Emmanuel Kant asked the question, “What is man?” Actually, this was the last of four questions that seemed to summarize the previous three, namely, “What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope?” These are all questions that go to the core of every human being. Today, I respectfully submit my response in terms of our current human condition.

First, we need to recognize what we share with other species before we analyze what makes our condition so different. Darwin already summarized what all species have in common, that is, the will to survive. Survival, he explained, was enhanced by evolution, the natural genetic selection of those more fit to survive in a dangerous world. Although early humanoids developed over a million years ago, most anthropologists believe the first modern human appeared about 40,000 years ago. His first survival task may have been to eliminate his predecessors, in this case the Neanderthals. Although there is some evidence of genetic assimilation with his predecessor, there is little doubt that the modern human competed more effectively for resources and was more capable of defending territory and tribe. Survival then was based upon genetic development. The human genome is part of who we are.

Secondly, we need to recognize how human survival differed from other species. As it turns out, tribal security was a major factor. Ancient civilizations lived on an earth centered world protected by tribal gods. Individuals within these civilized societies shared ethnic and social taboos that supported their assimilation and defined their roles. A person could live secure in a human centered cosmos and with a socially defined destiny. The most significant threat to this security was other civilizations, tribes, or cultures. Normally, animal species do not attempt to eliminate their own kind. But early human civilizations did regularly clash with each other. Besides natural disasters and predator species, humans felt threatened by other tribes and civilizations. These were the external threats that incurred the most fear, precipitated the buildup of weapons and arms, and insulated societies within the cocoon of their respective cultures. As a result, human history has become replete with intra-species violence: the clash of civilizations, barbaric invasions, border skirmishes, and even world wars. Internecine violence is also part of who we are.

The post-World War environment in which we now live still has many tribal conflicts, invasions, and border intrusions. But it also has international laws, treaties, trade agreements, and an expanding global communication network. Part of human evolution, then, includes a new approach to survival, one that includes communication and cooperation rather than conflict and war. But evolution is a slow process and develops initially at the individual level. Obviously, many of us still feel insecure and fear the enemy at our shores or the terrorists in our midst. Why do we harbor such insecurity and fear? Partly the answer rests in the unsettling nature of external threats such as terrorism, nuclear armed intercontinental missiles, and ongoing conflicts that could devolve into larger wars. Despite our progress, we still harbor the same fears of earlier civilizations. Our struggle to redefine ourselves is also part of who we are.

But now we have new internal threats that go to the heart of Kant’s question. In a sense, our very progress stands in the way of understanding who we are. For example, when we look at a painting, admire the workmanship of a hand carved chair, or listen to a music composition, we are immediately confronted with the personal power of the artist, the carpenter, or the composer. But most of us have little opportunity to realize our personal creative power. In fact, the world we now inhabit insulates us even from any sense of how the things we use and experience are generated. We drive cars we cannot repair, live in homes we cannot build, eat food we do not produce, communicate with people not even present, and work in environments where schedules and performance criteria are determined increasingly by computers. The economy we have created operates according to statistical laws we only superficially understand and struggle to control. Financial markets trade at the whim of programmed algorithms that no person controls and few even understand. And our politics displays much less rationality than Plato’s ideal, but rather a helter-skelter process that hurdles towards unforeseeable ends. What is apparent in contemporary politics is the will to power, but not its direction. Although politicians make it so, they have no control over its outcome. So as a worker, as an economic unit, and as a citizen, the modern human lives less securely than his predecessors. Tribal fear still persists from terrorists or the actions of rogue nations. In addition, we now live less secure with what we have created but do not control and without the comforting belief in a benign cosmos that exists just for us.

So “What is man,” the philosopher asks. Part of the answer is that we are an animal species with special rational powers. Our will to survive is part of our animal inheritance, as is our fear and pervading sense of insecurity. Our rational powers are the human inheritance that empowers us to create our future. On the evolutionary scale, humans have begun to climb their own ladder. It is not just the physical development of the frontal lobe or even the cultural developments of human history that explains us. We are defined by our goals.

If we cannot answer Kant’s question today, our failure is not the result of irrationality or religious belief. We are instead struggling to define our goals as a human race. To the extent we fear each other, we will feel insecure. To the extent we are subservient to our technology, we will feel less empowered. To the extent we remain unable to make our economy or our politics serve our basic needs and general welfare, we will feel oppressed and bewildered by systems run amuck. We cannot satisfy Kant’s query “What is man” because we have yet to finish our development as humans. The future of “man” is intrinsically tied to what Martin Luther King Jr. called the “audacity of hope.” Our essence, then, is partly aspirational. Perhaps the only appropriate response to Kant is “We shall see.”