What Is Means To Be Human Kant And Plato

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What Does It Mean to Be Human? What is life? What is human life? One might ponder this question atop the Eiffel Tower watching the tiny network of society move with the motion of an ant colony. I see people who go to work so they can buy that next pair of Gap khakis thinking that they will impress that girl or guy who they have been watching. They compete with cars and the best country clubs. These people conform; these people are instruments of the system. They simply wish to be normal, to have societal norms imposed upon how they should live. In other words, many humans believe material items make them human; material items and societal values define whom they are. To me and many other humans, life is more. Society and humans themselves repress basic characteristics that make them human. Being human is to seek knowledge, enlightenment, truths, autonomy, and responsibility.

This is life, and these are instincts which are too often repressed and devalued. When humans become pieces of "the instrument" they forget what true knowledge and autonomy is.

What is knowledge? What is enlightenment? To me it is expanding one's window to the world. College has made me feel much more worldly, and I can only imagine how that perception will seem so miniscule with three more years of learning and growth. To be human is to want to explore, to learn, and to embrace nature in order to see the world in its truest form. This is best understood in Plato's Republic and explained through the allegory of the cave. Individuals within can only look straight ahead because they are bound by chains. They are only able to see the shadows of objects displaying the equivalent of a puppet show. They recognize as...