Ideas and Challenges
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The human is a “bridge” (to speak metaphorically) between realms of life, at which it by nature must be in order to fulfill itself ... [Man] is a movement, a transcendence, a “thing in between” (metaxu).^14
once animal and yet exceeding our animality. Human beings, in more biblical terms, are dust that breathes, made of the earth and yet an image of God. The decisive question, noted above, is whether “humanity” is an destination or, we now add, lived in the tension of both. Is being “a thing in origin or a
between” a condition that human beings must, tragically and joyously, live out and yet never fully overcome, or does it mark out “humanity” as a des-tination that goes beyond, transcends, its mixed, fragmented nature? Or is the real challenge, as we believe, to live with integrity amid the tensions of
everyday existence, the turmoil and vitality of the human heart?impulse, just like in any careful inquiry, to provide a definition and theory of the subject matter. But who can define “man”? This problem of definition Often when thinkers make forays into the “study of man” there is the
has led some thinkers to note that the question of human “nature” is really a theological one. They reason that since human beings cannot get out of their skins to of “man,” only God, see themselves objectively and thus provide a real definition a superhuman but knowing reality, could provide the
perspective for rightly defining human nature. All that the philosopher or anthropologist or historian can do is to explore what Hannah Arendt called the define human “nature.” It is hardly surprising that when philosophers lost “human condition” and thus intentionally avoid any attempt to
interest in the question of human nature, theologians continued to speak of the “nature and destiny of man” in relation to God.definition of the human, but that it is important to shift from a substantive Other philosophers have insisted that one cannot dodge the question of 15
one to a functional definition, an examination of what human beings As Ernst Cassirer put it:Man’s outstanding characteristic, his distinguishing mark, is not his metaphysical do.
Of course, the problem then becomes what are distinctly “human” activities or physical nature – but his work. It is this work, it is the system of human activities, which defines and determines the circle of humanity.^16
or capabilities and how ought one to study them. Tzvetan Todorov, cited earlier, isolates three basic humanistic convictions rooted in capacities, what he calls “the autonomy of the I, the finality of the you, and the universality of the they.” In and through freedom, moral respect for others, and human