Who Is Man? (The Raymond Fred West Memorial Lectures0

by Abraham Joshua Heschel

One of the world’s most illustrious & influential theologians here confronts one of the crucial philosophical & religious questions of our the nature & role of man. In these three lectures, originally delivered in somewhat different form as The Raymond Fred West Memorial Lectures at Stanford University in 5/1963, Dr Heschel inquires into the logic of being What is meant by being human? What are the grounds on which to justify a human’s claim to being human? In the author’s words, “We have never been as openmouthed & inquisitive, never as astonished & embarrassed at our ignorance about man. We know what he makes, but we do not konw wha he is or what to expect of him. Is it not conceivable that our entire civilization is built upon a minsinterpretation of man? Or that the tragedy of man is due to the fact that he is a being who has forgotten the Who is Man? The failure to identify himself, to know what is authentic human existence, leads him to assume a false identity, to pretending to be what he is unable to be or to not accepting what is at the very root of his being. Ignorance about man is not lack of knowledge, but false knowledge.”

Genres: Philosophy, Judaism, Religion, Theology, Nonfiction, Jewish, Spirituality

Hardcover

First published June 1, 1965

About the author

Heschel was a descendant of preeminent rabbinic families of Europe, both on his father's (Moshe Mordechai Heschel, who died of influenza in 1916) and mother's (Reizel Perlow Heschel) side, and a descendant of Rebbe Avrohom Yehoshua Heshl of Apt and other dynasties. He was the youngest of six children including his siblings: Sarah, Dvora Miriam, Esther Sima, Gittel, and Jacob. In his teens he received a traditional yeshiva education, and obtained traditional semicha, rabbinical ordination. He then studied at the University of Berlin, where he obtained his doctorate, and at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, where he earned a second liberal rabbinic ordination.

Reviews

[Jasonlylescampbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Our Age
"This is an age in which it it is impossible to think about the human situation without shame, anguish, and disgust ... The sickness of our age is the failure of conscience rather than the failure of nerve." (p. 14-15)

The Human Face
"A human being has not only a body but also a face. A face cannot be grafted or interchanged. A face is a message, a face speaks, often unbeknown to the person. Is not the human face a living mixture of mystery and meaning? We are all able to see it, and are unable to describe it. Is it not a strange marvel that among so many hundreds of millions of faces, no two faces are alike? The most exposed part of the body, the best known, it is the least describable, a synonym for an incarnation of uniquness. Can we look at a face as if it were commonplace?" (P. 38)

Being on the way
"It is a fatal illusion to assume that to be human is a fact given with human being rather than a goal and an achievement. To animals the world is what it is; to man this is a world in the making, and being human means being on the way, striving, waiting, hoping." (P. 41)

Knowledge and reciprocity
"Knowledge is a debt, not a private property. To be a person is to reciprocate, to offer in return what one receives." (P. 46)

Unique Need to be Needed
"Animals are content when their needs are satisfied; man insists not only on being satisfied but also on being able to satisfy, on being a need not simply on having needs. Personal needs come and go, but one anxiety remains: Am I needed? There is no human being who has not been moved by that anxiety." (P. 57)

Man's complexity
"There are alleys in the soul where man walks alone, ways that do not lead to society, a world of privacy that shrinks from the public eye. Life comprises not only arable, productive land, but also mountains of dreams, an underground of sorrow, towers of yearning ... " (P. 59)

The Task of Mankind
"It is only despair that claims: the task of man is to let the world be. It is self-deception to assume that man can ever be an innocent spectator. To be human is to be involved, nolens volens, to act and to react, to wonder and to respond. For man, to be is to play a part in a cosmic drama, knowingly or unknowingly." (P. 68)

Two Ways
"There are two primary ways in which man relates himself to the world that surrounds him: manipulation and appreciation. In the first way he sees in what surrounds him things to be handled, forces to be managed, objects to be put to use. In the second way he sees in what surrounds him things to be acknowledged, understood, valued or admired. It is the hand that creates the tools for the purpose of manipulation, and it is the ear and the eye by which we attain appreciation. (p. 82)

Fellowship depends upon appreciation, while manipulation is the cause of alienation: objects and I apart, things stand dead, and I am alone. What is more decisive: a life of manipulation distorts the image of the world. Reality is equated with availability: what I can manipulate is, what I cannot manipulate is not. A life of manipulation is the death of transcendence. (p. 82)

Biblical call of mankind
Man is given the choice of being lost in the world or of being a partner in mastering and redeeming the world. (p. 83)

Man is from the beginning not submerged in nature nor totally derived from it. He must not surrender to the impersonal, to the earth, to being as such. Surrendering, he gradually obliterates himself. Turning beast, he becomes a cannibal. He is not simply in nature. He is free and capable of rising above nature, of conquering and controlling it. In the Prometheus myth man steals fire against the will of the gods; in the Bible man has the divine mandate to rise above nature. In this spirit, it is said in a Midrash that God taught Adam the art of making fire. (p. 83)

Deeds

Deeds are the language of living ... (p. 95)

Though we deal with things, we live in deeds. (The Earth Is the Lord's p. 14)

Man is challenged not to surrender to mere being. Being is to be surpassed by living.(p. 95)

Character
Character education will remain ineffective if it is limited to the teaching of norms and principles. The concern must be not to instill timeless ideas but to cultivate the concrete person. Life is clay, and character is form ... Right living is like a work of art, the product of a vision and of a wrestling with concrete situations. (p. 99)

The failing of our culture
The teaching of our society is that more knowledge means more power, more civilization--more comfort. We should have insisted in the spirit of the prophetic vision that more knowledge should also mean more reverence, that more knowledge should also mean more reverence, that more civilization should also mean less violence. The failure of our culture is in demanding too little of the individual, in not realizing the correlation of rights and obligations, in not realizing that there are inalienable obligations as well as inalienable rights. Our civilization offers comfort in abundance and asks for very little in return. Ours is essentially a Yes education; there is little training in the art of saying 'no' to oneself. (p. 100)

(This needs to be paired up with Newbigin's thoughts in the Other Side of 1984).

Man described
"Man is hard of inner hearing, but he has sharp, avid eyes. The power he unlocks surpasses the power that he is, dazzling him. He has the capacity for extravagance, sumptuousness, presumption. His power is explosive. Human being is boundless, but being human is respect for bounds. (p. 100)

The opposite of the human is not the animal but the demonic. (p. 101)

Interesting idea of freedom and human envy
We are forced to be free--we are free against our will ... we are in the majority in the total realm of being (the world), we frequently seek to join the multitude. In the agony and battle of passions we often choose to envy the beast. We behave as if the animal kingdom were our lost paradise, to which we are trying to return for moments of delight, believing that it is the animal state in which happiness consists. (p. 101)

A minority in the realm of being, he stands somewhere between God and the beasts. Unable to live alone, he must commune with either of the two. Both Adam and the beasts were blessed by the Lord, but man was also charged with conquering the earth and dominating the beast. Man is always faced with the choice of listening either to God or to the snake. It is always easier to envy the beast, to worship a totem and be dominated by it, than to hearken to the Voice.

Two Versions of Man
Here is the basic difference between the Greek and the biblical conception of man. To the Greek mind, man is above all a rational being; rationality makes him compatible with the cosmos. To the biblical mind, man is above all a commanded being, a being of whom demands may be made. The central problem is not: What is being? but rather: What is required of me?

Greek philosophy began in a world without a supreme, living, one God. It could not accept the gods or the example of their conduct. Plato had to break with the gods and to ask: What is the good? And the problem of values was born. And it was the idea of values that took the place of God. Plato lets Socrates ask: What is good? Yet Moses' question was: What does God require of thee? (p. 107)

Personal Indebtedness
Religion has been defined as a feeling of absolute dependence. We come closer to an understanding of religion by defining one of its roots as a sense of personal indebtedness. God is not only a power we depend on, He is a God who demands. Religion begins with the certainty that something is asked of us, that there are ends which are in need of us. Unlike all other values, moral and religious ends evoke in us a sense of obligation. (p. 109)

"I am commanded---therefore I am. (p. 111)

Failure to understand what is demanded of us is the source of anxiety. The acceptance of our existential debt is the prerequisite for sanity. The world was not made by man. The earth is the Lord's not a derelict. What we own, we owe. "How shall I ever repay to the Lord all his bounties to me!" (Psalm 116:12) (p. 112)

Celebration vs. Entertainment
To be human involves the ability to appreciate as well as the ability to give expression to appreciation. Man may forfeit his sense of the ineffable. To be alive is a commonplace; the sense of radical amazement is gone; the world is familiar, and familiarity does not breed exaltation or even appreciation. Deprived of the ability to praise, modern man is forced to look for entertainment; entertainment is becoming compulsory. The man of our time is losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating, he seeks to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state--it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle. Entertainment is a diversion, a distraction of the attention of the mind from the preoccupations of daily living. (p. 117)


Final Word
Who is man? A being in travail with God's dreams and designs, with God's dream of a world redeemed, of reconciliation of heaven and earth, of a mankind which is truly His image, reflecting His wisdom, justice, and compassion. God's dream is not to be alone, to have mankind as a partner in the drama of continuous creation. By whatever we do, by every act we carry out, we either advance or obstruct the drama of redemption; we either reduce or enhance the power of evil. (p. 119)

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book on philosophical ideas which attempts to answer the age old question of Who Man Is?

Taken from the perspective of the Bible, Abraham Joshua Herschel provides his philosophical thoughts on Who is Man, his being as a human being, and also his ability (and the need) to being human.

Some of the topics that are dealt within the book (these are the names of sections that compose six chapters)[truly, I wish I could compose my own writing here, but am in no good position intellectually to do it for now, so kindly excuse me over it]: To think of man in human terms; Do we live what we are? ; Self-knowledge as part of our being human; The self as a problem; The logic of being human; Definitions of man; What do we seek to know? ; What is being human? ; The necessary components which constitute the essence of being human; The dimension of meaning; The essence of being human; Being and meaning; Being and living; Meaning in quest of man; Transcendent meaning; How to live; To be is to obey; Continuity; Being-challenged-in-the-world; Requiredness; The experience of being asked; Embarrasment; Celebration, etc

The book is pretty well written. There are quite a few things to learn and apply in real life, obviously from such a book. At some of the times I was amazed of the content of the writing. While at other times I could not agree with what was written, being a much-thinking soul that my self tends to be. :P

"The man of our time is losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating, he seeks to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, and act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state - it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle. Entertainment is a diversion, a distraction of the attention of the mind from the preoccupation of daily living. Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.

Celebration is an act of expressing respect or reverence for that which one needs or honors. In modern usage, the term suggests demonstrations, often public demonstrations, of joy and festivity, such as singing, shouting, speechmaking, feasting, and the like. Yet what I mean is not outward ceremony and public demonstration, but rather inward appreciation, lending spiritual form to everyday acts. Its essence is to call attention to the sublime or solemn aspects of living, to rise above the confines of consumption.

To celebrate is to share in a greater joy, to participate in an eternal drama. In acts of consumption the intention is to please our own selves; in acts of celebration the intention is to extol God, the spirit, the source of blessing."

The book, I feel, could be more easily accepted by a theist, but not by an agnostic. But that is it! To a thinking agnostic with an open mind, the book provides lots of material to ponder upon.
More problem occurs when the content is compared with ideas previously held in one's mind from an Eastern Philosophical outlook, or even a spiritual approach. However still, there was quite a lot to learn and contemplate from this book.

[Muhammad Arqum · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stirring inquiry into the nature of man, human being and being human. Succinct, exquisite, eloquent and charming. A philosophical as well as poetic style that is rarely found.

[Abraham Katzoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who is man? The failure to identify himself, to know what is authentic human existence, leads him to assume a false identity, to pretend to be what he is unable to be or to fail to accept what is at the very root of his being. Ignorance about man is not lack of knowledge but false knowledge p6

Man is endowed with an amazing degree of receptivity, conformity, and gullibility. He is never finished, never immutable. Humanity is not something he comes upon in the recesses of the self. He always looks for a model or an example to follow. What determines ones being human is the image one adopts

Suppression’s are the price he pays for being accepted in society. Adjustment involves assenting to odd auspices, concessions of conscience, inevitable hypocrisies. It is, indeed, often “a life of quiet desperation.”

[Brian Wilcox · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wise intellectual, with a vivid, reverential religious sensitivity - these qualities appear in this work.

[Artur Benchimol · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has so many pearls of Heschelian thought. I highlighted half of it. It's my next favorite after "The Shabbat".

[Ross Jensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

These lectures are exceedingly rich and hence difficult to digest; I am not entirely confident in how best to sum them up, let alone in my four-star rating. That said, Rabbi Heschel’s portrait of what he calls “biblical religion” (and the religious life that it makes possible) is insightful and inspiring, and he does us all a service in distinguishing the biblical understanding of man’s life from both the Greek understanding and the atheistic-existentialist understanding. Accordingly, this slim volume might fruitfully be used as a kind of prolegomenon to philosophical studies that is firmly biblical in its orientation. I do worry that the Rabbi’s important criticisms of Plato, Aristotle, and Heidegger lead him, at times, into a romanticized, individualistic conception of the “challenge”/“problem”/“task” at the core of “being human,” as he puts it; it’s not clear to me that such a conception does justice to the synagogue, the church, and so forth (to, more generally, the “institutional” character of the human scene). But these lectures—challenges themselves—cut deep and are worthy of sustained consideration and engagement.

[Libia Fibilo · Rating 1 out of 5]

L'idea centrale di questo libro è speronare qualunque ragionamento lineare e introdurci questa pletora sermonale tra l'edificazione e il reclutamento. Nelle schiere dove la vaghezza è ipso facto poesia, l'inconcludenza pensiero profondo e l'oscurità indice dell'uomo sopraffatto dall'infinita, ineffabile, irraggiungibile pregnanza di significato, o di nullità, o di libertà di una vera essenza, eccovi il signor Joshua.

Spero almeno che abbia scritto questo libro da ubriaco, almeno qualche piacere qualcuno che ha un qualche tipo di rapporto con questo libro l'ha avuto. Di vin santo, intendo, con qualche cantuccio per la botta glicemica.

[John Laliberte · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing book - only 119 pages, but it contains volumes of insights of the wonder of God's call to humanity. For example, near the end Rabbi Heshel writes: "The Bible is not a book about God; it is a book about man." It seems that if we understood that and lived it, we would have more unity in our civil and religious life... and humanity would be so much better for it.

Thank Rabbi for your gift.

[Maurizio Manco · Rating 3 out of 5]

"L’enigma dell’essere umano non sta in ciò che egli è, ma in ciò che egli è capace di essere." (pp. 69, 70)

"Nessuna teoria sulla insolubilità della domanda sul significato potrà sradicare l’interesse che l’uomo nutre per esso." (p. 121)

"Essere uomo significa essere un problema." (p. 175)

[Mateusz Janiszewski · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poetycki język autora w jakiś sposób ratuje tę chaotyczną i w mojej opinii kiepską filozoficznie pozycję. Ponadto wobec filozofa, nawet będącego rabinem, oczekiwałoby się minimalnej abstrakcji od własnej tradycji, odpowiadając na tak ogólne pytanie, jak "Kim jest człowiek?".

[Wesley Person · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetic, this book is filled with gems. It was hard not to underline every passage. This book will provoke thoughts and challenge preconceived notions. Rabbi Herschel writing is simple but profound. I will be going back to this text for inspiration and source for meditation.

[Tonayo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Deep and interesting perspectives here, but fairly convoluted language, which made it harder to grasp his meaning.

[Unpil · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I have read this year. An absolute must for both the religious and non-religious. We must cease to remain merely in being; we must start living. And we must celebrate.

[Ava · Rating 4 out of 5]

He knows me

[Marti · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this in college, and these many years later the question and the answers remain with me.

Pg. 28:
We ask: What is man? Yet the true question should be: Who is man? As a thing man is explicable; as a person he is both a mystery and a surprise. As a thing he is finite; as a person he is inexhaustible?

And the first answer to the question: Who is man? is that he is a being who asks questions concerning himself. It is in asking such questions that man discovers that he is a person, and it is the kind of questions he asks that reveals his condition.

Pg 38:
To discover more the hospitality of being, one mus cultivate the art of reaching beyond oneself.

Pg 45:
For man to be means to be with other human beings. His existence is coexistence.

Pg 46
I become a person when I begin to reciprocate.

Pg 57
It is a most significant fact that man is not sufficient to himself, that life is not meaningful to him unless it is serving an end beyond itself, unless it is of value to someone else.

Pg 59
Human existence cannot derive its ultimate meaning from society, because society itself is in need of meaning.

Pg 75
Life is a partnership of God and man...

Pg 87
Man's true fulfillment depends upon communion with that which transcends him.

Pg 92
We can only live the truth if we have the power to die for it.

Pg 94
Reflection alone will not procure self-understanding. The human situation is disclosed in the thick of living. The deed is the distillation of the self.

Pg 98-99
Being is obedience, a response. "Thou art" precedes "I am." I am because I am called upon to be...
Living involves acceptance of meaning, obedience, and commitment...
A person is responsible for what he is, not only for what he does...
Life is clay, and character is form...
The goal is to lend shape to existence, to endow all of life with form.

Pg 103
[Man] is the knot in which heaven and earth are interlaced.

Pg 113
How embarrassing for man to have been created in the likeness of God and to be unable to recognize him!

Pg 114
I shudder at the thought of society ruled by people who are absolutely certain of their wisdom, by people to whom everything in the world is crystal-clear, whose minds know no mystery, no uncertainty.

Pg 119
Who is man? A being in travail with God's dreams and designs, with God's dream of a world redeemed, of reconciliation of heaven and earth, of a mankind which is truly His image, reflecting His wisdom, justice, and compassion. God's dream is not to be alone, to have mankind as a partner in the drama of continuous creation. By whatever we do, by every act we carry out, we either advance or obstruct the drama of redemption; we either reduce of enhance the power of evil.

[Micah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This little volume is probably the best introduction to Heschel's theology available. I mean, Man is Not Alone and God in Search of Man are far more comprehensive and in-depth, but for someone who just wants to get their feet a little bit wet and still understand Heschel's thought, this is the book to read as it covers most of his primary themes and concerns in just over 100 beautifully written pages. Also, the last paragraph is one of my favorite things ever written: “Who is man? A being in travail with God’s dreams and designs, with God’s dream of a world redeemed, of reconciliation of heaven and earth, of a mankind which is truly His image, reflecting His wisdom, justice, and compassion. God’s dream is not to be alone, to have mankind as a partner in the drama of continuous creation. By whatever we do, by every act we carry out, we either advance or obstruct the drama of redemption; we either reduce or enhance the power of evil.”

The whole book is full of gems like that. Highly recommended.

[Bill Kte'pi · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Animals are content when their needs are satisfied; man insists not only on being satisfied but also on being able to satisfy, on being a need not simply on having needs. Personal needs come and go, but one anxiety remains: Am I needed? There is no human being who has not been moved by that anxiety."

[TJ]

Too heady for me

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

hard cover with dustjacket good condition

[Mike F · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the great lessons from religious wisdom has had its value diminished vastly in modernity. Heschel brings being human back to the fore. Humanity benefits!