Up to this point, I have used the word “world” without disclosing what is meant by it.1 Yet this should have gone more or less unnoticed, since it is part of the nature of our existence to be embedded within our world, and thus its context provides us with many underlying assumptions which we take for granted. The world I am speaking of is what I will call the human world, which makes up “a world within the world”, so to speak. It is a world which–though metaphysically inseparable from the physical and especially biological aspects of our existence–nonetheless transcends them. An understanding of the depth and complexity of this will be necessary if we are to make certain concepts and observations sufficiently intelligible, and its articulation will help us better understand our situation, placing us in a better position to evaluate the phenomena we are considering. In this initial exposition, I am drawing heavily upon the work of Hannah Arendt and Raymond Tallis.2
Before considering the human world, consider first the world itself. Here I refer to the physical planet of the Earth, its physical properties and life forms, the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology, each of which is rooted in the corporeal, i.e., the physical properties of matter. The Earth itself–indeed our entire solar-system–occupies an almost unimaginably small space when considered from the perspective of the universe as a whole.3 The conditions of life are so astonishingly unlikely that the fact life exists has become a stock argument in the debates over the existence of God.4 The diversity and history of life on Earth are perhaps equally astonishing. Life forms are composed of matter, and thus the biological processes necessary for living organisms are physical by nature. And this is true whether we consider single-celled organisms, bacteria, plants, or animals. Species homo sapiens is no exception. Recognizing this is to partially acknowledge our state of dependence as well as our finitude, but also that of our necessary connection to all living things.5 We may be what Aristotle has called political or rational animals, but animals we remain.
Still, the qualification–political/rational–is not mistaken. Although as humans we inhabit the same Earth and are limited by the same physical constraints and biological processes as other life forms, we inhabit a world wholly apart and separate from them. That world is the human world, and it has been collectively created by ourselves. The human world exists over and above the physical and biological world, and opens up a field of potential, of space, which builds upon our basic physical, chemical, and biological makeup. It is both a shared and a private world, made up of thoughts, customs, laws, traditions, objects, buildings, communities, cultures. The history of civilization is the history of the human world. It is an artifactscape,6 built by the hands of men and women, who first invented and used tools, discovered fire, methods of hunting and cooking, trade and travel, building and architecture, culminating in the achievements of our shared history. The spheres of influence and the workaday world are part of it. The first oral traditions, poetry, religion, philosophy, are likewise part of this world, as they remain both aspirations and expressions of humanity. To inhabit this world is to “inhabit a shared world of acknowledged actuality afloat in a shared ocean of explicit possibility”.7 Put differently, we acknowledge the world we inhabit, as it provides a context of speech, action, and possibility, enabling us to lead our lives rather than merely live them organically. It is through speech and action that we reveal ourselves to others, thus constructing a unique social space. The social is the realm of relationships and communication, the seat of familial life, and the wellspring of the public, political, or common realm. With the advent of the social, culture emerges, as does temporal depth, history, and the arc of enacted individual and shared narrative. Thus, the human world is the totality of circumstances at a given time and place which are specifically and characteristically human. It is within the human world that we live and move and have our being.8
It is important to understand the priority of the social because the collective creation of the human world began with the rise of a shared–that is, a social–understanding.9 The shared space of the human world has come to characterize human life. It is not merely that we shape and form this world, it also shapes and forms us.10 This is part of the explanation of the human world existing over and above the biological, corporeal world–transcending it. Each of us is born into the human world which we come to discover, just as a newborn first discovers others, and only later comes to discover him or herself.11
The relationship between the individual and the human world is a complicated question, one which contains rival answers. On one view, society is prior to the individual and the individual must seek his or her good through society, and not from it.12 This is to recognize a structure of possibility, but also limitation; the individual is at best the co-author of his or her life.13 Another view, that of modern liberal individualism, places the individual prior to the social and political, abstracting the individual from the social context which renders him or her intrinsically intelligible.14 Thus abstracted, the individual is emptied of content and is therefore free to define him or herself independently of any criterion. This provides the basis for the Existentialist idea that “existence precedes essence”.15 The human world becomes an arena in which individuals determine and create themselves in their own image–rooted in the satisfaction of their own preferences–the sole authors of their lives. Between the two, it is the latter which holds dominant in the modern contemporary West, especially America.16
Notes:
1. There is a small note in the Introduction (#2) that provides a snapshot. But though it is sufficient for the context of the Introduction, it is by no means exhaustive of the word for what follows.
2. The phrase “the human world” I borrow explicitly from Tallis. Both Tallis and Arendt make clear references to this world, albeit in different though not entirely incompatible ways. As far as I can tell their writings exist independently of each other; at least I have found no evidence that Arendt influenced Tallis on this subject. See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, and Raymond Tallis, Aping Mankind.
3. Nearly every contemporary writer of science has said some approximation of this. Richard Dawkins, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Lawrence Krauss, Stephen Hawking, et al. I have no reason to believe it isn’t true.
4. This is known as the “fine-tuning” argument. For various reasons I find this argument uncompelling. A good overview can be found in the “Fine-Tuning” entry from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. See, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fine-tuning/.
5. Alasdair MacIntyre provides a brilliant analysis of this. See Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals.
6. Consider a building. An rodent or bird could dwell within or atop its roof in the same way it would dwell in the wild. The building is a physical object which may or may not be useful in the carrying out of life-stustaining activities, such as shelter. But within the human world, its meaning lies in something over and above its physical properties–a church, a library, a courthouse, a home. Its meaning transcends its mere physicality. This is understood and comprehended only within the human world. As another example, consider someone being kept alive by a life support machine. Here life itself is being “held together” by something entirely artificial, that exists over and above–apart–from the biological organism.
7. See Raymond Tallis, Aping Mankind.
8. To live outside the human world would be to live in isolation from all other humans. In such a situation a given person would, in important respects, cease to be fully human (of course, such a person would be fully human in a biological sense). Thus, the Romans used the words “to die” and “to cease to be among men” (inter homines esse desinere) as synonyms. See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition. The reference to ACTS 17:28 is deliberate.
9. Indeed, the birth of the social realm is coeval with the birth of the human world. The advent of language would equally be relevant here.
10. The aspects of the human world which affect us the most are likely a combination of the economic and technological.
11. Max Weber refers to the specifically economic aspect of the world as “a vast cosmos into which a person is born. […] This cosmos today determines the style of life of all individuals born into this grinding mechanism, and not only those directly engaged in economically productive activity.” See Stephen Kalberg’s translation of Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism with Other Writings on the Rise of the West. Emphasis in original.
12. This view has its genesis in ancient Greek thought, especially that of Aristotle. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, and Politics.
13. See Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue. Hannah Arendt develops the same idea in The Human Condition.
14. This is the basis of modern social contract theory, such as that found in the writings of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau, however, clearly understands he is dealing hypothetically with a pre-social man. See Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics.
15. For an accessible introduction to Existentialism, see Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is A Humanism.
16. See Robert Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart.