Being a Human
Being a Human
- Author/Seller
- Charles Foster
- SKU:
- 9781788167185
$25.00
A radical work of nature writing and philosophical enquiry, resituating us in our real human skins.
What kind of creature is a human? If we don't know what we are, how can we know how to act? Charles Foster sets out to
understand what a human is, inhabiting the sensory worlds of humans at three pivotal moments in our history.
Foster begins his quest with his son in a Derbyshire wood, trying to find a way of experiencing the world that recognises
the deep expanse of time when we understood ourselves as hunter-gatherers, and when modern consciousness was first
ignited. From there he travels to the Neolithic, a way of being defined by fences, farms, sky gods and slaughterhouses,
and finally to the Enlightenment, when we decided that the universe was a machine and we were soulless cogs within it.
What kind of creature is a human? If we don't know what we are, how can we know how to act? Charles Foster sets out to
understand what a human is, inhabiting the sensory worlds of humans at three pivotal moments in our history.
Foster begins his quest with his son in a Derbyshire wood, trying to find a way of experiencing the world that recognises
the deep expanse of time when we understood ourselves as hunter-gatherers, and when modern consciousness was first
ignited. From there he travels to the Neolithic, a way of being defined by fences, farms, sky gods and slaughterhouses,
and finally to the Enlightenment, when we decided that the universe was a machine and we were soulless cogs within it.