A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living (Learning to Live)

by Luc Ferry

Animals have an ‘essence’, common to their entire species, which precedes their existence as individuals: there is a cat essence, an essence of pigeon – and this instinct or ‘essence’ is common to the entire species, so much so that the individual identity and existence of each individual is wholly determined by it: no cat, no pigeon, can swerve away from this essence which suppresses all individual action. But, with humans, the opposite is true: no essence predetermines it, no programme can ever succeed in entirely hemming it in; no system can imprison it so absolutely that it cannot emancipate itself. I am born into a society: as a man or woman, native or immigrant, rich or poor, aristocrat or labourer, but these initial categories do not define me for the rest of my life. I can be a woman and decide not to have children; I can be born poor and underprivileged, but become rich; I can be born French, but adopt another language and change nationality, and so on.