmic one––is available to them and contends that this makes their lives bad, hence the “nihilist” tag. Some have objected that our lives could in fact have a cosmic significance, say, if they played a role in God’s plan (Quinn 2000, 65–66; Swinburne 2016, 154), were the sole ones with a dignity in the universe (Kahane 2014), or engaged in valuable activities that could be appreciated by anyone anywhere anytime (Wolf 2016, 261–62). Others naturally maintain that cosmic significance is irrelevant to appraising a human life, with some denying that it would be a genuine source of meaning (Landau 2017, 93–99), and others accepting that it would be but maintaining that the absence of this good would not count as a bad or merit regret (discussed in Benatar 2017, 56–62; Williams 2020, 108–11).

Finally, a distinguishable source of nihilism concerns the ontological, as distinct from axiological, preconditions for meaning in life. Perhaps most radically, there are those who deny that we have selves. Do we indeed lack selves, and, if we do, is a meaningful life impossible for us (see essays in Caruso and Flanagan 2018; Le Bihan 2019)? Somewhat less radically, there are those who grant that we have selves, but deny that they are in charge in the relevant way. That is, some have argued that we lack self-governance or free will of the sort that is essential for meaning in life, at least if determinism is true (Pisciotta 2013; essays in Caruso and Flanagan 2018). Non-quantum events, including human decisions, appear to be necessited by a prior state of the world, such that none could have been otherwise, and many of our decisions are a product of unconscious neurological mechanisms (while quantum events are of course utterly beyond our control). If none of our conscious choices could have been avoided and all were ultimately necessited by something external to them, perhaps they are insufficient to merit pride or admiration or to constitute narrative authorship of a life. In reply, some maintain that a compatibilism between determinism and moral responsibility applies with comparable force to meaning in life (e.g., Arpaly 2006; Fischer 2009, 145–77), while others contend that incompatibilism is true of moral responsibility but not of meaning (Pereboom 2014).

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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Delon, N., 2021, “ The Meaning of Life ”, a bibliography on PhilPapers.
• Metz, T., 2021, “ Life, Meaning of ”, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy , E. Mason (ed.).
• O’Brien, W., 2021, “ The Meaning of Life: Early Continental and Analytic Perspectives ”, in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy , J. Fieser and B. Dowden (eds.).
• Seachris, J., 2021, “ Meaning of Life: The Analytic Perspective ”, in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy , J. Fieser and B. Dowden (eds.).

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A Summary and Analysis of John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Published in 1689 though formally dated 1690, John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is one of the most important works of Enlightenment philosophy: indeed, in many ways, Locke paved the way for the (later) Enlightenment.

But what is it about An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , and Locke’s argument, which makes him so important?

You can read the whole of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding here (the text is taken from the original 1689 edition, which erroneously gave the title as An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding ), but we’ve tried to summarise the main points of Locke’s argument below, before proceeding to an analysis of his meaning – and his significance.

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding : summary

Locke begins the Essay by arguing against the earlier rationalist idea (propounded by Descartes among others) that ideas can be innate within the human mind. For Locke, when babies are born their minds are empty: a notion which he famously calls the tabula rasa (literally, ‘blank slate’). Human minds are like a blank sheet of paper when we’re born, and everything that ends up in them is supplied by experience.

This signals Locke’s adherence to empiricism over rationalism: rather than believing knowledge and ideas about the world are in-built within us by nature, he believes that ideas are acquired from external stimuli, from us going out there into the world and being exposed to things.

Book II develops this idea in more detail. Experience is the bedrock of all human knowledge. We don’t inherently ‘know’ things: we learn about things as we experience them. This is a bit like a ‘nurture over nature’ view. There are two routes to knowledge via experience: sensation and reflection . Sensation is about coming into contact with the external world, whereas reflection comes from introspection, or from reflecting on what we have experienced.

Book III proposes an idea later developed in more depth by Immanuel Kant: that we cannot ever know true reality, only our perception of it. And our perception of reality is necessarily subjective: you don’t have precisely the same experience of the world as I do. It is also in Book III that Locke attempts to apply his empiricist approach to language.

Book IV appears, on the face of it, to contradict what Locke had set out to argue: namely, that empiricism rather than rationalism is the correct way to view knowledge. But he is actually arguing that, once we adopt an empirical mindset, we are then able to draw a rationalist conclusion of the world from that experience.

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding : analysis

The twentieth-century philosopher Isaiah Berlin once suggested that John Locke effectively invented the idea of common sense in matters of philosophy, and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is certainly a powerful defence of the importance of an empiricist outlook, whereby we trust our own senses and experiences rather than simply assuming things to be innately true and unquestionable. Bertrand Russell made a similar claim about Locke’s book.

What this means is that Locke’s contribution to philosophy lies partly in his emphasis on the importance of experience in forming our ideas and values. Empiricism places the emphasis on our own sensory understanding of the world (what is now sometimes called ‘lived experience’, to offer a broader term).

This means that we trust our own senses rather than some innate knowledge we come pre-programmed with at birth. How do we know right from wrong? Locke would argue that we have to learn what ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ mean in order to know that.

Locke is, of course, right to emphasise the importance of experience in forming our knowledge of the world. But, in his determination to oppose the rationalist approach touted by Spinoza, Descartes, and others, does he take things too far in the other direction?

There are many moral philosophers who would argue that we do have an innate sense of right and wrong which is present at birth, even if we’re too young to act on it as soon as we leave the womb. Evolutionary biologists would argue that we wouldn’t have got as far as we have as a species without this in-built sense of morality, among other things.

There are other aspects of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding which critics have argued are too reductive. Although our own experience is obviously important in shaping our view of the world, few would go so far as Locke and argue that it’s the only significant factor.

For one thing, our experience of the world is just too different: a man living in a secluded monastery in Yorkshire is unlikely to arrive at the same ‘knowledge’ of the world as a midwife working in London. Locke grants that our experiences will necessarily be subjective, but where does that leave us when considering supposedly self-evident or universal truths, such as ‘killing is wrong’ or ‘do unto others as you would have them to do you’?

Nevertheless, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is an important book, not least because it was a milestone in philosophy and would act as the foundation for the work of many philosophers who came after Locke.

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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!

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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. These are such persons as Neil Harbisson, whose antenna implanted into his brain allows him to 'hear' colors via bone conduction, and Moon Ribas, whose implanted sensors allow her to 'feel' earthquakes over 1.0 on the Richter scale and movements of the Earth's moon. There are many other DIY bodyhackers too – Harbisson and Ribas are not the first ones to implant themselves with connectivity-enabled technology in order to change their perception and communication. Eduardo Kac implanted his leg with digital memory (in RFID chip form) within the art project 'Time Capsule' in 1997, and Kevin Warwick also implanted himself with multiple chips for sensory perception and online communication. However, in these cases the technology did not merge with the organism in the intent to alter regular performance. For this reason it may be helpful to differentiate between the relatively 'weak' cyborg status of Kac and Warwick, and the relatively 'strong' status of Harbisson and Ribas. Contemplating the changing conditions of personhood nowadays, there should be taken also a broader overlook on the future of society, in which we will have to include differently embodied legal persons – technologically enhanced, genetically engineered, artificially created. An interesting perspective to which I will later refer to more extensively, is proposed by Steven Fuller (a professor of social epistemology and enthusiast of transhumanism) and it is: “Humanity 2.0” – an “Extended Republic of Humanity or Transhumanity” which includes all responsible agents regardless of their material substratum. Humanity 2.0 is Fuller’s name for the republican society inclusive of all possible citizens, not just those born as Homo Sapiens. For this to occur, as he points out, it is necessary to redefine the concept of Human Rights as declared by the United Nations in 1948, which currently limits the basis for civil rights legislation to the Homo Sapiens species (Fuller 2015). 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). For Fuller however the biological human is not inviolate, and “the predicate human may be projected in three quite distinct ways, governed by (...) ecological, biomedical, and cybernetic interests.” (Fuller 2013, p. 6) Moreover, the predicate 'human' is not essential; of main import is extended citizenship and science’s “political capacity to organize humanity into a project of universal concern” (Fuller 2013, p. 5), allowing for responsibility, risk-taking, and pursuing the individually diverse lives of differently embodied persons. Therefore, my research on cyborgs as persons focuses on philosophical redefinition of the category of 'person' with Margolis as an ally, in order to make space for the inclusion of differently embodied, relatively autonomous individuals into our societies and sketch a vision for our future – indispensably framed by sociopolitics as envisioned by Fuller.

Leonid Grinin , Anton Grinin

In the modern world an individual deals with different technologies and products of scientific and technological progress and becomes more and more dependent on them, spending considerable time to understand changes and to keep up with progress. In general, the entire human history especially in the last few centuries is the history of victories and triumph of science, technology, and information technologies. Moreover, the humankind being a father of technology at the same time became more and more dependent on it. Today technologies penetrate almost every aspect of our life: private, family and intimate, as well as our mentality. But even more serious transformations are awaiting us in the future when devices and technologies are introduced into the human body and consciousness thus putting strain on all our biological (nervous, physical, and intellectual) adaptive capacities. Today they give a serious thought to seemingly strange ideas about whether mobile phones, computers, and organizers can become a part of our body and brain. In fact, technology has become one of the most powerful forces of development.

Culture & Psychology

Gustavo Lins Ribeiro

Daniel Riha

Comunicazioni Sociali. Journal of Media, Performing Arts and Cultural Studies

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'.

How the Merging of Cyberspace and Real Space is Changing us (into cyborgs)

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.

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine

Derrick de Kerckhove

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Ollivier Dyens

The New Birmingham Review

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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• > Journals
• > Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements
• > Volume 65
• > What is Humane Philosophy and Why is it At Risk?

Article contents

What is humane philosophy and why is it at risk.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 December 2009

Let me begin with what may seem a very minor point, but one which I think reveals something about how many philosophers today conceive of their subject. During the past few decades, there has been an increasing tendency for references in philosophy books and articles to be formatted in the ‘author and date’ style (‘see Fodor (1996)’, ‘see Smith (2001)’.) A neat and economical reference system, you may think; and it certainly saves space, albeit inconveniencing readers by forcing them to flip back to the end of the chapter or book to find the title of the work being referred to. But what has made this system so popular among philosophers? A factor which I suspect exerts a strong subconscious attraction for many people is that it makes a philosophy article look very like a piece of scientific research. For if one asks where the ‘author-date’ system originated, the answer is clear: it comes from the science journals. And in that context, the choice of referencing system has a very definite rationale. In the progress-driven world of science, priority is everything, and it's vitally important for a career that a researcher is able to proclaim his work as breaking new ground. Bloggs (2005) developed a technique for cloning a certain virus; Coggs (2006) showed how certain bits of viral DNA could be spliced; and now Dobbs (2007) draws on both techniques to develop the building blocks of a new vaccine. The idea is that our knowledge-base is enhanced, month by month and year by year, in small incremental steps (perhaps with occasional major breakthroughs); and in the catalogue of advances, the date tagged to each name signals when progress was made, and by whom.

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1 Often known as the ‘Harvard’ system, author-date referencing was apparently first used by a Edward Laurens Mark, a Professor of anatomy at Harvard University, in an article published in 1881 in the Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology.

2 Wittgenstein , Ludwig , Philosophical Investigations [ Philosophische Untersuchungen , 1953] ( New York : Macmillan , 1953 ), Part I, §309 Google Scholar .

3 ‘Can Analytic Philosophy Be Systematic?’ [1975], in Truth and Other Enigmas (London: Duckworth, 1978), 458.

4 Rorty , Richard , Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature ( Oxford : Blackwell , 1980 ), 300ff Google Scholar .

5 For Quine's view of philosophy as continuous with science, see his ‘Epistemology naturalized’, in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 69–90, and ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ in From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, MA; Harvard, 1953; rev. 1961).

6 Leiter , Brian (ed.), The Future for Philosophy ( Oxford : Clarendon Press , 2004 ), Editor's Introduction, 2 – 3 Google Scholar .

7 Pierre Gassendi, Fifth Set of Objections, published with Descartes's Meditations [ Meditations de prima philosophiae , 1641], AT VII 276: CSM II 193. ‘AT’ refers to the standard Franco-Latin edition of Descartes by Adam , C. & Tannery , P. , Œuvres de Descartes ( 12 vols, revised edn, Paris : Vrin/CNRS , 1964 –76) Google Scholar ; ‘CSM’ refers to the English translation by Cottingham , J. , Stoothoff , R. and Murdoch , D. , The Philosophical Writings of Descartes , vols I and II ( Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 1985 ) Google Scholar .

8 Gassendi himself actually seems to have held that the mind is an incorporeal substance, though he took this to be something known by faith. His empiricist view of knowledge, however, led him to insist that our understanding of the mind must be based on analogy with something perceived by the senses, and hence that the basis of the analogy will always be something corporeal. For an excellent discussion of his views in this area, see Lolordo , Antonia , Pierre Gassendi and the Birth of early Modern Philosophy ( Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2008 ), ch. 10, 230 –1 Google Scholar .

9 See Cottingham , J. , ‘Cartesian Dualism’, in Cottingham , (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Descartes ( Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 1995 ), ch. 8 Google Scholar .

10 See for example Smart , J. , ‘Sensations and Brain Processes’, in Chappell , V. C. (ed.), Philosophy of Mind ( Englewood Cliffs : Prentice Hall , 1962 ) Google Scholar .

11 Descartes, Meditations , Second Meditation (AT VII 28: CSM II 19); see further Cottingham , J. , Cartesian Reflections ( Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2008 ), ch. 4 Google Scholar .

12 Benedictus Spinoza, Ethics [ Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata , c. 1665], Part II, prop. 7, scholium; Davidson , Donald , Essays on Actions and Events ( Oxford : Clarendon Press , 1980 ) Google Scholar .

13 René Descartes, The Search for Truth [ La recherche de la vérité , ?1649], AT X 516: CSM II 410).

14 Williams , Bernard , ‘Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline’ [2000], in Williams, Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline ( Princeton : Princeton University Press , 2006 ), p. 184 Google Scholar .

15 Locke , John , An Essay concerning Human Understanding , [1690], (ed.) Nidditch , P. . ( Oxford : Clarendon , repr. 1984 ), Bk IV, ch. 3, §25 Google Scholar .

16 Wedgwood , R. , The Nature of Normativity ( Oxford : Clarendon Press , 2007 ), 6 CrossRef Google Scholar .

17 What is more, the multiplication of new terminology may give the impression of real new research, or quasi-scientific progress, when what is really happening is yet another swing back of forth of a pendulum, in a continuing piece of philosophical dialogue about the objectivity (or otherwise) of morality that goes back to David Hume versus Richard Price in the eighteenth century and ultimately to Plato versus Protagoras in the fourth century BC. See David Hume, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding [1748]; Richard Price, A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals [1758]; Plato, Theaetetus [ c . 370 BC], 160 D.

18 Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding , Sectn IV, part 1, penultimate paragraph.

19 Rawls , John , A Theory of Justice ( Oxford : Oxford University Press , 1972 ) ch. 1, §4 Google Scholar .

20 Matthew 19:21. Luke 9:59–60.

21 Matthew 11:30.

22 Compare Rawls's ‘maximin principle’, that requires inequalities to be justified by showing that they benefit the least advantaged ( A Theory of Justice , §11).

23 It would take far more space than I can spare here to assess this question thoroughly. Among the extensive recent literature addressing some of the issues involved, see especially Sayre-McCord , G. , ‘Coherentist Epistemology and Moral Theory’, in Sinnott-Armstrong , W. & Timmons , M. (eds), Moral Knowledge: New Readings in Epistemology ( New York: Oxford : Oxford University Press , 1996 ), 137 – 189 Google Scholar , and DePaul , M. , Balance and Refinement: Beyond coherence methods of moral inquiry ( New York : Routledge , 1993 ) Google Scholar .

24 Compare Strawson's , P. F. account of ‘connective’ as opposed to ‘reductive’ analysis in his Analysis and Metaphysics ( Oxford : Oxford University Press , 1992 ) CrossRef Google Scholar , discussed in Glock's , H-J. illuminating study What is Analytic Philosophy ( Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2008 ), ch. 6 CrossRef Google Scholar .

25 Wedgwood, The Nature of Normativity , p. 110.

26 Preface to the 1647 French translation of the Principles of Philosophy [ Principia philosophiae , 1644], AT IXB 14-15: CSM I 186. For more on Descartes's ‘synoptic’ conception of philosophy, see Cottingham, Cartesian Reflections , ch 1.

27 Williams, Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline , 197.

28 See Parfit , Derek , Reasons and Persons ( Oxford : Oxford University Press , 1984 ; repr. 1987), sections 95 and 96. Google Scholar

29 The various phrases in this and the previous paragraph are taken from Taylor , Charles , Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity ( Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 1989 ), 46 – 52 Google Scholar .

30 See for example Parfit's , ‘ The Puzzle of Reality ’, Times Literary Supplement , July 3, 1992 , 3 – 5 Google Scholar , and ‘Why Anything, Why This?’, London Review of Books 20 : 2 (22 January 1998), 22–5.

31 See Plato, Republic [ c. 380 BC], Book III (376ff), Book V (474ff).

32 ‘[Philosophia] animam format et fabricat, vitam disponit, actiones regit, agenda et omittenda demonstrat, sedet ad gubernaculum et per ancipitia fluctuantium derigit cursum.’ (‘Philosophy shapes and constructs the soul, arranges life, governs conduct, shows what is to be done and what omitted, sits at the helm and directs our course as we waver amidst uncertainties.’) Seneca, Epistulae Morales [ c . AD 64], 16, 3.

33 I explore many dimensions of ratiocentrism in Philosophy and the Good Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

34 ‘Man's craving for grandiosity is now suffering the … most bitter blow from present-day psychological research which is endeavouring to prove to the “ego” of each one of us that he is not even master in his own house, but that he must remain content with the veriest scraps of information about what is going on unconsciously in his own mind.’ Freud , Sigmund , Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis [ Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse , 1916–17], trans. Rivière , J. ( London : Routledge , 1922 ), ch. 18 Google Scholar .

35 See Philosophy and the Good Life , ch. 4, final section.

36 Geuss , R. , ‘ Poetry and Knowledge ’, Arion Vol. 11 no 1 (Spring/Summer 2003 ), 8 Google Scholar . Cf. Empson , W. , Seven Types of Ambiguity [1930] ( Harmondsworth : Penguin , 1995 ) Google Scholar .

37 This paragraph draws on material from my The Spiritual Dimension (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), ch. 5.

38 Metaphorical language (when the metaphors are fresh and living) provide a striking case of this polyvalence or multiple layering; precisely for this reason the full meaning of a metaphor cannot be reduced to what might be asserted by a literal paraphrase.

39 Compare Nozick's , Robert critique of ‘coercive’ argument in philosophy, in Philosophical Explanations ( Oxford : Clarendon Press , 1981 ), Introduction, 4ff Google Scholar .

40 See The Spiritual Dimension , ch. 1.

41 Hadot , Pierre , Philosophy as a Way of Life ( Cambridge, Mass. : Blackwell , 1995 ), ch. 3 Google Scholar . Originally published as Exercises spirituels et philosophie antique (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1987).

42 Plato, Republic , 394d. The actual phrase is: ‘wherever the argument takes us, like a wind, there we must go’ ( hopê an ho logos hôsper pneuma pherê, tautê iteon ). This slogan, incidentally, should not be taken to mean that the only reasonable course in philosophy is to accept the conclusions that follow from our premises; where the conclusions are silly or outrageous, it will often be better to go back and question the premises.

43 See Heidegger , Martin , Being and Time [ Sein und Zeit , 1927], trans. Macquarrie , J. and Robinson , E. ( New York : Harper and Row , 1962 ), §44, 262 Google Scholar ; and Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis , ch. 18,

44 This theme, and that of the preceding paragraph, is developed in Cottingham , J. , ‘The Self, The Good Life and the Transcendent,’ in Athanassoulis , N. and Vice , S. (eds.), The Moral Life: Essays in Honour of John Cottingham ( London : Palgrave , 2008 ), 228 – 271 Google Scholar .

45 I am grateful for the valuable comments received from a number of friends and colleagues, especially from Peter Hacker, Brad Hooker and Javier Kalhat, and also for very helpful discussion points raised by Chris Pulman and other members of the philosophy graduate seminar at the University of Reading.

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• John Cottingham
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1358246109990129

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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.

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.

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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Philosophy essay writing guide

Introduction.

This guide is intended to give new students of philosophy some preliminary advice about writing philosophy essays at university. For many of you, writing a philosophy essay will be something of a new experience, and no doubt many of you will be a little unsure of what to expect, or of what is expected of you. Most of you will have written essays in school for English, History, etc. A philosophy essay is something a little different again. However, it is not an unfathomable, mysterious affair, nor one where anything goes.

Just what a philosophy essay is will depend a lot, as you'd expect, on just what philosophy is. Defining philosophy is always a more or less controversial business, but one way to think of what is done in university philosophy departments is to think of the difference between having a philosophy and doing philosophy. Virtually everyone "has a philosophy" in the sense that we have many basic beliefs about the world and ourselves and use certain key concepts to articulate those beliefs. Many of us initially come to thus "have a philosophy" (or elements of several philosophies) often only unconsciously, or by following "what's obvious" or "what everybody knows", or by adopting a view because it sounds exciting or is intellectually fashionable.

"Doing philosophy", on the other hand, is a self-conscious unearthing and rigorous examination of these basic beliefs and key concepts. In doing so, we try to clarify the meanings of those beliefs and concepts and to evaluate critically their rational grounds or justification. Thus, rather than having their heads in the clouds, philosophers are really more under the surface of our thinking, examining the structures that support - or fail to support - those who trust that they have their feet on the ground. Such examination may even help to develop new and firmer ground.

Doing philosophy, then, begins with asking questions about the fundamental ideas and concepts that inform our ways of looking at the world and ourselves, and proceeds by developing responses to those questions which seek to gain insight into those ideas and concepts - and part of that development consists in asking further questions, giving further responses, and so on. Human beings across the world have been engaged in this sort of dialogue of question and response for many centuries - even millennia - and a number of great traditions of reflection and inquiry have evolved that have fundamentally influenced the development of religion, art, science and politics in many cultures. The influence of philosophical thinking on Western civilization, in particular, can be traced back more than 2,500 years to the Ancient Greeks.

In philosophy, a good essay is one that, among other things, displays a good sense of this dialectic of question and response by asking insightful, probing questions, and providing reasoned, well-argued responses. This means that you should not rest content with merely an unintegrated collection of assertions, but should instead work at establishing logical relations between your thoughts. You are assessed not on the basis of what you believe, but on how well you argue for the position you adopt in your essay, and on how interesting and insightful your discussion of the issues is. That is to say, you are assessed on how well you do philosophy, not on what philosophy you end up having. Nonetheless, you ought to make sure that your essay's discussion is relevant to the topic. (See Section 5.2 below on relevance.)

It is hoped that you enjoy the activity of essay writing. If you have chosen to study Arts, it is likely that you will have a particular interest in - even a passion for - ideas and the variety of forms and genres in which ideas are expressed and explored. The argumentative or discursive formal academic essay is one such form, and one which can be a pleasure to read and to write. Thus, the assessment that is set in philosophy courses is primarily an invitation to you to pursue what is already (or, hopefully, soon to be) your own interest in writing to explore ideas. However, your immediate goal in writing an academic philosophy essay ought not to be to write a personal testament, confession or polemic. Rather, you should primarily aim at articulating, clearly and relatively dispassionately, your philosophical thinking on the topic at hand. Nevertheless, the kind and degree of personal development one can gain from taking up the challenge to think and to write carefully, clearly and thoroughly is certainly something to be greatly valued.

This guide is intended to help you get started in the business of writing philosophy essays. As you practise your philosophical writing skills, you will develop your own technique, and learn what is appropriate in each particular case. So you may well come to "work around" many of these guidelines. Nonetheless, it is important that you pass through that which you seek to pass beyond.* In addition to your own writing, your reading of other philosophers will help you to develop your sense of what constitutes good philosophical writing. As you read, note the various styles and techniques that philosophical authors employ in their treatment of philosophical issues. Practice and studying good examples, then, are the most valuable ways to develop your essay writing skills.

This guide is, moreover, only one of many publications that introduce philosophy students to essay writing. Some others you may like to consult include:

• A. P. Martinich, Philosophical Writing, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997)
• J. Feinberg and R. Shafer-Landau, Doing Philosophy: A Guide to the Writing of Philosophy Papers, 2nd ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2001)
• Z. Seech, Writing Philosophy Papers, 4th ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2003)
• R. Solomon, "Writing Philosophy", Appendix to his The Big Questions: A Short Introduction to Philosophy, 6th ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2001)
• S. Gorovitz et al., Philosophical Analysis: An Introduction to its Language and Techniques, 3rd ed. (New York: Random House, 1979)

Also, the websites of many philosophy departments in universities around Australia and the world contain downloadable essay writing guides or links to them.

*This phrase is adapted from Jacques Bouveresse, "Why I am so very unFrench", in Alan Montefiore, ed., Philosophy in France Today (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 12.

What do I do in a Philosophy essay?

Philosophy essay topics are not designed to provide an intellectual obstacle course that trips you up so as to delight a malicious marker. They are designed to invite you to "grapple with" with some particular philosophical problem or issue. That is to say, they are designed to offer you an opportunity to demonstrate your understanding of a particular philosophical problem or issue, and to exhibit your own philosophical skills of analysis, argumentation, etc. These twin goals are usually best achieved by ensuring that your essay performs two basic functions (your understanding and your skills apply to both):

an exposition of the problem or issue in question (often as it is posed in some particular text); and a critical discussion of the problem or text

These two functions can, but need not always, correspond to physically or structurally distinct sections of your essay. See Section 5.1.

The expository ("setting forth") aspect of your essay is where you should make clear what the issue is and why it is an issue. Where you are dealing with an issue as it is presented in some particular text, your aim should be to make clear what it is that the author in question meant in their text, what they see as the issue and why they see it as an issue. This does not involve merely quoting or paraphrasing a text. Of course, occasional quotation and paraphrase may be appropriate - sometimes necessary - but these ought not to constitute the sole or major content of your exposition. Where you do quote or paraphrase, make sure you attribute your sources in footnotes or endnotes. (See Section 7.)

Exposition is, then, primarily a matter of developing in your own words what you think the issue is or what you think the text means. In all expository work you should always try to give a fair and accurate account of a text or problem, even when the exposition becomes more interpretive rather than simply descriptive. You ought to be patient and sympathetic in your exposition, even if you intend later to criticise heavily the philosopher in question. Indeed, the better the exposition in this regard, usually the more effective the critique.

An important part of exposition is your analysis of the text or issue. Here you should try to "break down" the text, issue or problem into its constitutive elements by distinguishing its different parts. (E.g. "There are two basic kinds of freedom in question when we speak of freedom of the will. First, … . Second, …", or "There are three elements in Plato's conception of the soul, namely... He establishes these three elements by means of the following two arguments... ") This also involves showing the relationships between those elements, relationships which make them "parts of the whole".

As well as laying out these elements within a text or issue, you can also (when appropriate or relevant) show how a text or issue "connects up with" other texts, issues, or philosophical and/or historical developments, which can help to shed further light on the matter by giving it a broader context. (eg "Freedom of the will is importantly connected to the justification of punishment", or "Plato's tripartite theory of the soul bears interesting resemblances to Freud's analysis of the psyche", or "Kant's transcendental idealism can be seen as reconciling the preceding rationalist and empiricist accounts of knowledge".)

An exposition of a text need not always simply follow the author's own view of what it means. You should, of course, demonstrate that you understand how the author themself understands their work, but an exposition can sometimes go beyond this, giving another reading of the text. (eg "Heidegger might deny it, but his Being and Time can be read as developing a pragmatist account of human understanding.") A given text or issue may well be susceptible to a number of plausible or reasonable interpretations. An exposition should aim to be sensitive to such variety. When appropriate, you should defend your interpretations against rivals and objections. Your interpretation ought, though, to be aimed at elucidating the meaning or meanings of the text or issue and not serve merely as a "coat-hanger" for presenting your own favoured views on the matter in question, which should be left to your ...

Critical discussion

This is where your thought gets more of the centre stage. Here you should attempt to develop a response to the issues which your exposition has made clear, and/or, in the case of a discussion of some particular text, attempt to give a critical appraisal of the author's treatment of the issue. In developing a response to a philosophical problem, argumentation is, again, of central importance. Avoid making unsupported assertions; back up your claims with reasons, and connect up your ideas so that they progress logically toward your conclusions. Consider some of the various objections to and questions about your views that others might or have put forward, and try to respond to them in defence of your own line of thinking. Your goal here should be to discuss what you have expounded so as to come to some conclusion or judgement about it. ("Critical" is derived from the Ancient Greek for "to decide, to judge".) Critical discussion is thus not necessarily "destructive" or "negative"; it can be quite constructive and positive.

In the case of a critical appraisal of a particular author's text, you can negatively criticise the author's arguments by pointing out questionable assumptions, invalid reasoning, etc. If, on the other hand, you think that the text is good, then your critical discussion can be positive. This can be done by revealing its "hidden virtues" (that is, by showing that there is more to the author's arguments and views than what lies on the surface) and/or by defending an author against possible and/or actual criticisms. (eg "Norman Malcolm argues that Descartes is mistaken in assuming that dreams and waking episodes have the same content.* However, Malcolm fails to appreciate the subtlety of Descartes' argument in the First Meditation, which allows Descartes to claim . . .") Just to expound an author's arguments and then say "I disagree" or "That seems right" is not really enough - you need to "have something to say" about it. Of course, by all means go on, after finding fault with some philosopher, to answer in your own way the questions tackled or raised by the author. (eg "Simone de Beauvoir's analysis of women's oppression in The Second Sex suffers from serious weaknesses, as I have shown in Section 2 above. A better way to approach the issue, I shall now argue, is to . . .".)

Where you are not primarily concerned with evaluating or responding to a particular text, your critical discussion can be more focused on your own constructive response to the issue. (eg "Having used Dworkin's account to clarify the meanings of the concepts of 'the sanctity of life' and 'voluntariness', I shall now argue that voluntary euthanasia is morally permissible because its voluntariness respects what is of value in the notion of the sanctity of life" - where you now leave Dworkin behind as a source and move on to give your own account.)

* See Norman Malcolm, "Dreaming and Skepticism", in Willis Doney, ed., Descartes: A Collection of Critical Essays (London: Macmillan, 1967), p. 56.

Guide to researching and writing Philosophy essays

5th edition by Steven Tudor , for the Philosophy program, University of Melbourne, 2003.

This fifth edition of How to Write a Philosophy Essay: A Guide for Students (previous editions titled A Guide to Researching and Writing Philosophy Essays ) was prepared in consultation with members of the Philosophy program, the University of Melbourne. For advice and assistance on this and earlier editions, thanks are due to Graham Priest, Barry Taylor, Christopher Cordner, Doug Adeney, Josie Winther, Linda Burns, Marion Tapper, Kimon Lycos, Brendan Long, Jeremy Moss, Tony Coady, Will Barrett, Brian Scarlett, and Megan Laverty. Some use was also made of materials prepared by the Philosophy Departments of La Trobe University, the University of Queensland, and The Australian National University.

Disclaimer: University, Faculty and program rules

Please note: this booklet does not provide authoritative statements of the official policies or rules of the University of Melbourne, the Faculty of Arts, or the Philosophy program with regard to student essays and examinations or any other matters. Students should, therefore, not rely on this booklet for such information, for which they should consult the various appropriate notice boards, handbooks, websites, and/or members of staff.

Essay topics

What do philosophy essay topics look like? There are, very roughly, two basic kinds of philosophy essay topics: "text-focused" topics and "problem-focused" topics. Text-focused topics ask you to consider some particular philosopher's writing on some issue. (eg "Discuss critically David Hume's account of causation in Part III of Book I of his A Treatise of Human Nature " or "Was Wittgenstein right to say that 'the meaning of a word is its use in the language', in his Philosophical Investigations, Sec. 43?"). Problem-focused topics are more directly about a particular philosophical problem or issue, without reference to any particular philosopher's text. (eg "Is voluntary euthanasia morally permissible?" or "What is scientific method?")

There is another sort of topic, one which presents a statement and asks you to discuss it, where that statement is a "made up" or, at least, unattributed quote. (eg. "'Without belief in God, people cannot be moral'. Discuss.") I shall regard these as variations of the problem-focused type of topic. Where you are asked to discuss some such statement "with reference to" some specified text or philosopher, then that topic becomes more text-focused. (eg "'Without belief in God, people cannot be moral'. Discuss with reference to J.L. Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. ") Occasionally, a topic presents an unattributed statement, but the statement is, in fact, a quote from a particular philosopher you've been studying, or, at least, a good paraphrase of their thinking. (An example of the latter: "'All the ideas in our minds originate from either sense perception or our reflection upon sensory information.' Discuss.", in a course devoted to John Locke, whose views are summed up in the quoted statement, though those words are not actually his.) Should you take such topics as problem- or text-focused? Rather unhelpfully, I'll say only that it depends on the case. You might ask your lecturer or tutor about it. Whichever way you do take it, be clear in your essay which way you are taking it.

The difference between text-focused and problem-focused essay topics is, however, not very radical. This is because, on the one hand, any particular philosopher's text is about some philosophical problem or question, while, on the other hand, most philosophical problems (certainly virtually all those you will be given as essay topics at university) will have been written about by previous philosophers.

The basic way to approach text-focused topics, then, is to treat the nominated text as an attempt by one philosopher to deal with a particular philosophical problem or issue. The essay topic will, generally speaking, be inviting you to do philosophy with that philosopher, to engage with them in thinking about the issue, whether that engagement proves to be as an ally or an adversary. The chosen text will usually be one which has been (or deserves to be) influential or significant in the history of philosophy, but the task is not to pay homage to past masters. But, even if homage is your thing, the best way to do that here is to engage with the master philosophically.

With regard to problem-focused topics, you will often find your exploration of the problem aided by taking some text or texts which have dealt with it as reference points or prompts. This is not always strictly necessary, but many of you starting out in philosophy will find it helpful to do so - it can help you give focus to your response to the question. (Thus, you might, in an essay on the topic "Is voluntary euthanasia morally permissible?" take it upon yourself to use, for example, Ronald Dworkin's Life's Dominion and Peter Singer's Practical Ethics as reference points. Or, in an essay on the topic "What is scientific method?", you might set up your answer via a comparison of the two different accounts in Karl Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery and Paul Feyerabend's Against Method.*) How will you know which texts to adopt as reference points or prompts, if none is mentioned in the essay topic itself? One way is to consider what texts have already been mentioned with regard to the topic in your course reading guide and in lectures and tutorials. Another way is to do some of your own research. On this see Section 4 below.

* In this guide, in giving examples of how to go about answering an essay question, I am not necessarily giving any concrete or reliable advice for any particular topic. The examples are primarily to do with the form or style or strategy you might find helpful.

Researching your essay

To do research for your philosophy essay you need to do only two things: read and think. Actually, for problem-focused essays, thinking is the only truly necessary bit, but it's highly likely that you will find your thinking much assisted if you do some reading as well. Philosophical research at university is a little different to research in most other disciplines (especially the natural sciences), in that it is not really about "collecting data" to support or refute explanatory theories. Rather, the thinking that's involved in philosophical research (as part of one's preparation for philosophical writing) is more a matter of reflecting critically upon the problems in front of one. Researching the writings of other philosophers should, therefore, be primarily directed towards helping you with that reflection rather than aiming at gathering together and reporting on "the relevant findings" on a particular topic. In many other disciplines, a "literature review" is an important research skill, and sometimes philosophy academics do such reviews - but it is rare that philosophy students are asked to do one.

What, then, to read? It should be clear from your lectures and tutorials what some starting points for your reading might be. (All courses provide reading guides; many also have booklets of reading material.) Your tutor and lecturer are also available for consultation on what readings you might begin with for any particular topic in that subject. Independent research can also uncover useful sources, and evidence of this in your essay can be a pleasing sign of intellectual independence. Make sure, though, that what you come up with is relevant to the topic. (See Section 5.2 below on relevance.) Whichever way you proceed, your reading should be purposive and selective.

In the case of essay questions that refer to a particular text, you should familiarise yourself thoroughly with this text. Usually, such a text will be a primary text, i.e. one in which a philosopher writes directly about a philosophical issue. Texts on or about a primary text are called secondary texts. (Many philosophical works will combine these two tasks, and discuss other philosophical texts while also dealing directly with a philosophical issue.) Some secondary texts can be helpful to students. However, don't think you will only ever understand a primary text if you have a nice friendly secondary text to take you by the hand through the primary text. More often than not, you need to have a good grasp of the primary text in order to make sense of the secondary text.

How much to read? The amount of reading you do should be that which maximises the quality of your thinking - that is, you should not swamp yourself with vast slabs of text that you can't digest, but nor should you starve your mind of ideas to chew over. There is, of course, no simple rule for determining this optimal amount. Be wary, though, of falling into the vice of looking for excuses not to read some philosopher or text, as in "Oh, that's boring old religious stuff" or "She's one of those obscure literary feminist types", or "In X Department they laugh at you if you mention those authors in tutes". If someone wants a reason not to think, they'll soon come up with one.

Philosophical writings

Most philosophical writings come in either of two forms: books or articles. Articles appear either in books that are edited anthologies or in academic journals, such as Philosophical Quarterly or Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Some academic journals are also on the internet. Most articles in the journals are written by professional philosophers for professional philosophers; similarly with many books. But by no means let this put you off. Everyone begins philosophy at the deep end - it's really the only kind there is!

There are, however, many books written for student audiences. Some of these are general introductions to philosophy as a whole; others are introductions to particular areas or issues (eg biomedical ethics or philosophy of science). Among the general introductions are various philosophical dictionaries, encyclopedias and "companions". These reference works collect short articles on a wide range of topics and can be very useful starting points for newcomers to a topic. Among the most useful of the general reference works are:

• Edward Craig, ed., The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (10 vols.) (London: Routledge, 1998)
• Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (8 vols.) (New York: Macmillan, 1967)
• Robert Audi, ed., The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
• Ted Honderich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)
• Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)
• Thomas Mautner, ed., The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy (London: Penguin, 1998)
• J.O. Urmson and Jonathan Ree, eds., The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers (London: Routledge, 1993)
• Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (an internet-based reference work: plato.stanford.edu/ )

Note taking

Note taking, like your reading, should not be random, but ought to be guided by the topic in question and by your particular lines of response to the issues involved. Note taking for philosophy is very much an individual art, which you develop as you progress. By and large it is not of much use to copy out reams of text as part of your researches. Nor is it generally helpful to read a great number of pages without making any note of what they contain for future reference. But between these two extremes it is up to you to find the mean that best helps you in getting your thoughts together.

Libraries and electronic resources

The University's Baillieu Library (including the Institute of Education Resource Centre), which is open to all members of the University, contains more than 2,500 years' worth of philosophical writings. The best way to become acquainted with them is by using them, including using the catalogues (including the Baillieu's on-line catalogues and subject resources web-pages), following up a work's references (and references in the references), intelligent browsing of the shelves, etc.

In the main Baillieu Library, the philosophical books are located (mostly) between 100–199 in the Dewey decimal system, and philosophical journals are located in the basement. The Reference section on the ground floor also has some relevant works. The Education Resource Centre also has a good philosophy collection.

In addition to hard-copy philosophical writings, there is also a variety of electronic resources in philosophy, mostly internet-based. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy was already mentioned above. Links to other useful internet sites (such as the Australasian Association of Philosophy website) can be found through the Baillieu Library's web-page and the Philosophy Department's web-page.

A strong word of warning, however, for the would-be philosophical web-surfer: because anyone can put material on a website, all kinds of stuff, of varying levels of quality, is out there - and new-comers to philosophy are usually not well placed to sort their way through it. Unless you have a very good understanding of what you're looking for - and what you're not looking for - most of you will be much better off simply carefully reading and thinking about a central text for your course, eg Descartes' First Meditation, rather than wandering about the internet clicking on all the hits for "Descartes". Exercise your mind, not your index finger.

Writing your essay

Planning and structuring your essay.

It is very important that you plan your essay, so that you have an idea of what you are going to write before you start to write it. Of course, you will most likely alter things in later drafts, but you should still start off by having a plan. Planning your essay includes laying out a structure. It is very important that your essay has a clearly discernible structure, ie that it is composed of parts and that these parts are logically connected. This helps both you and your reader to be clear about how your discussion develops, stage by stage, as you work through the issues at hand.

Poor essay structure is one of the most common weaknesses in student philosophy essays. Taking the time to work on the structure of your essay is time well spent, especially since skill in structuring your thoughts for presentation to others should be among the more enduring things you learn at university. A common trap that students fall into is to start their essay by writing the first sentence, then writing another one that seems to follow that one, then another one that sort of fits after that one, then another that might or might not have some connection with the previous one, and so on until the requisite 1,500 words are used up. The result is usually a weak, rambling essay.

There are, of course, no hard and fast rules about how to structure a philosophy essay. Again, it is a skill you develop through practice, and much will depend on the particular topic at hand. Nonetheless, it might be helpful to begin by developing an essay structure around the basic distinction between your exposition and your critical discussion (as discussed above). In this it will be important that you make clear who is putting forward which point, that is, make it clear whether you are presenting your own thoughts or are expounding someone else's. (Again, confusion in this regard is a common problem in student essays.) It can often help your structuring if you provide headings for different sections (possibly numbered or lettered). Again, this helps both your reader to follow your discussion and you to develop your thoughts. At each stage, show clearly the logical relations between and the reasons for your points, so that your reader can see clearly why you say what you say and can see clearly the development in your discussion.

Another key to structuring your essay can be found in the old adage "Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em. Tell 'em. Then tell 'em what you've told 'em", which provides you with a ready-made structure: Introduction, Main Body, and Conclusion.

In your Introduction, first introduce the issues the essay is concerned with. In doing so, try to state briefly just what the problem is and (if there is space) why it is a problem. This also applies, of course, to issues covered in text-focused essay topics. Next, tell the reader what it is that you are going to do about those problems in the Main Body. This is usually done by giving a brief sketch or overview of the main points you will present, a "pre-capitulation", so to speak, of your essay's structure. This is one way of showing your reader that you have a grasp (indeed, it helps you get a grasp) of your essay as a structured and integrated whole, and gives them some idea of what to expect by giving them an idea of how you have decided to answer the question. Of course, for reasons of space, your Introduction might not be very long, but something along these lines is likely to be useful.

In your Main Body, do what you've said you'll do. Here is where you should present your exposition(s) and your critical discussion(s). Thus, it is here that the main philosophical substance of your essay is to be found. Of course, what that substance is and how you will present it will depend on the particular topic before you. But, whatever the topic, make clear at each stage just what it is you are doing. You can be quite explicit about this. (eg "I shall now present Descartes' ontological argument for the existence of God, as it is presented in his Fifth Meditation. There will be three stages to this presentation.") Don't think that such explicitness must be a sign of an unsophisticated thinker.

A distinct Conclusion is perhaps not always necessary, if your Main Body has clearly "played out" your argument. So you don't always have to present a grand summation or definitive judgement at the end. Still, often for your own sake, try to state to yourself what it is your essay has achieved and see if it would be appropriate to say so explicitly. Don't feel that you must come up with earth-shattering conclusions. Of course, utter banality or triviality are not good goals, either. Also, your essay doesn't always have to conclude with a "solution" to a problem. Sometimes, simply clarifying an issue or problem is a worthy achievement and can merit first-class honours. A good conclusion to a philosophy essay, then, will usually combine a realistic assessment of the ambit and cogency of its claims with a plausible proposal that those claims have some philosophical substance.

What you write in your essay should always be relevant to the question posed. This is another common problem in student essays, so continually ask yourself "Am I addressing the question here?" First-class answers to a question can vary greatly, but you must make sure that your essay responds to the question asked, even if you go on to argue that the question as posed is itself problematic. (eg "To ask ‘What is scientific method?' presupposes that science follows one basic method. However, I shall argue that there are, in fact, several different scientific methods and that these are neither unified nor consistent.") Be wary, however, of twisting a topic too far out of shape in order to fit your favoured theme. (You would be ill-advised, for example, to proceed thus: "What is scientific method? This is a question asked by many great minds. But what is a mind? In this essay, I shall discuss the views of Thomas Aquinas on the nature of mind.")

This requirement of relevance is not intended as an authoritarian constraint on your intellectual freedom. It is part of the skill of paying sustained and focused attention to something put before you - which is one of the most important skills you can develop at university. If you do have other philosophical interests that you want to pursue (such as Aquinas on mind), then please do pursue them, in addition to writing your essay on the set topic. At no stage does the requirement of relevance prevent you from pursuing your other interests.

Citing Philosophical "Authorities"

There might be occasions when you want to quote other philosophers and writers apart from when you are quoting them because they are the subject of your essay. There are two basic reasons why you might want to do this. First, you might quote someone because their words constitute a good or exemplary expression or articulation of an idea you are dealing with, whether as its proponent, critic, or simply its chronicler. (eg "As Nietzsche succinctly put the point, 'There are no moral phenomena at all, only a moral interpretation of phenomena'.*") You may or may not want to endorse the idea whose good expression you have quoted, but simply want to use the philosopher as a spokesperson for or example of that view. But be clear about what you think the quote means and be careful about what you are doing with the quote. It won't do all the work for you.

The second reason you might want to quote a philosopher is because you think their words constitute an "authoritative statement" of a view. Here you want to use the fact that, eg Bertrand Russell maintained that there are two kinds of knowledge of things (namely, knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description) in support of your claim that there are two such kinds of knowledge of things. However, be very careful in doing this, for the nature of philosophical authority is not so simple here. That is to say, what really matters is not that Bertrand Russell the man held that view; what matters are his reasons for holding that view. So, when quoting philosophers for this second reason, be careful that you appreciate in what exactly the authority lies - which means that you should show that you appreciate why Russell maintained that thesis. Of course, you can't provide long arguments for every claim you make or want to make use of; every essay will have its enabling but unargued assumptions. But at least be clear about these. (eg "For the purposes of this essay, I shall adopt Russell's thesis* that ...").

* Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973 [first German ed.1886]), Sec. 108.

* See Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967 [first pub. 1912]), Ch. 5.

Philosophy is by its nature a relatively abstract and generalising business. (Note that abstractness and generality are not the same thing. Nor do vagueness and obscurity automatically attend them.) Sometimes a longish series of general ideas and abstract reasonings can become difficult for the reader (and often the writer) to follow. It can often help, therefore, to use some concrete or specific examples in your discussion. (Note that there can be different levels of concreteness and specificity in examples.)

Examples can be taken from history, current events, literature, and so on, or can be entirely your own invention. Exactly what examples you employ and just how and why you use them will, of course, depend on the case. Some uses might be: illustration of a position, problem or idea to help make it clearer; evidence for, perhaps even proof of, a proposition; a counter-example; a case-study to be returned to at various points during the essay; or a problem for a theory or viewpoint to be applied to. Again, be clear about what the example is and how and why you use it. Be careful not to get distracted by, or bogged down in, your examples. Brevity is usually best.

English expression

There's another old saying: "If you can't say what you mean, then you can't mean what you say" - and this very much applies to philosophical writing. Thus, in writing philosophically, you must write clearly and precisely. This means that good philosophical writing requires a good grasp of the language in which it is written, including its grammar and vocabulary. (See Section 9.3 for advice for people from non-English speaking backgrounds.) A high standard of writing skills is to be expected of Arts graduates. Indeed, this sort of skill will last longer than your memory of, for example, the three parts of the Platonic soul (though it is also hoped that some of the content of what you study will also stick). So use your time at university (in all your subjects) to develop these skills further.

Having a mastery of a good range of terms, being sensitive to the subtleties of their meaning, and being able to construct grammatically correct and properly punctuated sentences are essential to the clear articulation and development of your thoughts. Think of grammar, not as some old-fashioned set of rules of linguistic etiquette, but rather as the "internal logic" of a sentence, that is, as the relationships between the words within a sentence which enable them to combine to make sense.

Virtually all sentences in philosophical writing are declarative (ie. make statements), as opposed to interrogative, imperative or exclamatory types of sentences. There is some place, though, for interrogative sentences, ie. questions. (Note that, in contrast, this guide, which is not in the essay genre, contains many imperative sentences, ie. commands.) As you craft each (declarative) sentence in your essay, remember the basics of sentence construction. Make clear what the sentence is about (its subject) and what you are saying about it (the predicate). Make clear what the principal verb is in the predicate, since it is what usually does the main work in saying something about the subject. Where a sentence consists of more than one clause (as many do in philosophical writing), make clear what work each clause is doing. Attend closely, then, to each and every sentence you write so that its sense is clear and is the sense you intend it to have. Think carefully about what it is you want each particular sentence to do (in relation to both those sentences immediately surrounding it and the essay as a whole) and structure your sentence so that it does what you want it to do. To help you with your own sentence construction skills, when reading others' philosophical works (or indeed any writing) attend closely to the construction of each sentence so as to be alive to all the subtleties of the text.

Good punctuation is an essential part of sentence construction. Its role is to help to display the grammar of a sentence so that its meaning is clear. As an example of how punctuation can fundamentally change the grammar and, hence, meaning of a sentence, compare (i) "Philosophers, who argue for the identity of mind and brain, often fail to appreciate the radical consequences of that thesis." and (ii) "Philosophers who argue for the identity of mind and brain often fail to appreciate the radical consequences of that thesis." In the first sentence it is asserted (falsely, as it happens) that all philosophers argue for the identity of mind and brain; in the second, only some philosophers are said to argue for the identity of mind and brain. Only the punctuation differs in the two strings of identical words, and yet the meanings of the sentences are very different. Confusions over this sort of thing are common weaknesses in student essays, and leave readers asking themselves "What exactly is this student trying to say?"

It will be assumed that you can spell - which is not a matter of pressing the "spell-check" key on a word-processor. A good dictionary and a good thesaurus should always be within reach as you write your essay.

Also, try to shorten and simplify sentences where you can do so without sacrificing the subtlety and inherent complexity of the discussion. Where a sentence is becoming too long or complex, it is likely that too many ideas are being bundled up together too closely. Stop and separate your ideas out. If an idea is a good or important one, it will usually deserve its own sentence.

Your "intra-sentential logic" should work very closely with the "inter-sentential logic" of your essay, ie. with the logical relations between your sentences. (This "inter-sentential logic" is what "logic" is usually taken to refer to.) For example, to enable sentences P and Q to work together to yield sentence R as a conclusion, you need to make clear that there are elements within P and Q which connect up to yield R. Consider the following example: "Infanticide is the intentional killing of a human being. However, murder is regarded by all cultures as morally abhorrent. Therefore, people who commit infanticide should be punished." This doesn't work as an argument, because the writer has not constructed sentences which provide the connecting concepts in the various subjects and predicates, even though each sentence is grammatically correct (and possibly even true).

If you are concerned to write not only clearly and precisely, but also with some degree of grace and style (and I hope you are), it's still best to get the clarity and precision right first, in a plain, straightforward way, and then to polish things up afterwards to get the style and grace you want. But don't sacrifice clarity and precision for the sake of style and grace - be prepared to sacrifice that beautiful turn of phrase if its presence is going to send your discussion down an awkward path of reasoning. Aim to hit the nail on the head rather than make a loud bang. What you are likely to find, however, is that a philosophy essay which really is clear and precise will have a large measure of grace and style in its very clarity and precision.

Remember that obscurity is not a sign of profundity. (Some profound thought may well be difficult to follow, but that doesn't mean that one can achieve profundity merely through producing obscure, difficult-to-read writing.) Your marker is interested in what's actually in your essay, not what's possibly inside your head (or indeed what's possibly in some book you happen to have referred to in your essay). So avoid hinting at or alluding suggestively to ideas, especially where they are meant to do some important work in your essay. Instead, lay them out explicitly and directly. Of course, you won't have space to spell out every single idea, so work out which ideas do the most important work and make sure that you at least get those ideas clearly articulated. In expounding a text or problem that ultimately just is vague, muddled, or obscure, try to convey such vagueness, muddle or obscurity clearly, rather than simply reproducing it in your own writing. That is, be clear that and how a text or problem has such features, and then perhaps do your best to make matters clearer.

Despite these stern pronouncements, don't be afraid of sometimes saying things which happen to sound a little odd, if you have tried various formulations and think you have now expressed your ideas just as they should be expressed. Philosophy is often an exploratory business, and new ways of seeing and saying things can sometimes be a part of that exploration.

The need for clarity and precision in philosophical writing sometimes means that you need to stipulate your own meaning for a term. When you want to use a particular word in a particular way for the purposes of your essay - as a "technical term" - be clear about it. (eg "In this essay, I shall intend ‘egoism' to mean ...") Also, be consistent in your technical meanings, or else note when you are not. Be wary, though, of inventing too many neologisms or being too idiosyncratic in your stipulations.

With regard to what "authorial pronoun" to adopt in a philosophy essay, it's standard to write plainly in the first person singular ("I", "me", "my", etc.) rather than use the royal "we" (as in "we shall argue that ..."), or the convoluted quasi-legal indirect form ("It is submitted that ..."), or the scientific objectivity of a physics experimental report. Nonetheless, stick closer to "I argue", "I suggest", "my definition", etc., than to "I wish", "I hate", "my feeling", etc. A philosophy essay is still something more intellectual and formal than a personal reminiscence, polemic, or proclamation. In terms of audience, it's probably best to think of your reader as someone who is intelligent, open to discussion and knows a little about the topic you're writing on, but perhaps is not quite clear or decided about the issues, or needs convincing of the view you want to put forward, or is curious about what you think about the issues.

Try also to use non-discriminatory language, ie. language which does not express or imply inequality of worth between people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and so on. As you write, you will be considering carefully your choice of words to express your thoughts. You will almost always find that it is possible to avoid discriminatory language by rephrasing your sentences.

Other things to avoid:

• waffle and padding
• vagueness and ambiguity
• abbreviations (this guide I'm writing isn't an eg. of what's req'd. in a phil. essay)
• colloquialisms (which can really get up your reader's nose)
• writing whose syntax merely reflects the patterns of informal speech
• unnecessary abstractness or indirectness
• unexplained jargon
• flattery and invective
• overly-rhetorical questions (do you really need me to tell you what they are?) and other flourishes

There are many guides to good writing available. Anyone who writes (whether in the humanities or the sciences, whether beginners or experienced professionals) will do well to have some on hand. Most good bookshops and libraries will have some. Among the most consulted works are (check for the latest editions):

• J. M. Williams and G. C. Colomb, Style: Toward Clarity and Grace (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995)
• W. Strunk and E. B. White, The Elements of Style, 4th ed. (New York: Longman, 2000)
• E. Gowers, The Complete Plain Words, 3rd ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987)
• R. W. Burchfield, ed., The New Fowler's Modern English Usage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)
• Pam Peters, The Cambridge Australian English Style Guide (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
• Australian Government Publishing Service, Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers, 5th ed. (Canberra: AGPS, 1995)

Vocabulary of logical argument

Closely related to the above points about English expression is the importance of having a good grasp of what can rather generally be called "the vocabulary of logical argument". These sorts of terms are crucial in articulating clearly and cogently a logical line of argument. Such argumentation will, of course, be of central importance in whatever discipline you are studying, indeed in any sphere of life that requires effective thinking and communication. I have in mind terms such as these (grouped a little loosely):

all, any, every, most, some, none, a, an, the that, this, it, he, she, they if . . . , then. . . ; if and only if . . . , then . . . ; unless either . . . or . . .; neither . . . nor . . . not, is, are therefore, thus, hence, so, because, since, follows, entails, implies, infer, consequence, conditional upon moreover, furthermore which, that, whose and, but, however, despite, notwithstanding, nevertheless, even, though, still possibly, necessarily, can, must, may, might, ought, should true, false, probable, certain sound, unsound, valid, invalid, fallacious, supported, proved, contradicted, rebutted, refuted, negated logical, illogical, reasonable, unreasonable, rational, irrational assumption, premise, belief, claim, proposition argument, reason, reasoning, evidence, proof

Most of these are quite simple terms, but they are crucial in argumentative or discursive writing of all kinds. (Many are themselves the subject of study in logic, a branch of philosophy). The sloppy use of these sorts of terms is another common weakness in students' philosophy essays. Pay close and careful attention to how you employ them. Moreover, pay close and careful attention to how the authors you read use them. For further discussion of some of these terms and others, see:

• Basic Philosophical Vocabulary, prepared by the staff of the Philosophy Department and available from the programs Office
• Wesley C. Salmon, Logic, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1973)
• Antony Flew, Thinking About Thinking (London: Fontana, 1985)
• Graham Priest, Logic: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
• Joel Rudinow and Vincent E. Barry, Invitation to Critical Thinking, 4th ed. (Fort Worth, Texas: Harcourt Brace, 1999)

Revising your essay

It is virtually essential that you write a first draft of your essay and then work on that draft to work towards your finished essay. Indeed, several drafts may well be necessary in order to produce your best possible work. It is a rare philosopher indeed who can get things perfectly right on the first attempt, so be prepared to revise and re-develop what you write. Don't be too precious about what you have written, if it appears that it should be sacrificed in the revision process. There is usually a very marked difference between essays which are basically first draft rush-jobs done the night before they are due and those which have been revised and polished. Give yourself time to revise by starting writing early on. For most philosophy students, the greater part of the work in essay writing is in the writing, not in the preliminary researches and planning stages. So be wary of thinking "I've done all the research. I only need to write up my notes, which I can do the night before the essay's due". This is likely to lead to a weak, perhaps non-existent, essay (and very likely a sleepless night).

Stick to the word limit given for your essay. Why are word limits imposed? First, to give the markers a fair basis for comparing student essays. Second, to give you the opportunity to practise the discipline of working creatively under constraints. Skill in this discipline will stand you in very good stead in any sphere where circumstances impose limitations. Again, word limits are not constraints on your intellectual freedom. Outside your essay you are free to write without limit. But even there you'll probably find that your creativity is improved by working under a self-imposed discipline.

As a general rule, most student essays that fall well short of the word limit are weak or lazy attempts at the task, and most essays that go well over the limit are not much stronger or the result of much harder work - the extra length is often due to unstructured waffle or padding which the writer hasn't thought enough about so as to edit judiciously. If you structure your essay clearly, you'll find it easier to revise and edit, whether in order to contract or expand it. ("Hmm, let's see: section 2 is much longer than section 4, but is not as important, so I'll cut it down. And I should expand section 3, because that's a crucial step. And I can shift that third paragraph in the Introduction to the Conclusion.")

Plagiarism and originality

Plagiarism is essentially a form of academic dishonesty or cheating. At university level, such dishonesty is not tolerated and is dealt with severely, usually by awarding zero marks for a plagiarised essay or, in some cases, dismissing a student from the university.

When you submit your essay, you are implicitly stating that the essay is your own original and independent work, that you have not submitted the same work for assessment in another subject, and that where you have made use of other people's work, this is properly acknowledged. If you know that this is not in fact the case, you are being dishonest. (In a number of university departments, students are in fact required to sign declarations of academic honesty.)

Plagiarism is the knowing but unacknowledged use of work by someone else (including work by another student, and indeed oneself - see below) and which is being presented as one's own work. It can take a number of forms, including:

• copying : exactly reproducing another's words
• paraphrasing : expressing the meaning of another's words in different words
• summarising : reproducing the main points of another's argument
• cobbling : copying, paraphrasing or summarising the work of a number of different people and piecing them together to produce one body of text
• submitting one's own work when it has already been submitted for assessment in another subject
• collusion : presenting an essay as your own independent work when in fact it has been produced, in whole or part, in collusion with one or more other people

None of the practices of copying, paraphrasing, summarizing or cobbling is wrong in itself, but when one or more is done without proper acknowledgment it constitutes plagiarism. Therefore, all sources must be adequately and accurately acknowledged in footnotes or endnotes. (See Section 7.) Plagiarism from the internet in particular can be a temptation for a certain kind of student. However, be warned: there is a number of very good internet and software tools for identifying plagiarism.

With regard to collusion, it's undoubtedly often very helpful to discuss one's work with others, be it other students, family members, friends or teachers. Indeed, philosophy thrives on dialogue. However, don't kid yourself that you would simply be extending that process if you were to ask your interlocutor to join with you in the writing of your essay, whether by asking them to tell you what you should write or to write down some of their thoughts for you to reproduce in your essay. At the end of the day, you must be the one to decide what goes into your essay.

Originality

Students sometimes worry about whether they will be able to develop "original ideas", especially in light of the fact that nearly every philosophical idea one comes up with seems to have been thought of before by someone else. There is no denying that truly original work in philosophy is well rewarded, but your first aim should be to develop ideas that you think are good and not merely different. If, after arguing for what you believe is right, and arguing in way that you think is good, you then discover that someone else has had the same idea, don't throw your work away - you should feel vindicated to some extent that your thinking has been congruent with that of another (possibly great) philosopher. (If you have not yet handed your essay in when you make this discovery, make an appropriately placed note to that effect.) Don't be fooled, however, into thinking that plagiarism can be easily passed off as congruent thinking. Of course, if that other philosopher's ideas have helped you to develop your ideas, then this is not a matter of congruent ideas but rather of derivative ideas, and this must be adequately acknowledged. If, after developing your ideas, you discover that they are original, then that is an added bonus. But remember that it is more important to be a good philosopher than an original one.

Quotations, footnotes, endnotes and bibliography

Quotations in your essay should be kept to a minimum. The markers know the central texts pretty well already and so don't need to have pages thereof repeated in front of them. Of course, some quotation will usually be important and useful - sometimes essential - in both exposition and critical discussion.

When you quote the words of someone else directly, you must make the quotation clearly distinct from your own text, using quotation marks . (eg "Descartes said that 'it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once.'* He makes this claim …" - where the words quoted from Descartes are in 'single quotation marks'. Note that it is relatively arbitrary whether one uses 'single' or "double" quotation marks for "first order" quotations, but whichever style you adopt, use it consistently in the one essay.) Alternatively, where the quoted passage is greater than three lines, put the quoted words in a separate indented paragraph , so that your essay would look like this:

In his First Meditation , Descartes argues as follows:

Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired either from the senses or through the senses. But from time to time I have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once.* In this essay I shall argue that prudence does not in fact require us to distrust our senses and that Descartes's sceptical method is therefore seriously flawed.

In both cases, the quotations must be given proper referencingin a footnote or endnote.

When you are not quoting another person directly, but are still making use of their work - as in indirect quotations (eg "Descartes says that it is wise not to trust something that has deceived us before"*), paraphrases, summaries, and cobblings - you must still acknowledge your debts, using footnotes or endnotes.

* Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy , trans. John Cottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986 [first French ed., 1641]), p. 12.

Footnotes and endnotes

Footnotes appear at the foot of the same page on which the cited material appears, clearly separated from the main body of the text, each one clearly numbered. Endnotes appear at the end of the essay, again clearly separated from the main body of text, numbered and headed "Endnotes" or "Notes". Either method is acceptable, but you should choose one and stick with it throughout the one essay.

Below are some examples of how to put the relevant referencing information in footnotes and endnotes. This is not intended as an exercise in pedantry, but as a guide to how to provide the information needed for adequate referencing. The reason we provide this information is to enable our readers to find the sources we use in order to verify them and to allow them to pursue the material further if it interests them. In your own researches you will come to value good referencing in the texts you read as a helpful source of further references on a topic. Again, it is this sort of research skill that an Arts graduate will be expected to have mastered.

There are various conventions for writing up footnotes and endnotes. The Philosophy Department does not require that any particular convention be followed, only that you be consistent in your use of the convention that you do choose. For other conventions see the style guides mentioned above, or simply go to some texts published by reputable publishers and see what formats they employ.

Imagine, then, that the following are endnotes at the end of your essay. I will explain them below.

• James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy , 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993), p. 25.
• Philippa Foot, "Moral Relativism", in Michael Krausz and Jack W. Meiland, eds., Relativism: Cognitive and Moral (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), p. 155.
• Ibid., p. 160.
• Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton (New York: Harper and Row, 1964 [first German ed., 1785]), p. 63.
• Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, (London: Dent, 1973 [first pub. 1651]),p. 65.
• Rachels, The Elements, p. 51.
• Peter Winch, "The Universalizability of Moral Judgements", The Monist 49 (1965), p. 212.
• Antony Duff, "Legal Punishment", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2001 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2001/entries/legal-punishment/ at 15 June 2003, sec. 6.

Notes explained

• This is your first reference to a book called The Elements of Moral Philosophy. The title is given in full and in italics. If you are unable to use italics, then you should underline the title. The book's author is James Rachels. It's the 2nd edition of that book, which was published in New York, by the publishers McGraw-Hill, in 1993. The page you have referred to in your main text is page 25
• This is your first reference to Philippa Foot's article, "Moral Relativism", the title of which is put in "quotation marks". This article appeared in a book (title in italics) which is an anthology of different articles, and which was edited by Krausz and Meiland (names in full). The rest is in the same style as note (1)
• "Ibid." is short for "ibidem", which means "in the same place" in Latin. Use it on its own when you want to refer to exactly the same work and page number as in the immediately preceding note. So here the reference is again to Foot's article at page 155
• Ditto, except this time you refer to a different page in Foot's article, namely page 160
• This is reference to a book by Kant. Same book details as per note (1), except that, because this is a translation, you include the translator's name, and the date of the first edition in the original language
• This is a book reference again, so it's the same as note (1), except that, because it's an old book, you include the date of the original edition. (How old does a book have to be before it merits this treatment? There is no settled view. Note, though, that this convention is not usually followed for ancient authors)
• Here you are referring to Rachels' book again, but, because you are not in the very next note after a reference to it, you can't use "ibid.". Simply give the author's surname and a short title of the book, plus page reference. There is also a common alternative to this, whereby you give the surname, and write "op. cit." (which is short for "opere citato", which is Latin for "in the work already cited") and page reference (eg "Rachels, op. cit., p. 51.") Your reader then has to scan back over the notes to see what that "op." was exactly. The first option (author plus short title) is usually easier on the reader
• This is a reference to an article by Peter Winch in a journal called The Monist. The article's title is in "quotes", the journal title is in italics. The volume of the journal is 49, the year of publication is 1965, the page referred to is p. 212
• This is a reference to an article in the internet-based Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The article is titled "Legal Punishment" and was written by Antony Duff. The Encyclopedia was edited by Edward N. Zalta. Note that I have basically followed the mode of citation that the Encyclopedia itself recommends. (This is one sign of the site being a reputable one. Where a site makes such a recommendation, it's best to follow it.) I have, however, also added the date on which the article was retrieved from the site, and put the author's given name first, to be consistent with the other footnotes. I have also added the reference to section 6, in an effort to be more precise as to where in the article the material I used came from. Since web pages aren't numbered in the manner of hard copy works, it will help if you are able to refer to some other feature, such as paragraphs or sections, so as to pin-point your reference. In the absence of a site recommending a mode of citation to its own material, the basic information needed for adequate citation of internet-based material is (where identifiable) the author, the document title, the year the document was created, the website name, the uniform resource locator (URL) in <arrow-brackets>, date of retrieval, and a pin-point reference*

* I am here following the mode of citation of internet materials recommended in Melbourne University Law Review Association Inc, Australian Guide to Legal Citation , 2nd ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Law Review Association Inc, 2002), pp. 70-73. I have, though, added the desirability of a pin-point reference.

Bibliography

At the end of your essay (after your endnotes, if used) you should list in a bibliography all of the works referred to in your notes, as well as any other works you consulted in researching and writing your essay. The list should be in alphabetical order, going by authors' surnames. The format should be the same as for your notes, except that you drop the page references and should put surnames first. So the bibliography of our mock-essay above would look like this:

• Duff, Antony, "Legal Punishment", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2001 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2001/entries/legal-punishment/ at 15 June 2003
• Foot, Philippa, "Moral Relativism", in Michael Krausz and Jack Meiland, eds., Relativism: Cognitive and Moral (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982)
• Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan (London: Dent, 1973 [first pub.1651])
• Kant, Immanuel, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals , trans. H.J. Paton (New York: Harper and Row, 1964 [first German ed. 1785])
• Rachels, James, The Elements of Moral Philosophy , 2nd ed., (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993)
• Winch, Peter, "The Universalizability of Moral Judgements", The Monist 49 (1965)

Presentation of essays and seeking advice

Generally, you should present an essay that is legible (hand-writing is OK, but typed or word-processed essays are preferable), in English, on one side of pieces of paper that are somewhere in the vicinity of A4 size and are fixed together . You should attach a completed Cover Sheet provided by the Philosophy program. Plastic document covers, spiral binding and other forms of presentational paraphernalia are not necessary (nor are they usually even desirable, as they mostly just get in the marker's way).

Late essays

Late essays are penalised . (For details of penalties consult the Philosophy program's notice board.)

Essays not handed in

Essays not handed in at all get zero marks. An essay that is handed in but gets a mark below 50 (and so is technically a "failed" essay) still gets some marks. (At least, it will so long as it's not so extremely late that the deducted marks wipe out all the marks it would have received if handed in on time.) All marks received for your essay (whether pass or fail) go toward your final score in the subject. Therefore, even if you think your essay is bound to fail (but please let your marker be the judge of that), or the due date has already passed, or both, it is still in your interests to hand your essay in .

Tutors and lecturers

Philosophy staff are not there just to be listened to by you; they are also there to listen to you. So don't hesitate to contact your tutor or lecturer to discuss questions or problems you have concerning your work.

If you have a legitimate excuse, you may be granted an extension on the due date for your essay by the lecturer in charge. Similarly, special consideration may also be granted when illness or other circumstances adversely affect your work. Applications for special consideration are made online via the Special Consideration web page.

Student counselling

Some personal or non-philosophical academic difficulties you might have you might want to discuss with someone other than your tutor or lecturer. Student Counselling and Psychological Services are there for you to discuss all sorts of problems you might encounter. Please consult your student diary for details on the counselling service.

English language assistance

As noted above, good philosophical writing requires a good grasp of the language in which it is written. If you are from a non-English speaking background and are having difficulties with your English expression in an academic context, you might like to make use of the services provided by Student Services Academic Skills . Many native English speakers, too, can benefit from short "refresher" courses and workshops run by the Centre. Please consult your student diary for details about this service.

A bit on Philosophy exams

Essays of the sort discussed so far in this guide are not the only form of assessment in the Philosophy program - examinations are also set. What is to be said about them?

First, not much that is different from what's been said above about philosophy essays. This is because what you write in a philosophy exam is none other than a philosophy essay . Have a look at past philosophy exam papers, in the Gibson and Baillieu libraries, to get a feel for them. The only basic difference between essays and exams is the matter of what constraints you're working under. Essays have word limits; exams have time limits . Again, stick to them. (Actually, you'll be made to stick to them by the exam invigilators.)

It's best, then, to think about how long to spend writing on an exam essay topic, rather than about how many words to write on it. Simple arithmetic will tell you how much time to spend on each exam question. (eg if you have a 2-hour exam and have to answer 3 questions, each worth one-third of the exam mark, then spend 40 minutes on each question.) Avoid the trap of "borrowing time" from a later question in order to perfect your answer to an earlier question, and then working faster on the later questions to catch up on lost time - this is likely to get you in a tangle. There are no word limits in philosophy exam essays, but don't think that the more you scrawl across the page, the more marks you'll get. Nonetheless, use the time you've got so as to maximise your display of your philosophical understanding and skills in answering the question.

Planning and structuring remain very important in exam essays. With regard to the niceties of footnotes, endnotes and bibliographies, etc., these are not necessary, so don't waste time on these. However, if you quote or refer to a specific passage from a text, do indicate clearly that it is a quotation or reference. (The principle of being clear as to who is saying what remains central.) If you have the reference handy, just put it briefly in the text of your exam essay. (eg "As Descartes says in Meditation I (p. 12), . . ." or "'[I]t is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once' (Descartes, Meditation I, p. 12)".) Generally speaking, you will show your familiarity with any relevant texts by how you handle them in your discussion. This is also true for your non-exam essays.

Your preparation for the exam should have been done well before entering the exam hall. Note that various subjects have restrictions on what texts and other items can be brought into the exam hall. (Consult the Philosophy program's notice board for details.) Many subjects will have "closed book" exams. Even if an exam is "open book", if you are properly prepared, you should not need to spend much time at all consulting texts or notes during the exam itself.

You won't have time for redrafting and revising your exam essay (which makes planning and structuring your answers before you start writing all the more important). If you do want to delete something, just cross it out clearly. Don't waste time with liquid paper or erasers. Write legibly . Don't wr. "point form" sav. time. Diff. kn. mean. use incomp. sent.

Finally, read the instructions at the beginning of the exam paper. They are important. (eg it's not a good strategy to answer two questions from Part A, when the Instructions tell you to answer two questions, one from Part A and one from Part B.) Note the (somewhat quaint) University practice of starting Reading Time some time before the stated time for the exam. Philosophy exams usually have 15 minutes of reading time. (Check for each of your exams.) So, if your exam timetable says the exam is at 2.15 pm, with reading time of 15 minutes, then the reading time starts at 2.00 pm and the writing time starts at 2.15pm - so get to the exam hall well before 2.00 pm. Reading time is very important. Use it to decide which questions you'll answer and to start planning your answers.

Checklist of questions

• Do I understand the essay question ? Do I know when the essay is due ?
• Do I know which texts to consult? Do I know where to find them?
• Have I made useful notes from my reading of the relevant texts?
• Have I made a plan of how I'll approach the question in my essay?
• Have I given myself enough time to draft and redraft my essay?
• Have I written a clearly structured essay? Is it clear what each stageis doing? Do I do what I say I'll do in my Introduction?
• Have I clearly distinguished exposition and critical discussion ? Have I given a fair and accurate account of the author(s) in question?
• Is my response to the topic relevant ? Do I answer the question? Have I kept my essay within the general bounds of the topic?
• Have I displayed a good grasp of the vocabulary of logical argument ? Are my arguments logically valid and sound? Are my claims supported by reasons ? Am I consistent within my essay?
• Is my English expression clear and precise ? Are my grammar, punctuation and spelling correct? Have I said what I meant to say? Is my writing legible?
• Have I fully acknowledged all my sources in footnotes or endnotes? Are my quotations accurate? Have I included a bibliography ?
• Do I need to revise any part of my essay again?
• Have I made a copy or photocopy of my essay for myself?
• Have I kept the receipt for my handed-in essay?

Boredom Makes Us Human

I n a recent article in the Financial Times, Markham Heid shares with us a peculiar life crisis. At 41, he has built what many would regard as the good life: he has a family; he is healthy, productive, and creative; he has time to travel, read, exercise, and see friends. Yet, he feels that “something is off.” He gives this state a variety of names, including mid-life melancholy, ennui, and despair. He also diagnoses it in others all around him. To fight against it, some of his friends have turned to ayahuasca retreats, others to fitness. What renders Heid’s malaise somewhat strange is that it does not seem to arise from anything specific. If Heid had lost his job, had no time for himself, or was struggling in his marriage, some of these feelings would seem less puzzling. 

In the history of philosophy, there have been many attempts to understand such powerful but objectless feelings. Boredom , anxiety , and despair are some of the descriptions these moods have received. In the novel Nausea , the French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre describes someone who mysteriously experiences that feeling whenever they are confronted with ordinary objects, like a pebble on the beach. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger describes an uncanny unease we may feel when we are bored and searching desperately for distractions. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard speaks of a silent despair in the background of our lives, a sense of discord or dread of an unknown something that can grab us momentarily.

Sadly, the philosophical descriptions of such moods have often been misunderstood as sombre or romantic moments of existential reflection where we recognize our mortality or the meaninglessness of life. Pictured in this way, these moments are bound to stay isolated from the anxiety, despair, and melancholy that we face in our ordinary life and seek help for. But if we look beyond the existentialist clichés, the philosophical ideas on such moods can offer a new way forward. What could Heid have learnt from the philosophers?

Moods of nothing

Despite Heid’s references to Heidegger, we do not read anything about the philosopher’s own ruminations of a very similar experience of flatness: a feeling that all things (and we ourselves) sink into indifference; a sense that things around us slip away or we slip away from ourselves; a malaise related to a vacant stillness. What is remarkable, for Heidegger, is that such intense affects arise despite the fact that nothing may have changed in our lives: one is still surrounded by the same people, events, and activities, but these do not engage us as they used to. It is this feature that makes him describe what he calls “anxiety” as a mood generated by nothing in particular.

This makes such feelings doubly unwelcome. Most of us can tolerate negative emotions if we see them as instrumental to something desirable—we do not run to a therapist to treat a fear if we think that it holds us back from doing something obviously risky. But unlike fear, what Heidegger calls anxiety and what Heid’s article describes do not protect us from anything specific. No wonder why Sigmund Freud called anxiety a “ riddle .”

But this view is too simplistic for Heidegger. It risks concealing both the value and meaning of the feelings he describes. First, the human emotional life is much more complex than a simple battle between positive and negative feelings, or useful and useless emotions. Second, objectless moods can teach us something significant not about specific risks or problems in our lives but about the fact that we have a life to live at all. Learning from them can allow us to find what Heidegger describes as a sense of peace and joy within the malaise.

What’s missing?

Heid says that “some essential aspect of life is missing or not sufficiently represented.” He ends up attributing his melancholy to the lack of new experiences. Kierkegaard calls this the illusion of “crop rotation,” the idea that changing the soil frequently can save us from boredom and despair. 

But what really drives such moods is not the need for new experiences. It is not even the particulars of our individual lives or the culture we belong to, but that we have been given a life to live in the first place, the taste of possibility that comes with being alive. The kinds of questions that arise are not questions like “have I married the right person?” “will parenthood enrich my life?” or “do I have enough hobbies?” It is the more fundamental questions like “what does it mean to be human?” “what am I supposed to do with the fact that I was given a life?” and “what kind of life is possible for me?” that best explain our human tendency for anxiety, despair, or boredom .

This is why such moods are likely to appear as a mid-life crisis. With many of our life goals fulfilled, we start to wonder what life is for, what is possible for human existence, and what we are doing for it. Humans are inherently ambivalent toward possibility, attracted but also repelled by it. On one hand, we can experience it as a radical openness, an appreciation of our life as a gift. On the other, the open-endedness of possibility, the sense that one could always be doing more with their life, can create a great sense of agony about who we are and how we should go on. 

Throwing us out of our everyday lives, such moods make us ponder existence itself. They are cases where who we are and what we are for becomes an issue for each one of us. These questions never assume a final answer. Hovering over our lives, they can always leave us with a sense of unease. Recognizing that these questions are there, and that they matter, can at least allow us to know what may be missing, even when all is good.

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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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Question of the Month

What is a person, each answer below receives a book. apologies to the entrants not included..

One of the most fundamental questions of anthropology is that of personhood. We might also consider it the starting point for all philosophy. Indeed, it was Martin Heidegger who most forcefully underlined the connection between anthropology and ‘the apprehension of Being’, that is, metaphysics. For him, only the human person might hope to find meaning in the world around them. Hinging on this dilemma of how to define the person are all of the perennial issues of philosophy, of ethics, and of sociology.

To define it succinctly: a person is a being endowed with imagination . A person is able to think abstractly, to project themself into imaginary situations, to plan for the future, and to reflect on the past. In other words, a person acts in the present moment not bound by mere instinct, but usually able to transcend the limits of the animal mind. A person is also inherently social. In order to flourish, a person should exist in communion with other persons, and in sovereignty over its inanimate surroundings. Its faculty of imagination is constructed of accumulated experience, and thereby continually works in relation to the world and to other beings inhabiting it.

This definition covers many possibilities. It seems likely that our Homo erectus ancestors would qualify for personhood. It also seems plausible that future artificial intelligence could hit the mark. Perhaps certain animal species might exist on this spectrum, at the lower scale. But what happens when we pass through the spectrum of personhood onto something greater ? Why should consciousness end with personhood? Might there be other levels of consciousness superior to that which the person enjoys? Such a state would pass beyond both instinct and imagination to something more. Might this be what the Scholastic philosophers termed ‘Perfect Knowledge’? Such knowledge would go beyond instinct and imagination in the way we apprehend them, ignorant as we are. In a certain sense, then, personhood is constrained only by Plato’s cave of illusion, and by our bodily limitations. This might not be a bad thing. It is our cave after all, our world, and our social playground.

Anthony MacIsaac, Institut Catholique de Paris

The question of what a person is, isn’t exclusive to philosophy. Consequently, there are many answers. In a physiological and biological context, a person is a human with certain essential physiological and biological characteristics. Legally, the answer is broader. According to the law, a person is anyone or anything that can initiate and be subject to legal proceedings. By this conception, any adult, corporation, or institution is a person, but a minor is not a person, a foetus is not a person, and a humanoid robot like Hansen Robotics’ ‘Sophia’ is not a person. This highlights that legal personhood is dependent solely on legal recognition. In this sense a legal person is similar to a political person. A political person is anyone who has citizenship. The robot Sophia has been granted citizenship in Saudi Arabia, which demonstrates the contingency of political personhood. Moreover, there is no shortage of people who have had their citizenship stripped, whose political personhood is therefore non-existent.

In philosophy, morally, a being is a person if they’re a moral agent, making moral judgements and taking moral actions. Metaphysically, the set of criteria for personhood include rationality or logical reasoning, consciousness, self-consciousness, use of language, ability to initiate action, moral agency (again) and intelligence. Robot Sophia, a young child, and even an alien may meet sufficient criteria here. Even a foetus would potentially meet the criteria.

In practice, however, only legal and political personhood are of significance, and these are contingent on recognition by political or legal institutions. However, metaphysical and moral personhood provide an intellectual foundation upon which to discuss legal and political personhood. Therefore I suggest that a person in its full sense – both theoretically and practically – is a metaphysical and moral being with legal and political recognition . The latter is sufficient for practical personhood, the former for theoretical personhood, and both are necessary for full personhood.

Diogo Joao Baptista Gomes, Brachtenbach, Luxembourg

The answer is deceptively simple at face value. I am a person. You are a person. Every relative, friend, colleague, and acquaintance in your life is a person. Perhaps then you are tempted to say that a person is a human being. However, ‘human being’ evokes the human animal, whilst ‘person’ is something more esoteric, linked with one’s personality or intelligence, for example.

Boethius agreed. In his Theological Tractates he defined ‘person’ as ‘an individual substance of a rational nature’. Boethius used the etymology of the word to help him to form his definition. I find this interesting because ‘ persona ’ in Greek was a theatrical mask. So is personhood a mere façade? Are we all just animals masquerading as something more? And if we are all lowly beasts with overblown egos, is it possible that other species fit the criteria for personhood better than we do?

John Locke argued that a person is something that ‘can conceive itself as itself’. By that definition, it isn’t just human beings who qualify for personhood – great apes, elephants, and dolphins would qualify too. Philippa Brakes published an article titled ‘Are Orcas non-human persons?’ Orcas are self-aware, intelligent, and emotional beings. Their paralimbic (brain’s emotional) system is highly developed, even when compared to those of humans, and their insula cortex (which is linked to compassion, empathy, self-awareness, and sociability) is the most elaborate in the world.

No doubt some will reject this. Orcas can’t be people . They are infamously brutal killers: they’re even colloquially known as ‘killer whales’. A recent paper by John Totterdell described a coordinated, gruesome orca attack against a blue whale, in which the orcas stripped the creature of its blubber and fed off it whilst the whale was still alive. Surely this can’t be the behaviour of a person? Yet this response ignores the innumerable atrocities committed by human hands.

It scares us to think that other creatures could match, or perhaps exceed, our own intellectual and emotional understanding. But perhaps it is time to broaden our minds beyond the anthropocentric definition of personhood.

Rebecca McHugh, Ellesmere Port, Cheshire

In the first place, to be a person is to be human. Humans are animals, but they are animals who know . All animals can be said to ‘know’ in limited ways, largely defined by their bodies and their physical needs: they recognize what is good for them and they pursue it. This is not to say that we humans are not limited or defined by our physical bodies and needs: indeed we are! Every human person has a body, lives and grows in and as that body. But we can know in a way that extends far beyond the physical. We can abstract and define realities: we do not just see a rabbit and chase it; we know it as a rabbit. I can know myself as myself. We grow in self-knowledge and in knowledge of the world around us. Why ? and What ? are favourite questions. We become aware of the self-evident principles of life. I remember an occasion when I was looking after some small nieces and their even smaller brother. I bought them ice-creams; and because the boy was so small, I offered him half an ice-cream. But no! He was already aware that ‘whole’ is more – and more desireable – than half!

We are aware of and conscious of ‘myself’, but we are also know others as ‘not me’, and in our relationships with others our self-identity, our personality , develops. It is of course possible for the development of personality in a child to be, as it were, smothered by too much attention from already-formed personalities. Ideally, and normally, a child develops as a person as their knowledge of the world grows, relationships flourish, and choices are made and lived. For with knowledge we have free will, just because, unlike the rest of the animal world, our choice is not determined beforehand by the physical – by our bodies. Although the physical necessarily plays a large part in our development, nevertheless, the human, the person, is equipped freely to choose what he or she knows to be good.

Sr. M. Valery Walker OP, Stone, Staffordshire

Perhaps being a person requires some kind of psychological continuity involving memory and self-awareness. Yet, even if Uncle Rob has serious dementia we will continue to treat him as if he is a person. It is as though the term ‘person’ is not really descriptive , more evaluative . We continue to care for him and continue to feel compassion and love for him. Could not one therefore argue that a person is a being that is capable of being an object for care, compassion and love ?

It may be thought that this is irrational and sentimental. After all, we might care for our goldfish but be unconvinced that the goldfish is a person. We might love our teddy bear, which is clearly not a person. But the relationship we have to Uncle Rob is different to those we have to a goldfish or teddy bear. How we treat Uncle Rob is related to our wider vision of human life, including such fundamental factors as the powerful human intimacies that bind us to him, and the suffering and death that comes to all families. Curiously, in this marvellous yet horrendous nexus, Uncle Rob’s lack of cognitive capacity, far from disqualifying him from personhood, becomes one of the facts that reminds us that he is a person. While diminished cognitively, he yet remains an undiminished person . He remains fully the object of the kind of concern we can only direct at persons.

Such a view of persons partly explains our discomfort at regarding computers as persons, despite their cognitive capacities. Even a figure as complex as the Terminator does not strike us as fully a person. We feel that we are dealing rather with a cognitively sophisticated other . This also reflects the fact that the term person , because it is partly evaluative, does not pick out a metaphysical category, but expresses a relationship of concern we have for certain beings.

Robert Griffiths, Enton, Godalming

In a rush to bring order to the perceptual chaos that is our environment, the human brain tends to use rules of thumb, which, by their very nature, promote generalization based on information from prior experiences. In a way, the brain is constantly playing connect-the-dots by making predictions about how the dots are supposed to be connected. Personhood, in essence, is a cognitive construct – a mental picture of an individual drawn by connecting the dots, which are the perceptual features or physical characteristics of the individual. Unlike ‘human’ – a concept grounded in the biological reality of neurons, tissues, and bones – a ‘person’ exists purely within the mind, and thereby is influenced by cognitive schemas of one’s own or with whom one interacts.

This view implies that you can play host to multiple persons, where you are at least partially in control of the kind of person you are, constantly changing and modifying it in response to feedback from your surroundings. That, in turn, affects others’ perception of you, and elicits a similar feedback loop within them, which then changes your surroundings again. You connect the dots of your personhood in a particular way based on your beliefs, while others do it per their own beliefs. The resulting pictures are quite different. Making things even more chaotic, the constant back-and-forth between individuals and their surroundings means the dots keep moving while the lines are being drawn.

We can see evidence for this view of personhood in colloquialisms like ‘He became a completely different person’ or ‘You’re not the same person I fell in love with’. Interestingly, such sentiments are usually not observed when an individual changes their gender or radically alters their features through surgical means. That again suggests that a person is not a physical object but a mental concept, an effort by our brains to construct coherent narratives from the multiplicity of sensory experiences. An individual is a lot like a complex number. The equivalent of the real part is the physical, mechanical structure of a body, while anchored to it is a mental part that contributes to the behaviour and nature of the whole. That mental part is the person.

Rudradeep Guha, Vadodara, India

“Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin’, thought Alice;’but a grin without a cat! It is the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!” – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

The inner world of the human being is surprisingly similar to the grin of the Cheshire Cat: the ‘psyche’ (consciousness, perception, needs and motives) seem to be there, but the ‘owner’ is not visible. To see the owner behind the grin is to answer the question ‘What is a person?’

We are each ultimately unknowable to other people, but we also need other people to come to know ourselves. We are dependent on the perceptions of people outside ourselves. According to the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), another person can be revealed only in a dialogue, in the process of mutual understanding in which “the activity of the knower is combined with the activity of the discoverer.” A person then is the mutual co-existence of ‘I’ and the ‘other’ and as such cannot be an ‘object of study’: it can only become a subject in a dialogue, for whom the other is not ‘he’, ‘she’, or ‘I’, but a completely developed ‘you’. Therefore, the self is not an individual psychological phenomenon, but a decentred, dynamic and permeable social entity in which consciousness is not the property of the individual but a shared social phenomenon. Consciousness is always a product of responsive interactions, and cannot exist in isolation. Even hermits are still in dialogue, with their ecological surroundings, or with multiple inner voices.

Bakhtin noted that a person has no internal sovereign territory, but is wholly and always on the boundary; looking inside himself, he looks into the eyes of another with the eyes of another. So the ‘owner’ behind the grin is a being for another and through the other, for oneself.

Nella Leontieva, Sydney, N.S.W.

Person’ is an important word. Since a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on abortion, Americans have bitterly argued whether a baby in the womb is a person. If it is, it has moral and legal rights, such as the right to life, and thus it shouldn’t be killed. Note that I said ‘baby in the womb’ and ‘killed’. Those favoring unrestricted abortions would replace ‘baby’ with ‘fetus’, which is a mass of cells that can be aborted instead of ‘killed’. Words matter. However, whatever terms you use, the issue is the same: ‘Is the baby/fetus growing in the womb a person?’

Is the issue a metaphysical one or a moral one? One of being, or one of status in the moral order? At first it seems to be the former, but I believe it is the latter. The biology is comparatively straightforward; everyone can agree on the biological situation, but not whether it is a person. The real issue is, ‘What rights (moral and legal) shall we say that the baby/fetus has?’

It would be wonderful if we could definitely say what a person is so that all the world would agree. But we cannot. Attributes commonly describing a person are consciousness, self-awareness and personal identity, individuality, rationality, feelings (pain and pleasure, love and hatred, fear of death, etc), ability to choose (free will), set long term goals, and experience humor and beauty. I am inclined to think all of these attributes are necessary to the concept of personhood. Unfortunately, each of these attributes seems to allow gradation. Also, the marginal cases, such as newborn babies and comatose individuals on life support systems, lack one or more of the ‘required’ attributes. These considerations imply a scale of personhood. This is disturbing, for in the past such thinking has justified oppression and slavery. Most of us demand that a newborn baby and the comatose patient be considered persons, because we care for them as persons. Our pets have feelings and we have feelings for them, and so in some respects they deserve that we treat them as persons. And we do, but not fully so. As for aliens and robots, I think they can wait until we have a better grasp of the issue here and now.

John Talley, Rutherfordton, NC

Who am I? The crying child asked the father. When am I? The heart beseeched the absent lover. Why am I? Existence sighed under the sullen sky. Where am I? The mind questioned the tired body. What am I? The man whispered unto himself.

“You are stars stirred with consciousness” The mirror whispered to the man. “You dwell in purpose, promise, dream and future plan” The body told the broken mind. “You are nothing beyond the will to be” As the spinning heavens rained its light on me. “You bleed when nothing else matters” The lover nursed her broken heart. “For you are a window, a forest, a reason, a door, Life’s memory of what came before, Because you are a person” The father held the crying child. “Man unbeknownst to himself Being unreconciled Nothing less, my love, And nothing forevermore.”

Bianca Laleh, Totnes, Devon

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1.1 What Is Philosophy?

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Identify sages (early philosophers) across historical traditions.
• Explain the connection between ancient philosophy and the origin of the sciences.
• Describe philosophy as a discipline that makes coherent sense of a whole.
• Summarize the broad and diverse origins of philosophy.

It is difficult to define philosophy. In fact, to do so is itself a philosophical activity, since philosophers are attempting to gain the broadest and most fundamental conception of the world as it exists. The world includes nature, consciousness, morality, beauty, and social organizations. So the content available for philosophy is both broad and deep. Because of its very nature, philosophy considers a range of subjects, and philosophers cannot automatically rule anything out. Whereas other disciplines allow for basic assumptions, philosophers cannot be bound by such assumptions. This open-endedness makes philosophy a somewhat awkward and confusing subject for students. There are no easy answers to the questions of what philosophy studies or how one does philosophy. Nevertheless, in this chapter, we can make some progress on these questions by (1) looking at past examples of philosophers, (2) considering one compelling definition of philosophy, and (3) looking at the way academic philosophers today actually practice philosophy.

Historical Origins of Philosophy

One way to begin to understand philosophy is to look at its history. The historical origins of philosophical thinking and exploration vary around the globe. The word philosophy derives from ancient Greek, in which the philosopher is a lover or pursuer ( philia ) of wisdom ( sophia ). But the earliest Greek philosophers were not known as philosophers; they were simply known as sages . The sage tradition provides an early glimpse of philosophical thought in action. Sages are sometimes associated with mathematical and scientific discoveries and at other times with their political impact. What unites these figures is that they demonstrate a willingness to be skeptical of traditions, a curiosity about the natural world and our place in it, and a commitment to applying reason to understand nature, human nature, and society better. The overview of the sage tradition that follows will give you a taste of philosophy’s broad ambitions as well as its focus on complex relations between different areas of human knowledge. There are some examples of women who made contributions to philosophy and the sage tradition in Greece, India, and China, but these were patriarchal societies that did not provide many opportunities for women to participate in philosophical and political discussions.

The Sages of India, China, Africa, and Greece

In classical Indian philosophy and religion, sages play a central role in both religious mythology and in the practice of passing down teaching and instruction through generations. The Seven Sages, or Saptarishi (seven rishis in the Sanskrit language), play an important role in sanatana dharma , the eternal duties that have come to be identified with Hinduism but that predate the establishment of the religion. The Seven Sages are partially considered wise men and are said to be the authors of the ancient Indian texts known as the Vedas . But they are partly mythic figures as well, who are said to have descended from the gods and whose reincarnation marks the passing of each age of Manu (age of man or epoch of humanity). The rishis tended to live monastic lives, and together they are thought of as the spiritual and practical forerunners of Indian gurus or teachers, even up to today. They derive their wisdom, in part, from spiritual forces, but also from tapas , or the meditative, ascetic, and spiritual practices they perform to gain control over their bodies and minds. The stories of the rishis are part of the teachings that constitute spiritual and philosophical practice in contemporary Hinduism.

Figure 1.2 depicts a scene from the Matsya Purana, where Manu, the first man whose succession marks the prehistorical ages of Earth, sits with the Seven Sages in a boat to protect them from a mythic flood that is said to have submerged the world. The king of serpents guides the boat, which is said to have also contained seeds, plants, and animals saved by Manu from the flood.

Despite the fact that classical Indian culture is patriarchal, women figures play an important role in the earliest writings of the Vedic tradition (the classical Indian religious and philosophical tradition). These women figures are partly connected to the Indian conception of the fundamental forces of nature—energy, ability, strength, effort, and power—as feminine. This aspect of God was thought to be present at the creation of the world. The Rig Veda, the oldest Vedic writings, contains hymns that tell the story of Ghosha, a daughter of Rishi Kakshivan, who had a debilitating skin condition (probably leprosy) but devoted herself to spiritual practices to learn how to heal herself and eventually marry. Another woman, Maitreyi, is said to have married the Rishi Yajnavalkya (himself a god who was cast into mortality by a rival) for the purpose of continuing her spiritual training. She was a devoted ascetic and is said to have composed 10 of the hymns in the Rig Veda. Additionally, there is a famous dialogue between Maitreyi and Yajnavalkya in the Upanishads (another early, foundational collection of texts in the Vedic tradition) about attachment to material possessions, which cannot give a person happiness, and the achievement of ultimate bliss through knowledge of the Absolute (God).

Another woman sage named Gargi also participates in a celebrated dialogue with Yajnavalkya on natural philosophy and the fundamental elements and forces of the universe. Gargi is characterized as one of the most knowledgeable sages on the topic, though she ultimately concedes that Yajnavalkya has greater knowledge. In these brief episodes, these ancient Indian texts record instances of key women who attained a level of enlightenment and learning similar to their male counterparts. Unfortunately, this early equality between the sexes did not last. Over time Indian culture became more patriarchal, confining women to a dependent and subservient role. Perhaps the most dramatic and cruel example of the effects of Indian patriarchy was the ritual practice of sati , in which a widow would sometimes immolate herself, partly in recognition of the “fact” that following the death of her husband, her current life on Earth served no further purpose (Rout 2016). Neither a widow’s in-laws nor society recognized her value.

In similar fashion to the Indian tradition, the sage ( sheng ) tradition is important for Chinese philosophy . Confucius , one of the greatest Chinese writers, often refers to ancient sages, emphasizing their importance for their discovery of technical skills essential to human civilization, for their role as rulers and wise leaders, and for their wisdom. This emphasis is in alignment with the Confucian appeal to a well-ordered state under the guidance of a “ philosopher-king .” This point of view can be seen in early sage figures identified by one of the greatest classical authors in the Chinese tradition, as the “Nest Builder” and “Fire Maker” or, in another case, the “Flood Controller.” These names identify wise individuals with early technological discoveries. The Book of Changes , a classical Chinese text, identifies the Five (mythic) Emperors as sages, including Yao and Shun, who are said to have built canoes and oars, attached carts to oxen, built double gates for defense, and fashioned bows and arrows (Cheng 1983). Emperor Shun is also said to have ruled during the time of a great flood, when all of China was submerged. Yü is credited with having saved civilization by building canals and dams.

These figures are praised not only for their political wisdom and long rule, but also for their filial piety and devotion to work. For instance, Mencius, a Confucian philosopher, relates a story of Shun’s care for his blind father and wicked stepmother, while Yü is praised for his selfless devotion to work. In these ways, the Chinese philosophical traditions, such as Confucianism and Mohism, associate key values of their philosophical enterprises with the great sages of their history. Whether the sages were, in fact, actual people or, as many scholars have concluded, mythical forebearers, they possessed the essential human virtue of listening and responding to divine voices. This attribute can be inferred from the Chinese script for sheng , which bears the symbol of an ear as a prominent feature. So the sage is one who listens to insight from the heavens and then is capable of sharing that wisdom or acting upon it to the benefit of his society (Cheng 1983). This idea is similar to one found in the Indian tradition, where the most important texts, the Vedas, are known as shruti , or works that were heard through divine revelation and only later written down.

Although Confucianism is a venerable world philosophy, it is also highly patriarchal and resulted in the widespread subordination of women. The position of women in China began to change only after the Communist Revolution (1945–1952). While some accounts of Confucianism characterize men and women as emblematic of two opposing forces in the natural world, the Yin and Yang, this view of the sexes developed over time and was not consistently applied. Chinese women did see a measure of independence and freedom with the influence of Buddhism and Daoism, each of which had a more liberal view of the role of women (Adler 2006).

A detailed and important study of the sage tradition in Africa is provided by Henry Odera Oruka (1990), who makes the case that prominent folk sages in African tribal history developed complex philosophical ideas. Oruka interviewed tribal Africans identified by their communities as sages, and he recorded their sayings and ideas, confining himself to those sayings that demonstrated “a rational method of inquiry into the real nature of things” (Oruka 1990, 150). He recognized a tension in what made these sages philosophically interesting: they articulated the received wisdom of their tradition and culture while at the same time maintaining a critical distance from that culture, seeking a rational justification for the beliefs held by the culture.

Connections

The chapter on the early history of philosophy covers this topic in greater detail.

Among the ancient Greeks, it is common to identify seven sages. The best-known account is provided by Diogenes Laërtius, whose text Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is a canonical resource on early Greek philosophy. The first and most important sage is Thales of Miletus . Thales traveled to Egypt to study with the Egyptian priests, where he became one of the first Greeks to learn astronomy. He is known for bringing back to Greece knowledge of the calendar, dividing the year into 365 days, tracking the progress of the sun from solstice to solstice, and—somewhat dramatically—predicting a solar eclipse in 585 BCE. The eclipse occurred on the day of a battle between the Medes and Lydians. It is possible that Thales used knowledge of Babylonian astronomical records to guess the year and location of the eclipse. This mathematical and astronomical feat is one of Thales’s several claims to sagacity. In addition, he is said to have calculated the height of the pyramids using the basic geometry of similar triangles and measuring shadows at a certain time of day. He is also reported to have predicted a particularly good year for olives: he bought up all the olive presses and then made a fortune selling those presses to farmers wanting to turn their olives into oil. Together, these scientific and technical achievements suggest that at least part of Thales’s wisdom can be attributed to a very practical, scientific, and mathematical knowledge of the natural world. If that were all Thales was known for, he might be called the first scientist or engineer. But he also made more basic claims about the nature and composition of the universe; for instance, he claimed that all matter was fundamentally made of up water. He also argued that everything that moved on its own possessed a soul and that the soul itself was immortal. These claims demonstrate a concern about the fundamental nature of reality.

Another of the seven sages was Solon , a famed political leader. He introduced the “Law of Release” to Athens, which cancelled all personal debts and freed indentured servants, or “debt-slaves” who had been consigned to service based on a personal debt they were unable to repay. In addition, he established a constitutional government in Athens with a representative body, a procedure for taxation, and a series of economic reforms. He was widely admired as a political leader but voluntarily stepped down so that he would not become a tyrant. He was finally forced to flee Athens when he was unable to persuade the members of the Assembly (the ruling body) to resist the rising tyranny of one of his relatives, Pisistratus. When he arrived in exile, he was reportedly asked whom he considered to be happy, to which he replied, “One ought to count no man happy until he is dead.” Aristotle interpreted this statement to mean that happiness was not a momentary experience, but a quality reflective of someone’s entire life.

Beginnings of Natural Philosophy

The sage tradition is a largely prehistoric tradition that provides a narrative about how intellect, wisdom, piety, and virtue led to the innovations central to flourishing of ancient civilizations. Particularly in Greece, the sage tradition blends into a period of natural philosophy, where ancient scientists or philosophers try to explain nature using rational methods. Several of the early Greek schools of philosophy were centered on their respective views of nature. Followers of Thales, known as the Milesians , were particularly interested in the underlying causes of natural change. Why does water turn to ice? What happens when winter passes into spring? Why does it seem like the stars and planets orbit Earth in predictable patterns? From Aristotle we know that Thales thought there was a difference between material elements that participate in change and elements that contain their own source of motion. This early use of the term element did not have the same meaning as the scientific meaning of the word today in a field like chemistry. But Thales thought material elements bear some fundamental connection to water in that they have the capacity to move and alter their state. By contrast, other elements had their own internal source of motion, of which he cites the magnet and amber (which exhibits forces of static electricity when rubbed against other materials). He said that these elements have “soul.” This notion of soul, as a principle of internal motion, was influential across ancient and medieval natural philosophy. In fact, the English language words animal and animation are derived from the Latin word for soul ( anima ).

Similarly, early thinkers like Xenophanes began to formulate explanations for natural phenomena. For instance, he explained rainbows, the sun, the moon, and St. Elmo’s fire (luminous, electrical discharges) as apparitions of the clouds. This form of explanation, describing some apparent phenomenon as the result of an underlying mechanism, is paradigmatic of scientific explanation even today. Parmenides, the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, used logic to conclude that whatever fundamentally exists must be unchanging because if it ever did change, then at least some aspect of it would cease to exist. But that would imply that what exists could not exist—which seems to defy logic. Parmenides is not saying that there is no change, but that the changes we observe are a kind of illusion. Indeed, this point of view was highly influential, not only for Plato and Aristotle, but also for the early atomists, like Democritus , who held that all perceived qualities are merely human conventions. Underlying all these appearances, Democritus reasoned, are only atomic, unchanging bits of matter flowing through a void. While this ancient Greek view of atoms is quite different from the modern model of atoms, the very idea that every observable phenomenon has a basis in underlying pieces of matter in various configurations clearly connects modern science to the earliest Greek philosophers.

Along these lines, the Pythagoreans provide a very interesting example of a community of philosophers engaged in understanding the natural world and how best to live in it. You may be familiar with Pythagoras from his Pythagorean theorem, a key principle in geometry establishing a relationship between the sides of a right-angled triangle. Specifically, the square formed by the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the two squares formed by the remaining two sides. In the figure below, the area of the square formed by c is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares formed by a and b. The figure represents how Pythagoras would have conceptualized the theorem.

The Pythagoreans were excellent mathematicians, but they were more interested in how mathematics explained the natural world. In particular, Pythagoras recognized relationships between line segments and shapes, such as the Pythagorean theorem describes, but also between numbers and sounds, by virtue of harmonics and the intervals between notes. Similar regularities can be found in astronomy. As a result, Pythagoras reasoned that all of nature is generated according to mathematical regularities. This view led the Pythagoreans to believe that there was a unified, rational structure to the universe, that the planets and stars exhibit harmonic properties and may even produce music, that musical tones and harmonies could have healing powers, that the soul is immortal and continuously reincarnated, and that animals possess souls that ought to be respected and valued. As a result, the Pythagorean community was defined by serious scholarship as well as strict rules about diet, clothing, and behavior.

Additionally, in the early Pythagorean communities, it was possible for women to participate and contribute to philosophical thought and discovery. Pythagoras himself was said to have been inspired to study philosophy by the Delphic priestess Themistoclea. His wife Theano is credited with contributing to important discoveries in the realms of numbers and optics. She is said to have written a treatise, On Piety , which further applies Pythagorean philosophy to various aspects of practical life (Waithe 1987). Myia, the daughter of this illustrious couple, was also an active and productive part of the community. At least one of her letters has survived in which she discusses the application of Pythagorean philosophy to motherhood. The Pythagorean school is an example of how early philosophical and scientific thinking combines with religious, cultural, and ethical beliefs and practices to embrace many different aspects of life.

How It All Hangs Together

Closer to the present day, in 1962, Wilfrid Sellars , a highly influential 20th-century American philosopher, wrote a chapter called “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man” in Frontiers of Science and Philosophy . He opens the essay with a dramatic and concise description of philosophy: “The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term.” If we spend some time trying to understand what Sellars means by this definition, we will be in a better position to understand the academic discipline of philosophy. First, Sellars emphasizes that philosophy’s goal is to understand a very wide range of topics—in fact, the widest possible range. That is to say, philosophers are committed to understanding everything insofar as it can be understood. This is important because it means that, on principle, philosophers cannot rule out any topic of study. However, for a philosopher not every topic of study deserves equal attention. Some things, like conspiracy theories or paranoid delusions, are not worth studying because they are not real. It may be worth understanding why some people are prone to paranoid delusions or conspiratorial thinking, but the content of these ideas is not worth investigating. Other things may be factually true, such as the daily change in number of the grains of sand on a particular stretch of beach, but they are not worth studying because knowing that information will not teach us about how things hang together. So a philosopher chooses to study things that are informative and interesting—things that provide a better understanding of the world and our place in it.

To make judgments about which areas are interesting or worthy of study, philosophers need to cultivate a special skill. Sellars describes this philosophical skill as a kind of know-how (a practical, engaged type of knowledge, similar to riding a bike or learning to swim). Philosophical know-how, Sellars says, has to do with knowing your way around the world of concepts and being able to understand and think about how concepts connect, link up, support, and rely upon one another—in short, how things hang together. Knowing one’s way around the world of concepts also involves knowing where to look to find interesting discoveries and which places to avoid, much like a good fisherman knows where to cast his line. Sellars acknowledges that other academics and scientists know their way around the concepts in their field of study much like philosophers do. The difference is that these other inquirers confine themselves to a specific field of study or a particular subject matter, while philosophers want to understand the whole. Sellars thinks that this philosophical skill is most clearly demonstrated when we try to understand the connection between the natural world as we experience it directly (the “manifest image”) and the natural world as science explains it (the “scientific image”). He suggests that we gain an understanding of the nature of philosophy by trying to reconcile these two pictures of the world that most people understand independently.

Read Like a Philosopher

“philosophy and the scientific image of man”.

This essay, “ Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man ” by Wilfrid Sellars, has been republished several times and can be found online. Read through the essay with particular focus on the first section. Consider the following study questions:

• What is the difference between knowing how and knowing that? Are these concepts always distinct? What does it mean for philosophical knowledge to be a kind of know-how?
• What do you think Sellars means when he says that philosophers “have turned other special subject-matters to non-philosophers over the past 2500 years”?
• Sellars describes philosophy as “bringing a picture into focus,” but he is also careful to recognize challenges with this metaphor as it relates to the body of human knowledge. What are those challenges? Why is it difficult to imagine all of human knowledge as a picture or image?
• What is the scientific image of man in the world? What is the manifest image of man in the world? How are they different? And why are these two images the primary images that need to be brought into focus so that philosophy may have an eye on the whole?

Unlike other subjects that have clearly defined subject matter boundaries and relatively clear methods of exploration and analysis, philosophy intentionally lacks clear boundaries or methods. For instance, your biology textbook will tell you that biology is the “science of life.” The boundaries of biology are fairly clear: it is an experimental science that studies living things and the associated material necessary for life. Similarly, biology has relatively well-defined methods. Biologists, like other experimental scientists, broadly follow something called the “scientific method.” This is a bit of a misnomer, unfortunately, because there is no single method that all the experimental sciences follow. Nevertheless, biologists have a range of methods and practices, including observation, experimentation, and theory comparison and analysis, that are fairly well established and well known among practitioners. Philosophy doesn’t have such easy prescriptions—and for good reason. Philosophers are interested in gaining the broadest possible understanding of things, whether that be nature, what is possible, morals, aesthetics, political organizations, or any other field or concept.

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The Meaning of being Human

This philosophical essay will explore the question of what it means to be human. It will discuss various perspectives on human nature, including biological, psychological, sociological, and existential viewpoints. The piece will delve into themes such as consciousness, morality, creativity, and social connection. It will also consider how different cultures and disciplines define and understand the human experience. At PapersOwl too, you can discover numerous free essay illustrations related to Human.

How it works

In the article, “The Question We Must keep Asking,” the philosophical question that is being analyzed is, what does it mean to be human? This question is a very discussed topic amongst philosophers. It is hard to find one single answer to this question. To answer this philosophical question we must consider several factors that make up a human.

Humans are one of the relatively few species to get enough self-awareness to distinguish themselves when they see their reflection in a mirror.

Already at the age of 18 months, most humans babies are aware that the reflection they see in a mirror is their own. Then that ushers us to the question, how do humans act? Humans act with multiple senses, humans speak and see how to act differently with other people. We interact with child, an individual, a teacher, a family member very differently. Therefore we need to create systems that interact with other personas differently as per this environment.

Being a human requires a lot of more than just having human DNA. If what we understand by the word “human” is having the ability to express feelings, what we look like, how we interact with each other, our memories, then calling something a human just because it has human DNA would be wrong. There are a lot of factors that make up a human, such as: Self awareness, age, feelings, etc. When I think about what being a human being means, I think of the life experiences I have had, my memories, my relationship, my beliefs, my culture, my origins, etc.

There are numerous understandings about the sentence ‘What is being a human?’ People far and wide have distinctive answers and purpose of perspectives in regards to this inquiry. Albert Einstein, German brought into the world but American Physicist, trusted that person signifies “The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life. To make this a living force and bring it to clear consciousness is perhaps the foremost task of education. The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action. (Einstein) This emotional reality could be human conduct and indeed I accept there isn’t just a single meaning for ‘human’. Being a human does not mean having two ears, one heart, two hands, or to be affluent, to possess property, and so on. Then again being a human way to be able to separate between right and wrong. One ought to have the capacity to know how moral and suitable a choice is. A human does not need to acknowledge whatever he is told in this way, he rather be capable without anyone else to comprehend what is correct.

Some different inquiries emerges in regards to this theme. By what method can an executioner be a human, an attacker, or terrorist ? Terrorists are not predestined, they are not born being terrorists, they become terrorists. Terrorists humans as well, however the manner in which they have picked isn’t right. It was their decision to take fitting choice to help their families, yet they proved unable. Only one out of every odd except a significant number of the psychological oppressors have a similar reason. Being a human methods, being able to think sanely. As a human, they do have these capacities, however since they are not ready to utilize them, I accept there is no contrast among them and creatures. They ought to have the capacity to think profoundly past the basic unmistakable things on the planet.

Everyone realizes that unmistakable angles, for example, driving a vehicle, building streets, painting and human expressions make us not quite the same as creatures for instance, however what we need to comprehend the basic and critical point. We, as individuals, can make connections and associations. This one of a kind prevalence encourages us over expansive and develop our points of view, flourish achievement and make our species pleased with what we are and what we speak to. We have been partitioned into different nationalities, American, Swedish, Colombian, Italian, and so on. Inside these gatherings we have been partitioned into different into various ethnic gatherings, for example, Pashtun, Punjabi, and so on. Having admiration to all nationalities and ethnic gatherings, have we substantiated ourselves as mindful person? As referenced before, one of our prevalence over different creatures is our capacity to make connections, how solid do we have relations both broadly and globally? Neither have we kept the relationship holy and regarded nor we have kept it alive yet rather we have transformed into executioners. We have been murdering mankind since the formation of the plain first individual.

Moreover, everyone has distinctive definition, convictions and thought of what is being human. We were sent to this world with obligation yet in particular with reason. We have predominance over different creatures; we can think judiciously and profoundly. We can separate appropriate from off-base. Our lives rely upon what we think? What we choose? Also, how we choose? How we utilize our characteristic aptitudes of settling on choices and settling on the best decisions. We have not satisfied our obligations and have not substantiated ourselves as dependable people. We, as people should make connections and associations with one another. We need to regard and acknowledge ethical quality and we need to substantiate ourselves as dependable and great manifestations that we were intended to be. Being a human can have a great deal of implications, yet we should not contend about what makes a human and what does not, rather we should concentrate on improving this world for the future for the ages to come since we were made with reason and aim. We are here to help one another, to adore one another, to be sensible individuals, and a great deal of others qualities that being a person consist of.   

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