Philosophers call such shared features “universals,” because they belong universally to all the members of a class: thus humanity belongs to all humans. But what exactly is this shared humanity? On the one hand, it seems to play an important role in the world and in our understanding of things. When we know, for instance, that all humans are rational, it seems that we are understanding something not just about you, me, Groucho, or Zeppo, but about humanity itself. What we are understanding is that the possession of humanity implies the possession of rationality. On the other hand, the idea of
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