The first reflection: What is the human being?

There are many questions about our daily life. Some are trivial, others concern the deeper  levels of our life. But in our time, mostly we don't ask ourselves the first and last questions. We are concerned with  our money, our profession, our relationship,  clothing, diets, illness, holidays ... one could fill a column with these kinds of questions... These are the questions of the moment, they may look backward and forward a little bit, but we avoid the first and last questions carefully. It is the moment that counts.

There are people who make their profession of these first and last questions though. These are the philosophers, the theologians,  the epistemologists, the scientists. A physician can come easily to these questions, because he or she has to deal with  health, sickness, life and death.
The first question that can arise would not even be the question: Does God exist? As a first question it can't be answered, the only answer would be: I believe...

The first question that arises is a question of Self-Knowledge. We ask: What actually is a human being? What is it that I am myself? We don't expect answers from anatomy, physiology, pathology. The question 'What is a human being' seems to be related to the principles of life and death. A mineral has not been born, it doesn't die ether. A plant dies, but it wasn't born, it germinates from the seed. An animal actually is born, and it dies. But there is a big difference between the birth and the death of an animal and the birth and death of a human being. If we could point that out clearly, we would be able to shed  some light on our question 'What is a human being'.

Maybe you don't see a difference at all between the death of a beloved puppy and the death of a beloved child. You could believe, that your sufferings would be the same. But if you feel more exactly what it does to you, you would acknowledge a huge/big/immense  difference between an animal and a human being.  The death of an animal is an impressive event - but if  a person dies, the experience touches us with something infinite...

What is the human being? What is 'homo sapiens'?

In the theory of evolution we see the human being as the highest animal. That is interesting. Why don't we say: Man is the fourth realm in nature? We see a difference between a mineral and a plant, although there are transitions. We don't say that a plant is a higher mineral. Also we find a new natural realm in the animal, we don't see an animal as the highest plant.  Of course, there  are also  transitions here beings that are not  only plant-like  anymore.


Woodcut of Pierre Jean Francois Turpin: J.W. von Goethes plant

There is a gap between mineral and plant: it is life itself that forms the mineral being to a growing plant. Between plant and animal there is also a gap : It is feeling, sentience, consciousness - and along with that also a faculty to move out of passion...
When you try to find the transition from the animal being to the human being, you find organisms/species  that are transition-types between animal and man. A monkey is still an animal. But the Neanderthal ? Is it an animal with human faculties, or is it a human being with animal expressions? But the findings of these organisms/species  do not make the human race into a higher animal race. What actually is the difference between animal and human being? Man also has a sentient consciousness, he also can move out of passion. But there is something that forms a gap , something that is not present in the animal realm, and is present in the human realm.
Why don't we see the human being as a fourth stage of development in nature? And why don't we think about the possibility, that there will be a development to a higher species, a fifth realm? We could think about that - not in the way Nietzsche did, as he conceived the idea of the Übermensch'. That would  still be a human being...

But we could think about the next stages in evolution,  why should the evolution stop at 'homo sapiens' or even 'homo sapiens sapiens'?