It seems evident that we human beings are distinguished from other existing animals, after all, we are rational. This evidence, in turn, can provide several investigative paths for science and philosophy. In this text, we will see some aspects of human beings addressed by great philosophers who intensely mark the difference between humans and animals.
Plato he is the first philosopher to affirm the existence of a psychophysical dualism in human beings, that is, a double composition formed between the body and the soul that compose us. According to the philosopher, there is a soul, perfect and immaterial, and a body, material, limited and imperfect, that make us as we are. Plato does not directly address the relationship between animals and human beings, but he does leave us an important clue: only the rational beings can live a full life, because only rationality leads to the world of ideas, which is perfect and immutable.
Aristotle, in turn, asserts that the human being is a political animal. The human being lives in society, actively participates and even builds rules for that society. In this sense, Aristotle states that human beings are only able to carry out such activities because of a characteristic intrinsic to them: the
language. The human being is an animal endowed with words, language, different from other animals. Language allows us to create concepts, name objects and beings, and construct abstract thought, activities that our irrational companions cannot perform. Precisely because of these possibilities, we can perform a multitude of tasks, ranging from the development of techniques (with the help of our erect posture and our opposable thumb, which allows the pincer movement with the hands) to the study of mathematics, music and logic.Philosophy arose thanks to these human characteristics, but only in modernity some philosophers really bothered to analyze, in detail, the differences between human beings and the animals. Rene Descartes, in opposition to the scholastic philosophy, which stated that every living being has a soul, reaffirmed Plato's psychophysical dualism, applying it only to human beings. According to the modern philosopher, animals did not have a soul, being just automatons of nature, that is, species of mechanical beings that mechanically develop movements. This means to say that the human being is able to think, speak and move freely and according to his will, whereas animals only perform mechanical tasks.
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At the beginning of contemporaneity, the human being started to be seen as a being who works and modifies his environment through work, as stated in the thesis Marxist, and as a being without essence, according to the existentialist thesis. In the first case, the human being only identifies himself as such because he works, because he is able to develop an essential and rational work, even if being exploited by the figure of the bourgeois. In the second case, the human being is not born ready, that is, he does not have an essence or concept of the human that defines him immediately, but is built every day, according to his experiences. This does not equate him to an irrational animal, because, for existentialists, the human being is capable of accumulating experiences and experiences in your mind that defines your preferences and choices, something irrational animals don't do because they only live in the present moment and nothing more.
In conclusion, we can say that there are several ways to define the concept of human being according to the history of philosophy. Something that strikes the reader's eyes is, therefore, the fact that, most of the time, the difference between human beings and other animals is an almost obvious factor. By virtue of our ability, we can name, classify, and study things, as well as create the arts, techniques, and order the sciences.
by Francisco Porfirio
Graduated in Philosophy
