6 Embracing humanity

What does it mean to be human? The immensity of this question can be boiled down to an old principle proposed by the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel, which he attributed to fellow philosopher Baruch Spinoza: “Determination is negation.”

But negation of what?

First, of God. In the beginning there was God – the source of infinite action. In the Western tradition, man has no purpose without God. For Christians, man was created in God’s image; for