Kristen De Man

Topic: The Human Being in Moral Imagination

What is it to recognize someone as a human being? Standard answers to this question presuppose that recognizing another as human is a matter of coming to know something about them, e.g. that they belong to the species homo sapiens or that they are the bearer of a certain capacity. On this view, to recognize someone as human is not yet to make an ethical determination: it is one thing to apply the sortal concept “human” and another to ask what is owed to those beings who fall under the concept. In this course, we will explore an alternative view on which the recognition of another human being is already, just as such, the taking up of an ethical orientation. In the course of our exploration, we will consider the significance of such everyday facts as that we have names and faces, that we have inner lives which may be rich or shallow, that we honor our dead, and that we often love or hate one another in ways that make us unreasonable. What bearing do such facts have on our understanding of what it means to lead a human life, and what does this mean for a philosophical account of recognition? In addition to the specific topics mentioned above, we will consider the question in its formal aspect, as regards the logical character of the relation that holds between any two human beings. Readings will include selections from Cora Diamond, Iris Murdoch, Simone Weil, Raimond Gaita, Stanley Cavell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Buber, and Immanuel Levinas.