What Does It Mean to Be Human?

By Elizabeth Minnich

What does it mean to be human? It has long been a tantalizing question for religious figures, scientists, political leaders, artists, and autocrats, among others. Noted philosopher Elizabeth Minnich claims, "There are no answers to such a question (although we all have favored responses)."

In What Does It Mean to Be Human?, Minnich invites us to reclaim our freedom from the dangerously distorted rationales for supremacism. She explores how the simplest mistakes in responses to "what does it mean to be human?" have enabled deadly historical errors, totalizing regimes, colonialisms, genocides, and enslavement. Paying close attention to the languages, logics, and nonsense of authoritative pronouncements, Minnich considers ways of thinking that affect and reflect meaning. She offers a fresh understanding of how mistakenly limited definitions of "human being" can be.

What Does It Mean to Be Human? emerges from Minnich's ongoing effort to find, think through, and dissolve past mistakes that keep resurfacing to disastrous effect.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1439927820
• ISBN13: 9781439927823
• Release Date: November 2026
• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Length: 236 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.