Human condition

The human condition encompasses the unique and inescapable features of being human in a social, cultural, and personal context. It can be described as the irreducible part of humanity that is inherent and not connected to factors such as gender, race or class. It includes concerns such as a search for purpose, sense of curiosity, the inevitability of isolation, or the fear of death.

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Fields of study

The "human condition" is especially studied through the set of disciplines and sub-fields that make up the humanities. The study of history, philosophy, literature, and the arts all help understand the nature of the human condition and the broader cultural and social arrangements that make up human lives.

The human condition is the subject of such fields of study as philosophy, theology, sociology, psychology, anthropology, demographics, evolutionary biology, cultural studies, and sociobiology. The philosophical school of existentialism deals with the ongoing search for ultimate meaning in the human condition.

Use of the term

Although the term itself may have gained popular currency with André Malraux’s novel (1933) and René Magritte’s paintings 1933 & 1935, both titled La Condition Humaine, and with Hannah Arendt’s book (1958) and Masaki Kobayashi’s film trilogy (1959-1961)[1] which examined these and related concepts, the quest to understand the human condition dates back to the first attempts by humans to understand themselves and their place in the universe.

Features of the human condition

There are several theories as to what humans all have in common. A popular example is that humans search for purpose, are curious and thrive on new information. High-level thought processes, such as self-awareness, rationality, and sapience,[2][3][4] are considered to be defining features of what constitutes a "person".[5][6]

The existentialist psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom has identified what he refers to as the four "givens" or ultimate concerns of human existence - concerns with meaning, loneliness, freedom and mortality. [7] Yalom argues with Sartre that man is "condemned to freedom", and must face his ultimate aloneness, the lack of any unquestionable ground of meaning, and ultimate mortality.

In most developed countries, improvements in technology, medicine, education, and public health have brought about quantitative, not necessarily qualitative, marked changes in the human condition over the last few hundred years, with increases in life expectancy and population (see demographic transition). One of the largest changes has been the availability of contraception, which has changed the lives of countless humans. Even then, these changes only alter the details of the human condition.

See also

References

  1. ^ Ningen no joken I, the first instalment the Human Condition trilogy by Masaki Kobayashi http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053114/
    Ningen no joken II, the second instalment in the Human Condition trilogy by Masaki Kobayashi http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053115/
    Ningen no joken III, the third instalment in the Human Condition trilogy by Masaki Kobayashi http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055233/
  2. ^ Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues By Alasdair MacIntyre pp. 60, "But this [language] is insufficient for human rationality, What is needed in addition is the ability to construct sentences that contain as constituents either the sentences use to express the judgment about which the agent is reflecting, or references to those sentences."
  3. ^ John McDowell, Mind and World, 1994. p.115, Harvard University Press, (quoted in Dependent Rational Animals, by Alasdair MacIntyre): "In mere animals, sentience is in the service of a mode of life that is structured exclusively by immediate biological imperatives" [..] "merely animal life is shaped by goals whose control of the animal's behavior at a given moment is an immediate outcome of biological forces"
  4. ^ The Really Hard Problem:Meaning in a Material World, Owen Flanagan, MIT Press
  5. ^ Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues By Alasdair MacIntyre pp. 60, "Those who have wanted to draw a single sharp line between human and nonhuman animals have commonly laid emphasis upon the presence or absence of language as such, the ability to use and to respond to strings of syntactically ordered and semantically significant expressions whose utterance constitutes speech acts. But this is insufficient for human rationality. What is needed in addition.."
  6. ^ Nature vs. Nurture: The Miracle of Language, by Malia Knezek. "What about the fact that other animals do not have similar language capabilities? [..] This obviously involves some innate difference between humans and other animals.. [..] ..other animals do not use any other form of language (i.e. sign language) even though they have the physiological capabilities." citing, Andy Clark. Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. The MIT Press, 1997. 208-209).
  7. ^ http://changingminds.org/explanations/needs/ultimate_concerns.htm