Humanessence

By

Ricky Cobb

Philosophy 200

Professor Clay Railey

November 1, 2004
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Humanessence

Objective:
What is means to be human can only be symbolized through the constituents of
what a human is after what a human is not is eliminated.

I. What Does it Mean to be a Human Being?

II. Not the Body!
III. Habitholics Anonymous
1. Personality
2. Mmm. Doughnuts.
IV. Got Soul?
V. Last Will and Testament
1. No choice but to choose what was chosen
2. Predetermination
VI. Knock! Knock! Anyone Home?
VII. We’re Aware of it All!
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What Does it Mean to be a Human Being?

A human being is a dying being. Because we live, we have to die. It has been said

that all doctors are ultimate failures because, in the end, people still die. We seek

immortality of body but ‘forget’ immortality of soul. Or some, knowing the body to be

impermanent, seek immortality of soul (a.k.a. the self). But what is self? Who am I? It’s a

good question to ask oneself and there’s only one lifetime to do it in (unless you believe

in multiple lives in which case you could just find out who you are in some future life,

sometime… maybe… but the only real time is now). So what does it mean to be Human

Being?

Not the Body!

The body needs to eat to live. If it doesn’t get nourishment, it won’t live. It is

constantly shedding skin or hair, constantly renewing itself. The constant upkeep is such

a pain sometimes. Then no matter how well taken care of, or how well groomed and

supplemented, beautiful or ugly, it still dies. Plato wrote in his play Phaedo:

‘Other people may well be unaware that all who actually engage in

philosophy aright are practicing nothing other than dying and being

dead. Now if this is true, it would be odd indeed for them to be eager

in their whole life for nothing but this, and yet to be resentful when it

comes, the very thing they’d long been eager for and practiced.’

He goes on to explain why the body is something to be reviled and the soul (that

which is not the body) is to be revered and lead to the Good (Some people drop an ‘o’ and

call it God). For Plato the body inhibits the soul’s innate all-knowing (Plato 55).

That the body dies is obvious. It’s dying and creating every moment. One day, any
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day, it will stop creating and just pass away. Along with it goes the essence of whoever is

in it. Where that essence goes is not as important as the fact that it does go (if it goes

somewhere). What is evident is that a person’s ghost does not take up the life of a person

when the body dies. That ghost, or soul-essence, ‘moves on,’ or ‘blinks out of existence,’

or takes ‘rebirth’ in another body, or whatever your beliefs are. Therefore we must posit

that we are not the body. That is, we can not take our bodies with us no matter how much

we want to when we’re dead. What happens after we’re dead is unknown to us in life

(unless we ‘die while living’ -- more on that later).

Habit-a-holics Anonymous

Personality

Our essence is not the same as the body. So if we are to survive, which seems to

be an implanted urge we cannot escape, then there must be something else that is our

essence, a soul or self. It could be called personality, but personality changes. One could

claim to be the same person one was years ago but that would be incorrect to those that

know the person. No human can live and not undergo change to one’s ideas and

behaviors. Personality is just a process of change with no underlying unchanging essence

there. It is just the current collection of ideas and behaviors that enable distinction

between people. There is no ‘stickiness’ to one’s personality, it will change as situations

change (Davis 502).

Mmm. Doughnuts.

These ideas and behaviors could also be thought of as the urge to eat doughnuts...

or to compulsively act out any other behavior. Our habits are our ‘cruse control’ of a sort

where we told ourselves to act in a certain way in certain situations possibly long ago. So
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if you like doughnuts, then when you have the opportunity to eat one you probably will,

even if you’re currently full at the time and eating the doughnut would make you suffer

an overfull stomach. This is a kind of automatic programming (impulsive habits) that we

tend to get stuck in unless we purposefully slow down and take the time to make current

decisions.

Got Soul?

The question now becomes: Who (or what) is making the decisions? This is where

the idea of a soul comes in. A soul is said to be an immortal, non-corporeal substance

that, once created, is everlasting and permanent.

For St. Thomas Aquinas there are three souls:

There is a vegetative soul, such as the principle of plants, whose activity is

fulfilled in nutrition, growth, and reproduction. Superior to the vegetative is

the sensitive soul, which is present in animals; besides the processes of

nutrition, growth and reproduction the sensitive soul is capable of sensitive

knowledge and appetition. Superior still to the sensitive soul is the rational

soul (Radical Academy n.p.).

The rational soul is thought to be the will, that which decides. So what is this will

if we are to be it?

Last Will and Testament

We have to choose. We have no choice but to choose what we’ve chosen. So all

hope for a different past must be given up. It can’t be willed to change. But the future can

be created by will (to the degree of available choices). Whether that will was

predetermined or not, it was still chosen, and since we have no way of knowing whether
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life’s entire story is scripted out in advance, it makes no sense for us to adopt a

predetermined view of our actions. Saying everything is predetermined is just a way out

of personal moral responsibility leaving all actions up to someone or something else.

Assuming a self necessitates personal responsibility, otherwise, it’s someone else’s fault.

Knock! Knock! Anyone Home?

This self, then, is a thing which chooses. It is also a thing which is conscious of

the senses. It ‘knows’ sounds, sights, smells, tastes, touches, and thoughts (the emotions

might be considered as thoughts). But the consciousness isn’t always there. In dreams, for

example, the senses are fooled by dream senses. The consciousness isn’t aware of the

actual senses in the dream state.

Even without dreams the consciousness can still be latent as in the case when I

was anesthetized for surgery and had no sense impressions at all during the 2 hours I was

out. However I was aware that those two hours had passed in blank consciousness. I was

aware without sensory input (not even mental memory input).

Other similar occurrences have happened to people who have Near Death

Experiences. They are not aware of their physical body sensations but somehow can

know of events going on without the physical sense organs. Therefore, consciousness

cannot be considered the self…So we’re left with….

We’re Aware of it All!

Going through this process of elimination to find the self we’re left with the

awareness of being. Consciousness can’t be the self because what is seen is not the seer,

in other words it’s just another impression upon the awareness and not the awareness

itself. The awareness is that which notices the change. Being the noticer of the change,
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that also makes it the change; that which is the change is therefore is the only constant.

But all traditional ideas of a ‘self’ must be given up for that to be seen. What is left is

‘humanessence,’ some awareness that desires.

This personality we think we own or always have will die or change, perhaps

slowly, perhaps rapidly. It is not the true self, if were to postulate a self at all. Perhaps we

are all mindless predetermined robots acting out programming, but it doesn’t seem that

way. To be human is to be aware that you can have impressions. Impressions are just

physical matter, senses, thoughts, emotions, and consciousness that ‘touch’ against

awareness or receptivity which is our true nature.

We’re still going to die, but this awareness seems eternal, not subject to death (or

birth). I say “seems” because I don’t know where I came from before I was born or where

I’m going after ‘I’ die; few can say with certainty that they do. Those who are certain,

that is, with conviction, are the ones to listen to, be they completely deluded or knowers

of the truth.

All of this is not meaningful if you don’t ask yourself the question of: “How is

this life meaningful to you?” To concluded, then, the meaning of what it is to be human is

up to the human that is being. Or, as it has been said in another way, “Life is what you

make of it.”
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Works Cited

Davis, Stephen F., and Joseph J. Palladino. Psychology 3rd ed. “Challenges to the Idea of

Consistency.” Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002, 502.

Plato, “Phaedo.” Classics of Philosophy 2nd ed. Pojman, Louis P. Ed., New York: Oxford

University Press, 2003, 54-85.

The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. “The Human Soul (Rational Psychology).” The

Radical Academy. http://radicalacademy.com/aquinas3.htm 02 Nov, 2004.