麻豆传媒

What is it to be human? by Kenan Malik and others, Institute of Ideas,
拢7+拢1 p&p, ISBN 1904025005

HUMANS 鈥渟imply are not like other animals, and to assume that we are is
irrational鈥�. Thus pronounces Kenan Malik, writer and neurobiologist. His aim is
to 鈥渋nspire creative debate鈥濃�攐therwise known as getting a reaction. For
one reader at least, this small booklet succeeded. I threw it to the floor.

Malik insists that humans are unique. Science makes us sophisticated
machines. The history of war and environmental devastation allows us to think of
ourselves as animals. But, he argues, such a mechanistic view ignores our
subjectivity. Animals are the objects of natural forces, while we are subjects
of our own destinies. If we fail to recognise this, we reject our only chance to
better ourselves.

Something intangible about this gave me the willies. Maybe it鈥檚 the way Malik
presents the peculiarity of humanity as self-evident. Maybe it鈥檚 the way he
invokes Descartes. This little essay, with its six responses, launches a
鈥淐onversations in Print鈥� series from the Institute of Ideas鈥攁pparently a
successor to the contrarian magazine Living Marxism. In its
鈥渟cientific鈥� history, for aeons there were animals, and then, suddenly, maybe
40,000 years ago, there were humans painting caves.

Archaeology indicates a slower emergence of 鈥渕odern thinking鈥�, over at least
200,000 years. Earlier hominids possessed intelligences more sophisticated than
a chimp鈥檚, less than ours. Philosophically, there is a continuum. Of course we
are powerful, and should not ignore our capacity to shape the world. But there
are many insights to be had from thinking about ourselves as part of, not apart
from, creation.