Your complimentary articles You’ve read one of your four complimentary articles for this month. You can read four articles free per month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please There have been many ways in which philosophers have tried to characterise our distinctive human nature, and some are more convincing than others. Aristotle’s definition of man as ‘the rational animal’ invites wild laughter in the light of what we often get up to individually and collectively. Perhaps ‘the rationalising animal’ may be closer to the mark, given our capacity to justify the most destructive, counter-productive, and wicked behaviour. Homo sapiens – the title science has conferred on our most recent edition – which translates as ‘wise man’, also seems open to challenge, given that our wisdom, such as it is, is manifested somewhat intermittently. The definition of man as ‘the speaking animal’ is less vulnerable.…