@Kim Pasha,
Kim Pasha;106500 wrote:
How do you define a human?, What makes up human?, "What do you value?
What can I possibly write about to answer those questions?
How do you define a human being? Metaphysics, Book Zeta, specifically sections 7-8-9, Aristotle underlines fundamental thoughts on generation, in much the same spirit as Darwin, Lamarck, etc. It was a sort of science for Aristotle the way it was for those previously mentioned. However, the interesting bit comes from the fact that the issues on generation (7-9) stem from the discussion on substantial ontology(1-6,10). A fundamental question Aristotle asks at the beginning of book zeta is "what is being?" Essentially, what is this fundamental thing that is? Aristotle attributes it to substance, the "thing that underlies," or as he really put "being qua being." Within Aristotle's reasoning , substance was something without attributes, a blank substrate that had nothing.
One could argue then that to define human is not to define a specific race, genus, whatever have you since that does not essentially label what a human is (since race is an attribute that does not specifically address the thing that underlies- Aristotle). To define a human, there must be some intangible quality which is immune to additional predication, biological or what ever.
One answer could possibly be
human nature. Biological studies can lend to the predication of further attributes/habits/etc. of humans, they could not (arguably) get at the essential bits of human nature. Human nature essentially attempts to find out what exactly it is to be human. So in that respect, this is a link to the second part of the question, which is
"What makes up a human?" You could at this point try to isolate something intangible and something in itself. But that's the problem though, isn't it. Could it be the innate desire to socialize? But this could be a biological argument and susceptible to predication. What about a soul? Plato would say that (utilizing his conception of the tripartite of the soul), we are rational creatures that are able to perceive the forms. Only humans contain the essential elements that comprise the soul (at least according to Plato). However, the flaw is that one area of the soul may be over or underdeveloped compared to another. In that respect, we could have a disposition to good or bad and develop the variances inherent in human nature.
Maybe it could be those core ethical components that make up human nature. So that leads to your third question, "
What do you value." From there it's all up to you since it seems like a subjective part of the overall response. Suffice to say that you have to this point isolated humanness to an intangible/ethical question. You could take it anywhere at this point I suppose.
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