1. The document discusses three potential traits that define humanity: understanding and language, freedom and self-responsibility, and unlimited desire. 2. It argues that unlimited desire, which drives humans to constantly search for meaning, happiness, and fulfillment through questions, choices, love and communion, may be the most fundamental human trait. 3. This trait of unlimited desire can justify fundamental personal rights like the right to life, freedom, and due process, which in turn other rights are derived from, in order to ensure humans can fulfill their desires. However, recognizing another's humanity ultimately requires choice and acknowledgement of their desires too.

1. THE UNLIMITED DESIRE
ACKNOWLEDGING THE OTHER'S HUMANITY AND JUSTIFYING PERSONAL RIGHTS
FABIO MASSAIOLI
IIS 2019 – LONDON

2. SO IT BEGINS
• Defining what is human: very, very hard!
 Stakes and requirements are very high
• What we can try: point out core traits
 You find a human being wherever you find trait x
• But we’d like something more
 Is there something human beings never go without?
 Some kind of beacon: recognizing humanity even when everything else fails.
• What is it that makes us special?

3. A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY
• Martin Heidegger on Dasein:
 The entity that asks the question about the meaning of Being («The very asking of this question is an entity's
mode of Being; […] This entity […] which includes inquiring as one of the possibilities of its being, we shall
denote by the term “Dasein”» – Being and Time, §2)
 The entity in whose being, that very being is at stake («Dasein is an entity […] distinguished by the fact that, in
its Being, that very Being is an issue for it. […] Only the particular Dasein decides its existence» – Being and
Time, §4)
• By the way, what on earth is Dasein?
 A German verb, literally being-there, often translated as existence when used as a noun.
 A neutral term for us all. That entity «which each of us is himself». Not man, but something that man is always.

4. A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY (REPEATING)
Heidegger echoes (with a twist) two ancient and well-known characterizations of the human being:
• Animal rationale / Ζῷον λόγον ἔχον (The rational animal / The animal endowed with language)
 Traceable back to the origin of Greek philosophy, the formula is commonly attributed to Aristotle (it is a
paraphrase though!)
 Handle with care! Vast disagreement about the nature of rationality/language, meaning shifts through the ages
 We don’t just live out our life; rather, we understand situations and events as meaningful, and we inquire about
reality out of doubt, curiosity or amazement.
• The free creature (Free will as the distinguishing trait of the human being)
 Origin in early and medieval Christian thought; great success throughout modernity
 Not free as in free beer; rather, we are bound to take choices. In a way, animals are more free (but quality matters!)
 Our being is entrusted to ourselves ( moral responsibility!)

5. (BUT I STILL HAVEN’T FOUND)
WHAT I’M LOOKING FOR
• There is a third line of thought
 Running through Plato and the Platonic tradition, also Aristotle
 Not always explicit
 The question of happiness (or the good life)
 Plotinus’ argument: happiness is only relevant for human beings
 Going beyond needs: pleasure is not enough for human beings
 A different kind of pleasure: Platonic eros
Can we find here a different account of humanity?

6. AND LOVE IS A STRANGER
Doing some justice to Platonic love:
• What my friends think it is:
 Commonly interpreted as a non-sexual, intellectual, close relationship: not erotic
 Sometimes even a pejorative: “not real love”
• What it really is:
 Attraction towards truth and beauty in all its manifestations
 Driving force in the search for, and definitive acquisition of, the Good
 Erotic love of intellectual realities
• Specifically:
 Plato is telling us that love (eros) is involved in every aspect of human life («In general, indeed, it is all that
desire of good things and of being happy  Love most mighty and all-beguiling»  Sym. 205d)

7. AND LOVE IS A STRANGER (WHO’LL BECKON YOU ON)
• Christian thinkers elaborate and put a unique spin on the theme
 Peculiar attention to moral and personal freedom
 Whole new concept of love, with much greater importance («God is love»  1 John 4:8)
• Augustine of Hippo: love is the guiding principle of human life; life is a search
• Bernard of Clairvaux: human desire is unlimited
• Thomas Aquinas: traits and objects of desire
 Human desire is meaningful
 Human desire is delightful
 Its proper purpose is communion

9. LOOKING FOR SOMEONE
• Two “classical” traits of human life:
 Understanding, language and meaning: a life of questions
 Freedom and self-responsibility: a life of choices
• A third trait emerges: unlimited desire, or appetite beyond need
 Living outside and beyond the closed loop of needs
 Life as a search, happiness as fulfillment, meaning as the medium
 Love and communion as the highest end of life
• Which is more fundamental?

10. LOOKING FOR SOMEONE (I GUESS I’M DOING THAT)
• Offspring of desire:
 The very asking of questions and taking choices and loving people
 Specifically: the particular questions we ask, choices we take, and people we love
 The urge of communication and the whole of culture
 Decorative arts!
• Special features of desire (with respect to other traits):
 Source of uniqueness (the essence of personality: my own take on life!)
 Source of unity and multiplicity (no instance of something general, intrinsic distinction of desires, otherness)
 Contradiction of death (unlimitedness admits no end)
• What makes us special; what makes us someone

11. DOING THE WALK OF LIFE
• Three great ways of life:
 Desire meets the understanding: contemplative life, search for truth
 Desire meets freedom: ‘enterprising’ life, search for good
 Desire meets love: caring life, search for unity
• No one can do without the last (“No one would choose to live without friends”)

12. IS THIS HUMAN?
YES, BUT…

13. DEFINITELY HUMAN!

14. FUNDAMENTAL PERSONAL RIGHTS
• Is it possible to derive some personal rights from the traits we have outlined?
• Yes, if we seek to ensure the possibility of following and fulfilling our desire:
 Right to life
 Right to personal freedom (property, freedom of movement etc.)
 Right to be heard (marriage, due process, etc.)
• From these three, all others descend

15. SO YOU THINK YOU CAN TELL?
• Actually not: humanity is not a matter of empirical testing
 Must be acknowledged: that’s a choice
 Fundamental possibility of freedom: denying the other’s humanity
• Personal rights are justified rationally but not absolutely grounded
• My own desire is wounded in killing and abusing others
 Asking for what I would not concede is self-contradictory and self-destructive
 Desire if listened to commands respect of the golden rule
 Again, if you are willing to listen

16. THANK YOU!
THE PLAYLIST
A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY
REPEATING
Propellerheads feat. Shirley
Bassey
I STILL HAVEN’T FOUND WHAT
I’M LOOKING FOR
U2 – The Joshua Tree
YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE
Nancy Sinatra – Nancy in London
LOOKING FOR SOMEONE
Genesis – Trespass
WALK OF LIFE
Dire Straits & Mark Knopfler –
Brothers in Arms
WISH YOU WERE HERE
Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here
RECOMMENDED READING
J. F. Crosby, A Neglected Source of the Dignity of
Persons, in Personalist Papers, CUA Press 2012
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Plato, Philebus or On pleasure
Id., Phaedo or On the Soul
Id., Symposium