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Being Human: Bodies, Minds, Persons
What is consciousness? Is the mind a machine? What makes each of us a person? How do our bodies relate to our minds?
In this deeply engaging exploration of what it means to be human, Rowan Williams addresses these frequently asked questions with lucid meditations that draw from findings in neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, and literature. Then he presses on to ask, Might faith be necessary to human flourishing? If so, why? And how can a traditional Christian practice—namely, silence—help us advance on the path to human maturity?
The book ends with a brief but profound meditation on Christ’s ascension, inviting readers to consider how, through Jesus, our humanity in all its variety and vulnerability has been transfigured and taken into the heart of the divine life.
Being Human is a book that readers of all religious persuasions will find both challenging and highly rewarding. Questions at the end of each chapter encourage personal reflection or group discussion.
In this deeply engaging exploration of what it means to be human, Rowan Williams addresses these frequently asked questions with lucid meditations that draw from findings in neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, and literature. Then he presses on to ask, Might faith be necessary to human flourishing? If so, why? And how can a traditional Christian practice—namely, silence—help us advance on the path to human maturity?
The book ends with a brief but profound meditation on Christ’s ascension, inviting readers to consider how, through Jesus, our humanity in all its variety and vulnerability has been transfigured and taken into the heart of the divine life.
Being Human is a book that readers of all religious persuasions will find both challenging and highly rewarding. Questions at the end of each chapter encourage personal reflection or group discussion.
128 pages, Paperback
Published March 15, 2018
101 people are currently reading
686 people want to read
About the author
Rowan Williams
260 books337 followersRowan Douglas Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouth, is an Anglican bishop, poet, and theologian. He was Archbishop of Canterbury from December 2002-2012, and is now Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge and Chancellor of the University of South Wales.
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August 12, 2022
My first Rowan Williams book, but I expect the first of many. This one is the 3rd in a trilogy, and I plan to soon read the other two (Being Christian, Being Disciples). He seems to be of that rare breed of Christian theologians who combines intellect and erudition with a concern for pastoral care, expounding on deep concepts clearly and with humility.
December 24, 2018
Rowan Williams is, in addition to the former Archbishop of Canterbury, an accomplished preacher and minister, and one of the foremost Christian minds of our era, an astute philosopher with extraordinary familiarity with recent developments in twentieth and twenty-first century philosophy of mind. In many ways—as this slim volume attests to—his philosophical contributions are impressionistic and easily accessible, while nevertheless sustained by deep, rich intellectual reflection evidenced in a selection of easy-to-miss observations and, at the very least, in Williams’s learned references. In this text, the third entry in a series, Williams examines some of the most profound philosophical questions ever to have been posed, questions about consciousness, personhood and personality, minds and bodies, and human nature. To be sure, Williams’s account is not exhaustive; one cannot expect from his brief analyses clear answers to these complex questions nor even an overview of their most pertinent aspects in current philosophical debate. Yet Being Human is indeed an excellent introduction to why, exactly, a Christian thinker like Williams is interested in such questions and, more importantly, why how we answer them matters so much to each and every one of us.
Williams embarks on his analysis with an overview of the problem of consciousness. Consciousness, he vociferously maintains, is neither a fictional construct—and thus “mistaken,” the word Williams uses to articulate this view, i.e. that we are mistaken to think consciousness is an actual phenomenon—nor mechanistic, i.e. that the brain is a machine and consciousness is thus mechanical in that it works in terms of inputs and outputs. The metaphor of the machine, Williams says, is hyperbolically reductionist; in fact, he finds numerous philosophical and scientific claims about consciousness overly reductionist and, even, posited in a type of bad faith: “if somebody tells you that x is ‘only’ really y, that’s very attractive. . . . You have admitted somebody to an inner circle” (23). Positively, Williams therefore claims that consciousness has four interwoven and rather common-sense components: it is located, it is relational, it consists of a continuous narrative, and it is shared via symbolic speech, vocalized or otherwise. “To be conscious, to be part of this narrative, relational, localized life,” Williams explains, “is to be a speaker.” Ultimately, Williams thinks Christianity has certain lessons to teach us about consciousness. He thus concludes this chapter with a suspicion “that the animus of certain kinds of scientist and philosopher towards [certain] models of consciousness and indeed of freedom, or of personal identity . . . reflects [the sense that consciousness] intrinsically leaves the question of the sacred on the table” (24). The mysterious nature of consciousness that Williams alludes to, in other words, too closely intersects with questions about the divine for many philosophers and scientists.
In the second chapter, Williams tackles the difficult question of personhood. He embarks on his exploration of this question with a short essay from Vladimir Lossky, who proposes that we do not yet have a proper vocabulary—that we as of yet lack a named concept—to describe personhood: namely, that which is “simply one unique instance of its kind and, on the other hand, that quality, whatever it is,” which makes this entity “irreducible to its nature” (29). Since a person is not just her nature, then what makes a person cannot be some particular attribute, like the capacity for reason, to cite one popular example, that a person possesses. In fact, on Lossky’s view, what is unique about the human person is that she exceeds or surpasses her own nature, which is thus distinct from her, while she nevertheless still contains it. Put in simpler terms, human nature means to overstep the very nature that makes us human. Consequently, Williams claims, we can never say that a certain person has the full set of required attributes to be a person and thus deserves our respect, and that a certain other individual lacks particular attributes and thus does not deserve our respect. This is to fundamentally misunderstand personhood.
In addition, Williams reasserts the Christian notion that human persons are, prior to their constitution as conscious selves with narratives to which to lay claim, first in relationship with God. I cannot, he says, find a primordial sense of myself divorced from my relation to God. Given this primordial relation to the divine other, moreover, I cannot lay claim to another person as my own—“their relation to me is not all that is true of them” (37). Perhaps most powerfully in this chapter, Williams concludes that when we talk about respect due humans, this does not mean simply that there is some substance in us that makes us special, some aspect of humanity which we can identify and name as unique. Rather, when we say that all human (or non-human) persons deserve respect, that we should treat all persons as ends, etc., this is an attempt to affirm “a place, a proper place, in relation with others, . . . that we are embedded in relationship” (38). Each of us has value because we are seen and addressed with love, “ideally, the love we experience humanly and socially, but, beyond and behind this, always and unconditionally the love of God” (38). This defense of the infinite and irreducible value of all persons is, I think, dynamic and powerful in a way philosophical ethics cannot account for.
Chapter three addresses the traditional philosophical problem of mind-body dualism which, in recent years, in part due to the influence of transhumanism and futurism, has re-appeared as a topical cultural issue. Can we, like Robert Ford of Westworld, for example, distill our selves—i.e. the content of our minds, often seen as the locus of our personhood—to data points that one can upload to a computer where we can “live forever”? Such an attitude betrays Cartesian dualism, which much of twentieth century philosophy worked hard to rebuke. Williams, bolstered by the Christian tradition, likewise rejects such dualism and explains lucidly how we think and know with our bodies. To ride a bike, to learn to play the cello—these activities require you to learn “a set of habits which your body activates. You learn to respond or resonate to your environment in a particular way” (52). When you learn with your body, “you learn to accommodate [yourself] to a complex set of stimuli which you probably couldn’t ever tabulate in full. People who learn crafts learn very much in this way” (52). Importantly, Williams links the notion that we can only really learn and know with our minds to an overemphasis on microcosmic analysis and control; whereas the view that we learn and know with both our mind and our body appropriately fuses microcosmic attention to specific problems and macrocosmic awareness of broader patterns, creative horizons, and connections that may not serve functional or practical purposes, the view that prioritizes, perhaps exclusively, the role of the mind tends to imply that we, as knowers, encounter “problem after problem, situation after situation,” which each demand specific solutions to the specific issues before us (51). This view, Williams claims with reference to the work of Canadian philosopher Philip Shepherd, “brackets out the actual process by which we learn to know most of what we know” (51-52). Most provocatively in this chapter, Williams connects the first view, that of mind-body fusion, as it were, with the Christian notion of incarnation. That God became one of us, embodied as a human person with all the bodily limitations each of us possesses, reminds us that “the way up is the way down” (62). In other words, Williams tells us, the only way to learn more about the spiritual realm involves an appreciation for “one’s own mortality and physicality,” an appreciation that “God has spoken and acted in a very particular social, historical, and material context: that is, in the life of Jesus” (63). Embodied divinity reflects the fact that we mere mortals are, likewise, embodied, and that our bodies are more than just vessels in which our “true” personhood temporarily resides.
In my view, the final two chapters of Being Human are less focused and persuasive than the first three. The penultimate chapter addresses four themes—autonomy, passion, time, and mortality—which Williams identifies as important to human maturity. This discussion, while learned, is far too brief and feels like an excursion from previous chapters. Nevertheless, Williams does offer a noteworthy defense of difficulty in relation to time in this chapter. Difficulty takes time to overcome, and insofar as this effort imposes discipline, it incites us to think less in terms of short-term solutions to immediate problems and more in terms of our broader life projects. When we take the time to master a craft, an essay, a piece of music, we cultivate patience and the awareness of “another world, another culture, another person,” such as the reader of my prospective essay or the writer of the music I seek to learn (65). Time, Williams perceptively notes, can build solidarity in this way, and in Christianity, time is central. Most notably, God enters into time via the incarnation, and Christians celebrate time ritually in the different ecclesial seasons of the year and on holy days. A Christian view of time, Williams demonstrates, sharply contrasts the more common notion of time in a late capitalist market-driven milieu. On this latter view, time is a scarce resource, a “valuable commodity, every moment of which has to be made to yield its maximum possible result, so you can’t afford to stop.” Time is used up, not celebrated or remembered, and always has in its cross-hairs our next objective. Ideally, in a Christian context, time allows us to return to events or to people in history whom we may encounter, each time, in an entirely new way, and thus learn what we hitherto missed. I feel this most pointedly around Christmas; each Advent, it seems, I come to see Christmas in a new, transformative way, and thus find my faith rejuvenated and refreshed.
The final chapter explores silence, which Williams likewise situates in relation to Christianity and to secular modern culture. For Williams, silence plays a central role in prayer, and he compares the type of silence wherein God is present in prayer to Buddhist traditions of meditation. His passionate defense of silence opens up for Christian readers a new way to understand prayer in which one allows God to enter into one’s life in meditative silence. Silence, he insists, does powerful spiritual work, and we would do well to cultivate more silent moments in our lives.
On a more personal note, Being Human best condenses in layperson’s terms the types of philosophical problems I am interested in and the Christian perspective from which I often explore those problems. While Williams’s introduction to issues of consciousness, personhood, mind-body dualism, time, and silence is not perfect, he lucidly and astutely examines such themes with extraordinary aplomb. In the end, his conversational tone belies the fact that Williams rejects some of the foremost ideas in contemporary philosophy of mind and presents a radically different notion of what it means to be human in this little book.
Williams embarks on his analysis with an overview of the problem of consciousness. Consciousness, he vociferously maintains, is neither a fictional construct—and thus “mistaken,” the word Williams uses to articulate this view, i.e. that we are mistaken to think consciousness is an actual phenomenon—nor mechanistic, i.e. that the brain is a machine and consciousness is thus mechanical in that it works in terms of inputs and outputs. The metaphor of the machine, Williams says, is hyperbolically reductionist; in fact, he finds numerous philosophical and scientific claims about consciousness overly reductionist and, even, posited in a type of bad faith: “if somebody tells you that x is ‘only’ really y, that’s very attractive. . . . You have admitted somebody to an inner circle” (23). Positively, Williams therefore claims that consciousness has four interwoven and rather common-sense components: it is located, it is relational, it consists of a continuous narrative, and it is shared via symbolic speech, vocalized or otherwise. “To be conscious, to be part of this narrative, relational, localized life,” Williams explains, “is to be a speaker.” Ultimately, Williams thinks Christianity has certain lessons to teach us about consciousness. He thus concludes this chapter with a suspicion “that the animus of certain kinds of scientist and philosopher towards [certain] models of consciousness and indeed of freedom, or of personal identity . . . reflects [the sense that consciousness] intrinsically leaves the question of the sacred on the table” (24). The mysterious nature of consciousness that Williams alludes to, in other words, too closely intersects with questions about the divine for many philosophers and scientists.
In the second chapter, Williams tackles the difficult question of personhood. He embarks on his exploration of this question with a short essay from Vladimir Lossky, who proposes that we do not yet have a proper vocabulary—that we as of yet lack a named concept—to describe personhood: namely, that which is “simply one unique instance of its kind and, on the other hand, that quality, whatever it is,” which makes this entity “irreducible to its nature” (29). Since a person is not just her nature, then what makes a person cannot be some particular attribute, like the capacity for reason, to cite one popular example, that a person possesses. In fact, on Lossky’s view, what is unique about the human person is that she exceeds or surpasses her own nature, which is thus distinct from her, while she nevertheless still contains it. Put in simpler terms, human nature means to overstep the very nature that makes us human. Consequently, Williams claims, we can never say that a certain person has the full set of required attributes to be a person and thus deserves our respect, and that a certain other individual lacks particular attributes and thus does not deserve our respect. This is to fundamentally misunderstand personhood.
In addition, Williams reasserts the Christian notion that human persons are, prior to their constitution as conscious selves with narratives to which to lay claim, first in relationship with God. I cannot, he says, find a primordial sense of myself divorced from my relation to God. Given this primordial relation to the divine other, moreover, I cannot lay claim to another person as my own—“their relation to me is not all that is true of them” (37). Perhaps most powerfully in this chapter, Williams concludes that when we talk about respect due humans, this does not mean simply that there is some substance in us that makes us special, some aspect of humanity which we can identify and name as unique. Rather, when we say that all human (or non-human) persons deserve respect, that we should treat all persons as ends, etc., this is an attempt to affirm “a place, a proper place, in relation with others, . . . that we are embedded in relationship” (38). Each of us has value because we are seen and addressed with love, “ideally, the love we experience humanly and socially, but, beyond and behind this, always and unconditionally the love of God” (38). This defense of the infinite and irreducible value of all persons is, I think, dynamic and powerful in a way philosophical ethics cannot account for.
Chapter three addresses the traditional philosophical problem of mind-body dualism which, in recent years, in part due to the influence of transhumanism and futurism, has re-appeared as a topical cultural issue. Can we, like Robert Ford of Westworld, for example, distill our selves—i.e. the content of our minds, often seen as the locus of our personhood—to data points that one can upload to a computer where we can “live forever”? Such an attitude betrays Cartesian dualism, which much of twentieth century philosophy worked hard to rebuke. Williams, bolstered by the Christian tradition, likewise rejects such dualism and explains lucidly how we think and know with our bodies. To ride a bike, to learn to play the cello—these activities require you to learn “a set of habits which your body activates. You learn to respond or resonate to your environment in a particular way” (52). When you learn with your body, “you learn to accommodate [yourself] to a complex set of stimuli which you probably couldn’t ever tabulate in full. People who learn crafts learn very much in this way” (52). Importantly, Williams links the notion that we can only really learn and know with our minds to an overemphasis on microcosmic analysis and control; whereas the view that we learn and know with both our mind and our body appropriately fuses microcosmic attention to specific problems and macrocosmic awareness of broader patterns, creative horizons, and connections that may not serve functional or practical purposes, the view that prioritizes, perhaps exclusively, the role of the mind tends to imply that we, as knowers, encounter “problem after problem, situation after situation,” which each demand specific solutions to the specific issues before us (51). This view, Williams claims with reference to the work of Canadian philosopher Philip Shepherd, “brackets out the actual process by which we learn to know most of what we know” (51-52). Most provocatively in this chapter, Williams connects the first view, that of mind-body fusion, as it were, with the Christian notion of incarnation. That God became one of us, embodied as a human person with all the bodily limitations each of us possesses, reminds us that “the way up is the way down” (62). In other words, Williams tells us, the only way to learn more about the spiritual realm involves an appreciation for “one’s own mortality and physicality,” an appreciation that “God has spoken and acted in a very particular social, historical, and material context: that is, in the life of Jesus” (63). Embodied divinity reflects the fact that we mere mortals are, likewise, embodied, and that our bodies are more than just vessels in which our “true” personhood temporarily resides.
In my view, the final two chapters of Being Human are less focused and persuasive than the first three. The penultimate chapter addresses four themes—autonomy, passion, time, and mortality—which Williams identifies as important to human maturity. This discussion, while learned, is far too brief and feels like an excursion from previous chapters. Nevertheless, Williams does offer a noteworthy defense of difficulty in relation to time in this chapter. Difficulty takes time to overcome, and insofar as this effort imposes discipline, it incites us to think less in terms of short-term solutions to immediate problems and more in terms of our broader life projects. When we take the time to master a craft, an essay, a piece of music, we cultivate patience and the awareness of “another world, another culture, another person,” such as the reader of my prospective essay or the writer of the music I seek to learn (65). Time, Williams perceptively notes, can build solidarity in this way, and in Christianity, time is central. Most notably, God enters into time via the incarnation, and Christians celebrate time ritually in the different ecclesial seasons of the year and on holy days. A Christian view of time, Williams demonstrates, sharply contrasts the more common notion of time in a late capitalist market-driven milieu. On this latter view, time is a scarce resource, a “valuable commodity, every moment of which has to be made to yield its maximum possible result, so you can’t afford to stop.” Time is used up, not celebrated or remembered, and always has in its cross-hairs our next objective. Ideally, in a Christian context, time allows us to return to events or to people in history whom we may encounter, each time, in an entirely new way, and thus learn what we hitherto missed. I feel this most pointedly around Christmas; each Advent, it seems, I come to see Christmas in a new, transformative way, and thus find my faith rejuvenated and refreshed.
The final chapter explores silence, which Williams likewise situates in relation to Christianity and to secular modern culture. For Williams, silence plays a central role in prayer, and he compares the type of silence wherein God is present in prayer to Buddhist traditions of meditation. His passionate defense of silence opens up for Christian readers a new way to understand prayer in which one allows God to enter into one’s life in meditative silence. Silence, he insists, does powerful spiritual work, and we would do well to cultivate more silent moments in our lives.
On a more personal note, Being Human best condenses in layperson’s terms the types of philosophical problems I am interested in and the Christian perspective from which I often explore those problems. While Williams’s introduction to issues of consciousness, personhood, mind-body dualism, time, and silence is not perfect, he lucidly and astutely examines such themes with extraordinary aplomb. In the end, his conversational tone belies the fact that Williams rejects some of the foremost ideas in contemporary philosophy of mind and presents a radically different notion of what it means to be human in this little book.
September 13, 2024
It’s good to be human.
May 1, 2020
I was looking for something short to read, and picked this one out with no expectations or knowledge of the author. That being said, I had some hopes about what it'd be about: consciousness, the mind, and what it means to be human.
While the author does offer an intellectually honest and dutiful examination of what that means to him, he does it primarily through a theological lens. This means there is far less of a philosophical and neurological basis for discussing his titular topics (though he does address these early on, briefly).
Now, granted, there is nothing wrong with a theological work per se. But even though William's writing is clean and pleasant and earnest—I actually did not feel there was much that much substance aside from poetical notions of what it means to be a good Christian, which is apparently what his book ultimately boils down to. To me, this negates the value of this book, because it doesn't meet its ostensible raison d'être, but rather advocates for what feels like an under-handed, hidden agenda that he was preaching all along. But I concede I did not read the prior two volumes of his 'trilogy', nor did I know he was a prominent theologian beforehand. So not knowing this is essentially a work of theology is on me, not on the author.
But still, there's something especially irksome about a somewhat promising basic examination of what it means to be conscious in the early chapter—with the the hopefully tacit understanding he'd build upon complexity later to arrive at meaningful insights and conclusions—only to arrive at how 'talking about silence can help one be closer to God.' Not what I signed up for, and frankly, not the best book on theology I've read. (Though I don't read many of those.)
Anyhow, if one is a Christian and wants to think a bit outside the box, they'll probably like this. But for anyone else, this will probably come across as a mealy mouthed attempt at Christian Apologetics under the guise of philosophy and other more secular-centric topics.
While the author does offer an intellectually honest and dutiful examination of what that means to him, he does it primarily through a theological lens. This means there is far less of a philosophical and neurological basis for discussing his titular topics (though he does address these early on, briefly).
Now, granted, there is nothing wrong with a theological work per se. But even though William's writing is clean and pleasant and earnest—I actually did not feel there was much that much substance aside from poetical notions of what it means to be a good Christian, which is apparently what his book ultimately boils down to. To me, this negates the value of this book, because it doesn't meet its ostensible raison d'être, but rather advocates for what feels like an under-handed, hidden agenda that he was preaching all along. But I concede I did not read the prior two volumes of his 'trilogy', nor did I know he was a prominent theologian beforehand. So not knowing this is essentially a work of theology is on me, not on the author.
But still, there's something especially irksome about a somewhat promising basic examination of what it means to be conscious in the early chapter—with the the hopefully tacit understanding he'd build upon complexity later to arrive at meaningful insights and conclusions—only to arrive at how 'talking about silence can help one be closer to God.' Not what I signed up for, and frankly, not the best book on theology I've read. (Though I don't read many of those.)
Anyhow, if one is a Christian and wants to think a bit outside the box, they'll probably like this. But for anyone else, this will probably come across as a mealy mouthed attempt at Christian Apologetics under the guise of philosophy and other more secular-centric topics.
November 21, 2018
Rowan Williams concludes his magnificent "Being" trilogy rather at the beginning; this slim volume is the least overtly "Christian" of the books but sets out to explore the fundamentals of what make us human. Williams interacts with the thought of Iain McGilchrist, Richard Sennett, and Daniel Dennett, among others, as he considers consciousness, personhood, and relationships, drawing upon philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, and theology. Only at the tail end of the book does Williams purposefully bring in a discussion of the Christian faith. This final book in the trilogy did not appeal to me as much as its predecessors, but it is the natural starting point for the three (if I were giving the trilogy to a friend I would say read 1) "Being Human" 2) "Being Christian" 3) "Being Disciples").
February 8, 2022
Delightful
I took my time getting into this book. There was a lot of back and forth. Not because it was bad at all, but because it was Rowan Williams. Dense thought provoking prose, but at the end of the day a refreshing reminder of some of life’s simplest truths about who we are as human beings.
I took my time getting into this book. There was a lot of back and forth. Not because it was bad at all, but because it was Rowan Williams. Dense thought provoking prose, but at the end of the day a refreshing reminder of some of life’s simplest truths about who we are as human beings.
February 28, 2021
Being Human is the no doubt the densest of Williams' Being series. It's here that Williams' proves his intellect, venturing more into philosophical than devotional theology -- which is fine by me. I felt stretched in new and important ways, and I'll return to the sections that went over my head.
Williams' last chapter, entitled "Silence and Human Maturity," is the highpoint of the whole book. I was glad to have read some mystics and contemplatives before it, because I was able to spot the choir that Williams' joins in (I'm thinking specifically of The Cloud of Unknowing, which argues extensively for the need to "Let God occur," as Williams interprets it).
Here is one of my favorite quotes:
"God is that environment, that encounter, that we will never get to the bottom of and that we will never control, and that, try as we may, we will never absorb, because God is God and we are what God makes and loves and works on. So to understand that there's something about silence that is profoundly at the heart of being human just begins to open up the recognition that being Christian requires us more than ever to come to terms with those moments when silence is imposed on us, when we face what we can't control" (92-93).
Williams' last chapter, entitled "Silence and Human Maturity," is the highpoint of the whole book. I was glad to have read some mystics and contemplatives before it, because I was able to spot the choir that Williams' joins in (I'm thinking specifically of The Cloud of Unknowing, which argues extensively for the need to "Let God occur," as Williams interprets it).
Here is one of my favorite quotes:
"God is that environment, that encounter, that we will never get to the bottom of and that we will never control, and that, try as we may, we will never absorb, because God is God and we are what God makes and loves and works on. So to understand that there's something about silence that is profoundly at the heart of being human just begins to open up the recognition that being Christian requires us more than ever to come to terms with those moments when silence is imposed on us, when we face what we can't control" (92-93).
June 18, 2021
I found the second chapter, entitled "What is a person?", to be absolutely brilliant. Specifically, his discussion on humans being 'persons' rather than 'individuals' was great. As humans, we cannot and do not live within our own 'individual' environments separate from others working solitarily to carve out our own space in the world. Instead, we are 'persons' who are in relation to the creator God and to each other. His discussion on how an overly individualistic view results in disengagement from others and how a proper view as person results in an attempt to engage with those whom you are connected with was great. That being said, I found the last few chapters a bit hard to follow and less insightful. And the chapters on consciousness and silence to be alright. So three stars overall, I guess -- its a tough book to rate. Rowan is brilliant, though.
December 21, 2019
This book reads like a pastoral riff on the themes found in Williams’ “Edge of Words”. It’s marvelous.
May 1, 2020
A brief but substantial examination of a Christian understanding of human nature. Williams first rejects the efforts of certain neuroscientists and philosophers to reduce mind and consciousness to a mechanistic phenomenon, and then articulates four positive points about consciousness: it is located, relational, experienced as a continuous narrative, and is a shared language between people.
He then follows Vladimir Lossky in trying to articulate the way in which human nature always exceeds the descriptive parameters used to define it; how we are somehow established in our nature by “overstepping” the natural facts about us, while still containing those facts within ourselves. The shared nature of our consciousness—the way in which we mean something to one another and define ourselves in the context of our relatedness to others—makes it impossible to coherently abstract something called “the individual” from this field. Humans are more properly described as Persons than as Individuals; persons are embedded in relationships, dependent on one another and on their ultimate source, while individuals can have no grasp of finitude or a lack of total control over the self and the environment.
Williams ends with a discussion of the importance of silence to Christian life. Silence is not about being “stifled” by someone else, but rather about an experience of something that cannot be readily integrated into one’s understanding of reality. Contemplative silence connotes astonishment, vulnerability, and openness before God.
He then follows Vladimir Lossky in trying to articulate the way in which human nature always exceeds the descriptive parameters used to define it; how we are somehow established in our nature by “overstepping” the natural facts about us, while still containing those facts within ourselves. The shared nature of our consciousness—the way in which we mean something to one another and define ourselves in the context of our relatedness to others—makes it impossible to coherently abstract something called “the individual” from this field. Humans are more properly described as Persons than as Individuals; persons are embedded in relationships, dependent on one another and on their ultimate source, while individuals can have no grasp of finitude or a lack of total control over the self and the environment.
Williams ends with a discussion of the importance of silence to Christian life. Silence is not about being “stifled” by someone else, but rather about an experience of something that cannot be readily integrated into one’s understanding of reality. Contemplative silence connotes astonishment, vulnerability, and openness before God.
August 28, 2024
This book started as a tough read for me, partially as it is a tough read, but also because I was reading to catch up/achieve a goal rather than to really feel the depth of this book. This beginning of reading is ironic because as I continue reading this story and n Being Human, I realized that I have fallen in the trap of losing and stunting my humanity to its fullest. I have taken the easy and comfortable way out that is lazy and does not peak the max capacity of living into what it means to be human. And then reading the part when Rowan Williams talks about how he enjoys difficult things (partially humorous since he acknowledges the fact that his writing tendencies can be difficult to read at times), but that by doing difficult things it awakens the humanity inside of you to remain intrigued and to pursue the answer. This book is not at the absolute top of my life (would probably rate it close to a 4.5 if that was on the scale), but nonetheless a great read that is ultimately short though full of lots of depth.
March 23, 2025
If CS Lewis was alive today, this is what he would write.
While I’m not super sure the book is totally unified in structure, it is so dense, important, and beautiful that I don’t really care.
First, Williams shows that being a human is more than being whatever it is that makes up humans on a material level. He doesn’t commit to any particular view of the soul as far as I can tell, but he does distinguish between persons and individuals, and argues we are definitely the former. He also suggests that this personality involves relationality, which might require a divine being to be explained. But he’s pretty careful and cautious in his conclusions (but not timid!).
Second, he deals with some practical matters of what it means to be human and discusses how silence might be an important habit to cultivate in order to fulfill our humanity.
The ending homily on the ascension gives you the feeling of being taken up to heaven yourself as you read it. But he does it in a way that affirms the slimy, grimy humanity that we are all a part of. It’s really something.
While I’m not super sure the book is totally unified in structure, it is so dense, important, and beautiful that I don’t really care.
First, Williams shows that being a human is more than being whatever it is that makes up humans on a material level. He doesn’t commit to any particular view of the soul as far as I can tell, but he does distinguish between persons and individuals, and argues we are definitely the former. He also suggests that this personality involves relationality, which might require a divine being to be explained. But he’s pretty careful and cautious in his conclusions (but not timid!).
Second, he deals with some practical matters of what it means to be human and discusses how silence might be an important habit to cultivate in order to fulfill our humanity.
The ending homily on the ascension gives you the feeling of being taken up to heaven yourself as you read it. But he does it in a way that affirms the slimy, grimy humanity that we are all a part of. It’s really something.
Read
October 23, 2024Definitely a book that’s worth a reread, there’s just too much to intake on the first try. my biggest takeaway for this time is that our person, our humanity, and ourselves, cannot be merely defined from within ourselves.
We are known and named before we know what names are. Even as we are conscious of ourselves, we do that from the perspective that isn’t merely inward. We think of how we’re heard. What we look like. Where we are. Our self is an echo of God’s understanding of us and the world’s.
Really powerful after reading the Anxious Generation, which argues that with technology, we have continually separated ourselves from the physical world and physical real relationships, to our detriment. Combined with Being Human, the argument becomes that we’re not just removing ourselves from reality and community, but we’re losing our own understanding of humanity in the shuffle.
We are known and named before we know what names are. Even as we are conscious of ourselves, we do that from the perspective that isn’t merely inward. We think of how we’re heard. What we look like. Where we are. Our self is an echo of God’s understanding of us and the world’s.
Really powerful after reading the Anxious Generation, which argues that with technology, we have continually separated ourselves from the physical world and physical real relationships, to our detriment. Combined with Being Human, the argument becomes that we’re not just removing ourselves from reality and community, but we’re losing our own understanding of humanity in the shuffle.
April 26, 2021
Packed with integrated, philosophically robust, Theologically luminous, insights shared in an almost meditative, curiosity-sharing tenor. Williams strikes one as a person who has learned to be hospitable even in his way of inviting people to think alongside him.
July 14, 2021
Thoughtful and Challenging
Blending the philosophical and theological, Williams presents his readers with a great summary on what it means to be human and the relationship that exists even within our “selves.” The challenge comes in the final chapter with an invitation to embrace silence; in doing so following in the way of Jesus.
Blending the philosophical and theological, Williams presents his readers with a great summary on what it means to be human and the relationship that exists even within our “selves.” The challenge comes in the final chapter with an invitation to embrace silence; in doing so following in the way of Jesus.
November 27, 2022
I couldn’t read Being Human. I actually went into it with a very open mind, ready to charitably decipher lessons about how we should approach life or thinking about ourselves. But then he talked about computers and philosophy of mind in a way that I think displayed some deep ignorance and my well of charity dried up; here are my complaints from the first five pages.
1. There are two senses in which a thought might be a thought “of” something: it could be that when I picture a fridge in my head this is a copy of a real life fridge but just an imaginary version in my head. On the other hand, even if there are no fridges out in the real world and I picture a fridge, this picture still is a reference to something, namely the collection of experiences or memories or intuitions that combine to form a fridge in my head even though the real world has no fridges. Everyone seems ok to say I’m “thinking of” something when I picture a unicorn even though there aren’t real world unicorns, and I suspect people would be ok with this even if there aren’t any real world pictures of unicorns either, and people just learned what a unicorn was by being told to picture a horse with a horn. It is ONLY in the first sense that the brain being a machine has bearing on whether we have “thoughts of” anything, but he argues that our thoughts not being of anything in the second sense is absurd so we must not have machines for brains. To see this more clearly we can just imagine we’re all brains in vats, and even then our thoughts are still “of” something, which even makes intentionality compatible with holding that consciousness is an illusion.
2. He starts by conflating the mind being a machine with the brain being a machine: the latter is a pretty common claim in (philosophy of mind or) neuroscience and then from that you can get non-machine emergent phenomena like the mind or consciousness
3. He thinks that the claim that the brain is a machine is metaphorical, but it should actually be taken literally. One of his problems with the metaphor is that machines exist in order to solve problems extraneous to themselves, (and I know we’re just arguing about definitions here, but he does seem to be missing something important), but that’s just what man-made machines happen to do because we wouldn’t have a reason for inventing them otherwise. We have complete design control over all the machines we’ve ever made so of course the “purpose” of a machine will almost always be translated into the goal of some human. That doesn’t mean though that the objective purpose of these machines is to fulfill the role they were designed for: that’s just how we humans happen to view them. When Percy Lebaron spencer was trying to design magnets that accelerated particles and accidentally in the process created a box which quickly heats whatever’s in it, we call the microwave one of the most important household inventions of all time rather than a failure. It very explicitly did not solve the problem it was designed for; it had some completely unrelated purpose, and that was awesome and that was useful. Taking this microwave example a step further, instead of a person accidentally throwing together the parts that would make a microwave, we can imagine the universe having a supernova which really really luckily threw together the parts which made a microwave. This seems like a perfectly good machine to me, even though the supernova has no use for it AND even if humans hadn’t evolved yet. It’s just a system that efficiently and reliably does something which would otherwise be extremely hard to do. In this way, human brains are a machine even though no one else has any purpose for them. They were created by nature so of course nature doesn’t have a purpose for them (at least not in a literal sense), and they’re exactly the type of machine which has a sense of self and hence is interested in solving internal problems. His entire first argument against the brain being a machine is that the machines can’t solve problems about themselves while relying on an unsophisticated conception of “machine” as the entirety of his evidence
4. He claims that physicalism ignores wholism and emergent phenomena but every physicalist I’ve ever talked to has a very good account of both of those, with some thinking that they’re illusory (nothing can actually be more than the sum of its parts) and almost thinking that they’re not (in the end, consciousness just reduces to the physical even though it’s not physical itself). I think the good version of physicalism is this second version and he seems to completely ignore that it’s an option
5. The reason people want to say that the brain is a machine is to 1. emphasize that it’s made of the same sort of stuff as everything else in the universe is, i.e. it makes the mind compatible with physicalism, and 2. Point out that processes that happen in our head are in fact automatic: when a certain subset of neurons in our brain light up in a certain way, that quickly and reliably causes another subset of neurons to light up in a certain way, and that quickly and reliably is when we report feeling or thinking a certain way, much the same how turning one gear turns another gear makes some output in a machine. So when he says that it’s nonsensical to say that consciousness is a machine, it really seems to me he’s talking about something unrelated to these two, in which case he’s just missing the point
6. Plenty of those who think the brain is a machine think we still have consciousness! The global broadcast theory of mind (which is also the most popular theory of mind amongst professional philosophers of mind) is a characterization of the mechanics of consciousness: consciousness is what happens when a given subset of the mind deems some information/phenomenon really important and wants to broadcast it so the rest of the mind has access: this broadcasting is what feels like our inner monologue/mind’s eye. All of this is just totally compatible with the idea that everything going on reduces to physics (even though of course the language of physics is wholly unequipped to actually describe the sort of stuff which is being globally broadcast which reduces to it (qualia))
7. The whole section on the word “mistake” is just really a bit silly. Of course we can sensibly say that consciousness is a mistake even if we think humans don’t have a consciousness (which is a much more extreme position that what I believe) since we can just mean by mistake that philosophy would be more productive with a different notion of consciousness: this works even if the constituent parts of philosophy are like dogs or computers instead of people. That entire section felt like the epitome to me of people who use words in ways that feel good without doing any serious analysis of whether the vague contexts that they’re using those words in are the right ones, i.e. he’s writing poetically while claiming to be getting at some precise analysis of what machines are/aren’t, and poetry is simply not the tool for accessing precise external truths
8. Man-made machines are just significantly more capable than he seems to be aware of? Like modern AI can already generate text that makes it seem like it’s conscious and knows what it is and doesn’t want to die (see the Google engineer who got fired for claiming his AI was conscious). Now I don’t think they’re actually complex enough yet to have a genuine sense of self, but soon (in our lifetime) we’ll just have machines which were built for no purpose other than our curiosity which will work to learn and improve themselves and change their goals over time and try to help others when it doesn’t conflict with its own self-preservation and describe its own internal experiences to us and tell us what choices it’s making and why. In order for him to truly be against the idea that our brains are machines, he would have to explain why these AI aren’t conscious. He either totally misses this crucial responsibility or executes on it sufficiently poorly that I didn’t recognize his answer.
1. There are two senses in which a thought might be a thought “of” something: it could be that when I picture a fridge in my head this is a copy of a real life fridge but just an imaginary version in my head. On the other hand, even if there are no fridges out in the real world and I picture a fridge, this picture still is a reference to something, namely the collection of experiences or memories or intuitions that combine to form a fridge in my head even though the real world has no fridges. Everyone seems ok to say I’m “thinking of” something when I picture a unicorn even though there aren’t real world unicorns, and I suspect people would be ok with this even if there aren’t any real world pictures of unicorns either, and people just learned what a unicorn was by being told to picture a horse with a horn. It is ONLY in the first sense that the brain being a machine has bearing on whether we have “thoughts of” anything, but he argues that our thoughts not being of anything in the second sense is absurd so we must not have machines for brains. To see this more clearly we can just imagine we’re all brains in vats, and even then our thoughts are still “of” something, which even makes intentionality compatible with holding that consciousness is an illusion.
2. He starts by conflating the mind being a machine with the brain being a machine: the latter is a pretty common claim in (philosophy of mind or) neuroscience and then from that you can get non-machine emergent phenomena like the mind or consciousness
3. He thinks that the claim that the brain is a machine is metaphorical, but it should actually be taken literally. One of his problems with the metaphor is that machines exist in order to solve problems extraneous to themselves, (and I know we’re just arguing about definitions here, but he does seem to be missing something important), but that’s just what man-made machines happen to do because we wouldn’t have a reason for inventing them otherwise. We have complete design control over all the machines we’ve ever made so of course the “purpose” of a machine will almost always be translated into the goal of some human. That doesn’t mean though that the objective purpose of these machines is to fulfill the role they were designed for: that’s just how we humans happen to view them. When Percy Lebaron spencer was trying to design magnets that accelerated particles and accidentally in the process created a box which quickly heats whatever’s in it, we call the microwave one of the most important household inventions of all time rather than a failure. It very explicitly did not solve the problem it was designed for; it had some completely unrelated purpose, and that was awesome and that was useful. Taking this microwave example a step further, instead of a person accidentally throwing together the parts that would make a microwave, we can imagine the universe having a supernova which really really luckily threw together the parts which made a microwave. This seems like a perfectly good machine to me, even though the supernova has no use for it AND even if humans hadn’t evolved yet. It’s just a system that efficiently and reliably does something which would otherwise be extremely hard to do. In this way, human brains are a machine even though no one else has any purpose for them. They were created by nature so of course nature doesn’t have a purpose for them (at least not in a literal sense), and they’re exactly the type of machine which has a sense of self and hence is interested in solving internal problems. His entire first argument against the brain being a machine is that the machines can’t solve problems about themselves while relying on an unsophisticated conception of “machine” as the entirety of his evidence
4. He claims that physicalism ignores wholism and emergent phenomena but every physicalist I’ve ever talked to has a very good account of both of those, with some thinking that they’re illusory (nothing can actually be more than the sum of its parts) and almost thinking that they’re not (in the end, consciousness just reduces to the physical even though it’s not physical itself). I think the good version of physicalism is this second version and he seems to completely ignore that it’s an option
5. The reason people want to say that the brain is a machine is to 1. emphasize that it’s made of the same sort of stuff as everything else in the universe is, i.e. it makes the mind compatible with physicalism, and 2. Point out that processes that happen in our head are in fact automatic: when a certain subset of neurons in our brain light up in a certain way, that quickly and reliably causes another subset of neurons to light up in a certain way, and that quickly and reliably is when we report feeling or thinking a certain way, much the same how turning one gear turns another gear makes some output in a machine. So when he says that it’s nonsensical to say that consciousness is a machine, it really seems to me he’s talking about something unrelated to these two, in which case he’s just missing the point
6. Plenty of those who think the brain is a machine think we still have consciousness! The global broadcast theory of mind (which is also the most popular theory of mind amongst professional philosophers of mind) is a characterization of the mechanics of consciousness: consciousness is what happens when a given subset of the mind deems some information/phenomenon really important and wants to broadcast it so the rest of the mind has access: this broadcasting is what feels like our inner monologue/mind’s eye. All of this is just totally compatible with the idea that everything going on reduces to physics (even though of course the language of physics is wholly unequipped to actually describe the sort of stuff which is being globally broadcast which reduces to it (qualia))
7. The whole section on the word “mistake” is just really a bit silly. Of course we can sensibly say that consciousness is a mistake even if we think humans don’t have a consciousness (which is a much more extreme position that what I believe) since we can just mean by mistake that philosophy would be more productive with a different notion of consciousness: this works even if the constituent parts of philosophy are like dogs or computers instead of people. That entire section felt like the epitome to me of people who use words in ways that feel good without doing any serious analysis of whether the vague contexts that they’re using those words in are the right ones, i.e. he’s writing poetically while claiming to be getting at some precise analysis of what machines are/aren’t, and poetry is simply not the tool for accessing precise external truths
8. Man-made machines are just significantly more capable than he seems to be aware of? Like modern AI can already generate text that makes it seem like it’s conscious and knows what it is and doesn’t want to die (see the Google engineer who got fired for claiming his AI was conscious). Now I don’t think they’re actually complex enough yet to have a genuine sense of self, but soon (in our lifetime) we’ll just have machines which were built for no purpose other than our curiosity which will work to learn and improve themselves and change their goals over time and try to help others when it doesn’t conflict with its own self-preservation and describe its own internal experiences to us and tell us what choices it’s making and why. In order for him to truly be against the idea that our brains are machines, he would have to explain why these AI aren’t conscious. He either totally misses this crucial responsibility or executes on it sufficiently poorly that I didn’t recognize his answer.
July 6, 2019
Rowan Williams’ writing is informed, balanced and abstract. It is philosophical in the sense that it reflects on what is, and theological in the sense of putting philosophy, experience and theology together.
I find the chapters on personhood and silence the best, with acute observations and important thougts and perspectives. But I also close the book feeling it is too abstract and too affirming, with not enough challenges or guidance. In no point does it offend, but that also means that though short, even more simplicity and clarity would have been possible.
I find the chapters on personhood and silence the best, with acute observations and important thougts and perspectives. But I also close the book feeling it is too abstract and too affirming, with not enough challenges or guidance. In no point does it offend, but that also means that though short, even more simplicity and clarity would have been possible.
June 5, 2023
I had to read this book for work but it was pretty enjoyable. The author does a really good job at explaining consciousness (or what he believes it to be) in a way that’s very easy to follow along in chapter 1. That’s honestly probably why I’m giving it 3 stars instead of two. In the rest of the chapters he then goes onto explore the different aspects he lists in the title. He does a pretty ok job at these , he introduces what other people think , intersects his own opinion and then moves onto the next part.
The book falls a bit flat because he doesn’t do the best job at intertwining previous discussions. For example, he starts off with consciousness in chapter 1 and essentially leaves it there once the chapter ends. When you’re discussing the body , mind and personhood these are all inextricably linked. However he doesn’t do the best job at intertwining them.
With regards to the religious aspect of the book (Christianity) I would’ve liked to see more. In the last chapter he has a few sections dedicated to speaking about Jesus and how silence relates to Christianity and the way of being which was really interesting to read but I wish he intertwined this throughout the book. Also in the instances he does mention the Christian perspective it would’ve been much more effective for him to include biblical text alongside his opinion / the conclusions he was drawing.
Something that just seemed really irrelevant was in the last paragraph he just randomly mentioned women in the Middle East suffering amongst a list of things and it was unnecessary. Why specifically mention women in the Middle East especially since it had no direct relevance to the book? Anyway, just left a bad taste in my mouth
The book falls a bit flat because he doesn’t do the best job at intertwining previous discussions. For example, he starts off with consciousness in chapter 1 and essentially leaves it there once the chapter ends. When you’re discussing the body , mind and personhood these are all inextricably linked. However he doesn’t do the best job at intertwining them.
With regards to the religious aspect of the book (Christianity) I would’ve liked to see more. In the last chapter he has a few sections dedicated to speaking about Jesus and how silence relates to Christianity and the way of being which was really interesting to read but I wish he intertwined this throughout the book. Also in the instances he does mention the Christian perspective it would’ve been much more effective for him to include biblical text alongside his opinion / the conclusions he was drawing.
Something that just seemed really irrelevant was in the last paragraph he just randomly mentioned women in the Middle East suffering amongst a list of things and it was unnecessary. Why specifically mention women in the Middle East especially since it had no direct relevance to the book? Anyway, just left a bad taste in my mouth
October 22, 2022
A profound reflection on personhood and human flourishing that is both concise and rich, intellectual and pastoral, integrating philosophical and theological elements. I particularly found his consideration of intelligence and silence and maturity thought provoking.
If our personhood is, as Williams says, inherently situated and relational- first to God and then to others, then our knowing in its fullest sense should help make us recognisably human to one another. This form of knowing, which he characterises as right brain, embodied and horizon-expanding knowledge, helps us navigate and inhabit an environment, contrasted with analytical, problem solving knowledge that tends to reduce things to a problem. Intelligence, then, in its fullest sense has a physical element to it, where we learn to inhabit an environment over time and with practice.
Similarly to how disembodied, analytical thinking can reduce something multifaceted and complex to a set of problems, Williams observes that there are some moments where words cannot adequately explain or 'domesticate' a feeling or experience. Before God, sometimes our silence is most adequate in 'letting God be God'. Silence and contemplation have been part of the Christian spiritual disciplines for millenia, and we have no less need of them now.
My first Rowan Williams read but won't be my last
If our personhood is, as Williams says, inherently situated and relational- first to God and then to others, then our knowing in its fullest sense should help make us recognisably human to one another. This form of knowing, which he characterises as right brain, embodied and horizon-expanding knowledge, helps us navigate and inhabit an environment, contrasted with analytical, problem solving knowledge that tends to reduce things to a problem. Intelligence, then, in its fullest sense has a physical element to it, where we learn to inhabit an environment over time and with practice.
Similarly to how disembodied, analytical thinking can reduce something multifaceted and complex to a set of problems, Williams observes that there are some moments where words cannot adequately explain or 'domesticate' a feeling or experience. Before God, sometimes our silence is most adequate in 'letting God be God'. Silence and contemplation have been part of the Christian spiritual disciplines for millenia, and we have no less need of them now.
My first Rowan Williams read but won't be my last
January 2, 2019
Having read, reviewed and enjoyed (in different ways and very different situations/seasons!) Rowan Williams’ little books Being Christian and Being Disciples, I was very excited to be in the meeting where SPCK decide to publish Being Human. Having left SPCK, and continued to read around the topic, I’m really rather glad that Rowan has written a good book on the question that I hope to write a PhD on.
But I digress.
Let’s introduce this review in Rowan’s own words:
“This book completes a sort of unintended trilogy, following earlier books, Being Christian and Being Disciples. It is less about the basics of Christian belief and behaviour and more about the sort of questions in our culture that make us wonder what ‘real’ humanity is like and whether our most central ideas about what is human are under threat in this environment”
Amen.
https://www.thomascreedy.co.uk/book-r...
But I digress.
Let’s introduce this review in Rowan’s own words:
“This book completes a sort of unintended trilogy, following earlier books, Being Christian and Being Disciples. It is less about the basics of Christian belief and behaviour and more about the sort of questions in our culture that make us wonder what ‘real’ humanity is like and whether our most central ideas about what is human are under threat in this environment”
Amen.
https://www.thomascreedy.co.uk/book-r...
May 28, 2025
"Jesus has gone before us into the darkest places of human reality. He has picked up the sounds that he hears. And think of what those sounds are: the quiet cries of the abused child; the despairing tears of a refugee, of a woman in the Middle East, surrounded and threatened by different kinds of mindless violence; the fear of a man watching a flood or hurricane destroying his family’s livelihood. Jesus picks up the cry of the hungry and the forgotten. He hears the human beings that nobody else hears. And he calls to us to say, ‘You listen too.’ He makes his own the cynical dismissal of faith by the sophisticated, and sees through it to the underlying need. He makes his own the joy and celebration and thanksgiving of human beings going about their routine work and finding their fulfilment in ordinary, prosaic, everyday love and faithfulness. All of that is taken ‘To the throne of Godhead, / To the Father’s breast’, to the burning heart of truth and reality."
December 15, 2020
Disclaimer: I am not a Christian nor an atheist. I am a militant agnostic.
This is a very eclectic and interesting book that looks at a variety of philosophical issues from the perspective of the most competent Christian thinker that I've come across.
Refreshingly exact and self-aware, this book provides a perspective of humanity as defined by empathy and vulnerability. Rather than make grand proclamations Rowan Williams is happy to look at what we don't know and how we can manage our inadequacies with mutual humility and respect.
It's humanistic themes for resonate with anyone that wants to be a decent person.
I did find that he slipped into theology a little bit more than I was expecting, but not so much as to ruin the experience.
Although I can't agree with all of his conclusions, I do think that the Christianity that he advocates is Christianity in its best possible form.
This is a very eclectic and interesting book that looks at a variety of philosophical issues from the perspective of the most competent Christian thinker that I've come across.
Refreshingly exact and self-aware, this book provides a perspective of humanity as defined by empathy and vulnerability. Rather than make grand proclamations Rowan Williams is happy to look at what we don't know and how we can manage our inadequacies with mutual humility and respect.
It's humanistic themes for resonate with anyone that wants to be a decent person.
I did find that he slipped into theology a little bit more than I was expecting, but not so much as to ruin the experience.
Although I can't agree with all of his conclusions, I do think that the Christianity that he advocates is Christianity in its best possible form.
February 21, 2023
A rebuttal of the gnostic tendency to condemn the body in the favour of the purely spiritual or transcendent. This is of vital importance today when the forces of capital wish to dissolve all difference between persons and time in favour of an homogenised supply of ever-ready labour. (See also Augusto del Noce for a demonstration of how gnosticism is the intellectual predecessor of nihilist bourgeois materialism).
I find Williams to be a compelling speaker but less convincing as a writer: a combination of avuncular insinuation and a hint of middle class embarrassment when talking seriously about Christianity.
I find Williams to be a compelling speaker but less convincing as a writer: a combination of avuncular insinuation and a hint of middle class embarrassment when talking seriously about Christianity.
February 21, 2025
What I learnt by trying to read this book is that I am simply too ‘left brained’ to understand this book.
I am simply unable to think on an abstract enough level. Luckily my small withered right brain has not been an impediment due to the fact and checkbox-filled nature of the UK education system.
The star rating is my of my personal reading experience rather than a reflection on the book itself because I will readily admit I mostly had no idea what he was talking about.
“When we have said that everything can be reduced to this or that equation, we have actually said nothing of any great substance; we have simply said there is a mathematical process without which this would not be what it is.
I am simply unable to think on an abstract enough level. Luckily my small withered right brain has not been an impediment due to the fact and checkbox-filled nature of the UK education system.
The star rating is my of my personal reading experience rather than a reflection on the book itself because I will readily admit I mostly had no idea what he was talking about.
“When we have said that everything can be reduced to this or that equation, we have actually said nothing of any great substance; we have simply said there is a mathematical process without which this would not be what it is.
October 21, 2025
This is the second of 10 books I’m reading as part of a book club. Suffice to say, I really wanted to like this book. I love the premise (what are the indispensable things that make humans human?), but I found the arguments to be vague, rambling, poorly developed, or all three. This is unequivocally poor writing. While I do believe this will make for some interesting book club discussion, it is not something I would have ever picked up on my own, and certainly not anything I will ever pick up again.
1.5⭐️
“Empathy, that is, the imaginative identification, with a perspective that is not my own, is not just an optimal extra in our human identity and our human repertoire, it’s something without which we cannot know ourselves. Without identification with the other, I don’t know myself.”
1.5⭐️
“Empathy, that is, the imaginative identification, with a perspective that is not my own, is not just an optimal extra in our human identity and our human repertoire, it’s something without which we cannot know ourselves. Without identification with the other, I don’t know myself.”
April 27, 2023
You already know that I love a book about humanity and God. I liked this book, but some of it for sure went over my head. I was hoping for more disability content, but I appreciated the book discussed multiple ways of being human. 3 stars.
"I am and I have value, because I am seen by and engaged with love- ideally, the love we experience humanly and socially, but, beyond and behind this, always and unconditionally the love of God. And the service of others' rights or dignity, is in this perspective, simply the search to echo this permanent attitude of love, attention, respect, which the Creator gives to what is made."
"I am and I have value, because I am seen by and engaged with love- ideally, the love we experience humanly and socially, but, beyond and behind this, always and unconditionally the love of God. And the service of others' rights or dignity, is in this perspective, simply the search to echo this permanent attitude of love, attention, respect, which the Creator gives to what is made."
January 7, 2025
“In the extraordinary economy of heaven, God is God by being God for us, and we are human by being human for God; and all joy and fulfillment opens up once we recognize this.” Yep. Our humanity and created-ness is something we often take advantage of or misuse, when actual God just wants us to follow him with our whole being - we are living in created bodies that walk through life echoing their creator - and that creator is most pleased when we act in accordance to that. After a long hiatus, I can finally say I’ve finished the Being trilogy. This was a bit more cerebral and dense than the other two books but I enjoyed it just as much!
November 1, 2018
A lovely, manageable book of essays and sermons by the most profoundly human and humorous Anglican theologian, like ever. What is consciousness, from a Christian lens? What is a person? We are not machines, and we are not worlds unto ourselves, Williams says. He makes the unsurprising but insightful claim that in fact that religious faith, whether Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc., nurtures human flourishing in a way radical to a modern Western capitalist norm through its honor for time, bodies, dependence, death, and self-critique (!).
Read
September 28, 2020What an extraordinarily thought-provoking little book. Looking at what it means to be human and how a human being might live well, Williams asks, 'What is consciousness?', 'What is a person?', and examines the connections between bodies, minds, and thoughts; between faith and human flourishing; and between silence and human maturity. 'Humanity transfigured', the sermon enclosed as epilogue is a rather lovely way of pulling it all together. Williams pulls on science, philosophy, and theology throughout to paint a picture of a more expansive path forward, a more sustainable way of being human.
January 1, 2024
Brief, yet phenomenal book with delightful depth. Beautifully written with probing questions, insights and stories on topics like consciousness, personhood, human flourishing and silence (among other things). These are critical topics that fundamentally shape how we experience the world, ourselves and others. Far from abstract pontificating, Williams does a great job throughout the book impressing the importance of these topics in our everyday life. Christians and non-Christians alike will greatly benefit from reading this book.
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