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What Is Human And What, If Anything, Does It Have To Do With Political Sciences

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Par   •  24 Avril 2013  •  1 017 Mots (5 Pages)  •  1 032 Vues

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If you ask me what I am, my answer will depend on the context. If the context is an international gathering, I will say that I am french. If it is a science test, I will say that I am ignorant. Our definition of what we are is always relative to something else. «Human» is what we are relative to what is not human, «Animal». It has at least two meanings : the human race, people speaking and writing, as opposed to animals living in the wild; or the human quality, implying a moral sense, that we use to talk about «human» or «inhuman» acts for example. Here we will study the first meaning, to see what makes us any different from any other living being and the consequences (political sciences) of this difference.

One of the major visible differences between the Human and the Animal, is that the Animal means immediate solution given to immediate need, whereas the Human means sophisticated answer given to immediate need. For instance, animals, if they feel the need to feed themselves, will simply look for food and eat it. Humans have made up more sophisticated ways to eat. This is where nature stops and culture begins. This is why eating habits differ with locations or social positions. It is also why we have more complex needs and why we think that a life made only of satisfying basic needs is «a dog’s life». Even our way of satisfying those needs is elaborate : we delay the satisfaction, and by that wait we make everything Human, because we have time to think about it. Moreover, any need becomes more than it is, in a sense that new expectations are attached to it. A basic need is never satisfied as such, it comes with something else (see the difference between feeding and cooking for instance). This is also why we have more needs than animals. Satisfying our basic instincts is never enough, because we feel that they connect us with our «Animal» part. Everything we do is an attempt to escape our original «Animal» condition, an attempt to be different from the rest of the species. Therefore, «Human» is a construction. We can define it as something we have built around the essence of us. Our culture, our thoughts, our habits... None of this is pure, none of this comes directly from us. Everything we put around the self, that part of us that longs for completion, is a construction.

What are the consequences of this construction ? That our lives are, themselves, constructions. The way we act and the way we interact are constructions as well. There is nothing natural about them, which ultimately means that they need rules. Indeed, «Animal» organisation is no institution. It is only natural, like the food chain, because animals don’t think about their needs, nothing is planned. Everything is immediate therefore nothing is organised, nor ruled «officially». They have no conscience of their actions and the consequences of them.

«Human» organisation has to be more complicated. We have plans, and these plans may interfere. If a lion is hungry, sees a gazelle and eats it, nothing can stop him and there will be no unfortunate consequences for him. However, human actions have a lot of consequences in many ways, because other humans will react to any action we do, and more than react, they will judge it. They know that nothing we do is a genuine answer to an instinct, so if what we do does not fit their ideas, they will disapprove it because they know that we thought it through.

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