0. Who is (Wo)Man?
0.1. We are knowing more and more about (Wo)Man, but the determination
of her/his nature is still problematic: asking «What is (Wo)Man?» is
paradoxically possible only in the space left open by (wo)man’s erasure.
Whatever human nature is, (wo)man wants to know her/himself, because if (s)he
does not know who (s)he is, (s)he can not know where to go: moving from hominitas to humanitas requires a definition of (wo)man’s nature, of her/his «place»
in the world, in view of describing ex-istence as a modulation of the «World Openness» and an attempt to find a way of articulate the possibilities, as intrinsically «medial» and «modal»
since it is founded on «referral» and «relationship with the outside».
0.2. The guiding principle for
distinguishing (wo)man and animal in a non-discriminatory way is the positional
relationship with the world, the modality of link with the surroundings:
ethology is the study of ways of life
and existential conduct, of the way in which a form-of-life selects what
is meaningful and specifies its environment – it is a practical science of ways of being. The animal lives en-closed in
the Genommenheit of its specific Umwelt, the (wo)man ex-sists since (s)he
is dis-closed to the Welt: (s)he
lives in the open and engages with the world, (s)he must actively cut out a «niche-sphere»
able to guarantee stability without compromising the possibility of the (re)opening to the world.
0.3. We need to define human
nature by binding natural and human sciences: this requires two different axes,
a philosophical one (A) and a scientific one (B), in
order to avoid the opposition between «two cultures» and give birth to a
«technical culture». Philosophy without science is empty, science without
philosophy is blind: there is no possibility to face socio-political and
techno-economical challenges without an unitary and systematic philosophical
anthropology.
0.4. Science goes towards the
knowledge of human nature, which is being understood as biologically cultural: the stake is to question the point of
rupture and transition between nature and over-nature, that is, to show that
the possibilities of human freedom are not dissociable from the constraints
imposed by human nature. Independence of the Inside (autonomy) and dependence
from the Outside (heteronomy) are paradoxically directly proportional. So, my
main thesis are: 1. (wo)man is defined
by the relation with the outside; 2. her/his nature is intrinsically potential (that is, there is no (wo)man without
relation and training, without experience: we
learn together how to become human).
1. No others? No (wo)men!
1.A. To understand human nature in a non-anthropocentric way we should
understand the paradoxical way in which nature expresses itself through (wo)man,
that is, de-naturalizing and s-naturalizing itself in the form of a
«subtractive concealing»: its «pres-absence» makes (wo)man the naturally-artificial
animal, eccentrically open to the world, exposed to alterity and handed to
action – designed for respond to the appeal of the world, projected for relatio/(re)actio. Technicity and exposition are all
in one in the existence, they are manifestations of the movement of extimité, through which alterity is the vacuum within the identity that makes it
possible. According to this, I claim that (wo)man is an ethical and timing animal,
because he is «ecstatic», open from/to the otherness, relationship with the
outside and referring to.
1.B. Biologically, hominization is the result of two intertwined
movements, a phylogenetic one and an ontogenetic one: the retardation of the
evolutionary process (fetalization/heterochrony/paedomorphosis), that makes (wo)man
almost a «primate fetus» and a «destructured ape», is linked to the formation
of proto-socio-cultural niches, and it is connected to an acceleration of the
parthenogenesis (progenesis) that
makes (wo)man a «physiological premature birth» and a «secondary home-nester» –
that is, a «naked» animal biochemically and physiologically immature and
unprotected, in need of care, help, defence and contact to survive. (Wo)Man is
an utterly helplessness animal: (s)he needs the given assistance of others, and
without it would die shortly after birth.
«Uterine gestation» is
accompanied by «extra-uterine gestation»: (wo)man experiences to
specify his own generic openness to the world, (s)he is the «ultraneotenous animal» that transcends biology by
opening her/himself to the culture and history. To exist in a «immediately
mediate» way means to have to realize oneself through «relations» and «meaning connections»:
«depending on» and being «related to». Ineptitude at birth is a serious
and protracted obstacle to the immediate survival and independence, but is it
also an unique opportunity to differentiate from the way of being of the other animal
species: (wo)man is a paradoxical «in spite of» becoming an «in cause of».
2. Potentially human
2.B. Animal’s closure in its specific Umwelt is governed by the genetic endowment (animal selects the
stimuli basing on operations genetically determined), (wo)man’s Weltoffenheit is the «countermelody» of
a regressive movement of genetic
behaviours, which is paradoxically parallel to a «complexification» and «hyperformalization»
of the biological datum that opens up to its own transcending. Talking about
instinct, «modules», or complexity of human nature, is talking about something
that opens to the relation with the outside and the external scaffolding, viz.
an innate potential factor that needs
to be specified/determined through
interaction with the «outside». (Wo)Man is so complex that no genome can control
and direct every single step of her/his development: the action of genes does a
lot, but it cannot regulate everything. The plasticity of the synaptic
connections (specially in the cerebral cortex), and the naked and exposed skin
of the body specialize in the non-specificity. Synthesizing the results of the
research of the neurosciences and biology, I suggest that (wo)man has a plastic brain set up to experiencing (B.1)
and a generic naked body open to motor learning (B.2): (s)he is programmed for learning, designed
for opening. The dualism nurture/culture
disappears: history and biology are the two side of a same coin, which is the human nature. Therefore, I argue
that a philosophical interpretation of the scientific datum may support the
assertion that (wo)man is/has «generic
nature», neither degender nor genetic.
2.B.1. The brain is not
genetically ruled, there is a neurogenesis
which has the form of a «selective pruning»:
to learn means to reduce the number of starting possibilities, but keeping
always open the potentiality, the «able to»: the generic human nature declines itself but it remains open to any further
possible determination. Genome contains the instructions required to drive only
a part of the construction of the synaptic connections, but not as many as are necessary
to specify all of them: therefore,
synapses are continually determined by experience and by chance. Mind is not
cut in marble, it’s not something solid and unalterable, but it’s living and
changing: genome is a text that requires a comment, (wo)man is not how (s)he is
because of the genes stored in the couples of basis, but because of the way in which these dialogue with the
environment. The brain has not developed according to a strict design that
specifies its destiny, the plastic neurons are planned for adapt themselves to
the experiences, the mind is «malleable»: DNA «creates» (wo)man without
determining her/him; indeed, the genome encodes its own transcending. This leads
to overcome the idea that neuronal links and synaptic circuits are invariant
and completely un-modifiable: (wo)man is undoubtedly born with all the neurons,
but the synaptic connections are not already fixed, and most of the axons are
«naked», without «myelin sheats».
Cerebral structures are dynamic (dynamei
on: potential) and not static: synapses do not follow pre-fixed rules, they
act plastically, they could succeed
or succumb, through a «Darwinian fight» – an «epigenetic» process in which new
synapses take shape, and some of the old ones are erased or reshaped. To learn,
to be open to the world, means to modify the neural architecture, to «sculpt» a
mind only generically determined, and
there could be no sculpture without relation with the world and the others.
2.B.2. The body has some manifest
properties, but is not pre-determined in specific movements (it must even learn how to walk), and it is free-willingly
articulated: the articulation of the human body can not be comprehended through
any determinate concept, it has to
point not to some determinate sphere
of movement, but rather to all conceivable movements ad libitum. That is, it has not any determinacy but only an
infinite determinability, it’s not
formed in any particular way but is only formable: all animals are born complete and finished, human beings are
only «intimated», and thus, while every animal «is what it is», human beings
must «become what they are to be». Then, formability is the character of human body: the body is the plastic (ec)center
of action and articulation of the movements, the mimetic theatre of the signifying
inscription of habits and exercises, of the dialectic between difference and repetition. Thus, our body is paradoxical: it is our point of view
upon the world, as one of the objects of that world, because (wo)man has not
only a setting (Umwelt), but also a
world (Welt). The spatiality of the
body is not a spaziality of position,
but a spatiality of situation: the
body shows us that we are in-the-world, that we habit the world. It show us
that we move in the world, and
movements is not limited to submitting passively to space and time, it actively
assumes them, it takes them up in their basic significance: any activity is a
certain way of determining the articulated body. We never know in advance what
a body can do, because a body is a space of experimentation, of conflict
between having and being: it has a variegate and original acquired mobility, it
is able to learn the most complicated coordination of movements in an almost
infinite variety of modes. The inexhaustibility of the possible combination of
movements and the limitless fine motor sensitivity are a biological necessity
for (wo)man. The most important and peculiar faculties of human beings can not
be located only in the mind: there is also the «great reason» of the
«generalist body», capable of several adaptions, of making its own inadequacy
productive – starting from the hand, non-specific
but polyvalent and open to pluri-specialization. Thus, there is not only an
important cerebral and neuronal plasticity, but there is also an equally
important bodily and motoric plasticity.
2.A. According to the philosophical category of Gattungswesen, human nature is potential
openness to the world that determines itself by temporal modalization – that is, by historical specifications and relational
declinations. This «singular-plural» concept binds the unity of human
nature to the plurality of its unforeseeable (clinamic) ways of
realization: human nature can be described as «intrinsically potential»,
because (wo)man does not know in advance in which way (s)he has to determine (her)himself. Then, I suggest that existence takes place in an «experimental plane
of immanence», because (wo)man does not know ahead of time «what (s)he is
capable-of»: this plane is not a mental design, a well defined project, or a
fully specified program, that is, it is not an organization that comes from above
and refers to a (divine: God; or natural: Gene) transcendence, that drives teleologically the development. The
plane of immanence is not «structural», on the contrary, is a «process of
composition» that must be apprehended for itself, through that which it gives,
in that which it gives: its direction – the direction of existence – is teleoclinal, free and open. Therefore,
against the pervasive idea of genetic determinism
– that we are our genes –, we should remember that in our lives several
scenarios might come true, for we can and do change our genes: under normal
circumstances, all of our basic anatomy and physiology, eye colour, height,
intelligence and basic personal traits, are ingrained in our DNA sequences, but this is not to say that out genomes
dictate our lives. In fact, our talents have many opportunities to nurture
themselves and develop in novel ways: these are paradoxical gifts of our
genomic endowment, because more than a static information store, our genomes
are dynamic, tightly-regulated
collections of genes, which switch on and off in many combinations. No
behaviour would be possible were it not for our biological constitution, but our capacity to change with
circumstance demonstrates that biology is not the complete story: from the start
of our lives, we are moving beyond nature, and our transcendence of natural
determination is our most striking trait. We do not know what our nature
permits us to be: it does not answer the question of what it means to be a human being, or
dictate what it is that we should become, but it is our nature that dictate us that we should become. It does not tell
us how to be(come), but it tells us
something very important: that we
have to be(come) what we are, human.
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