Re: CHAT: Homo Sapiens (was: fiery spirits)

On Sunday, October 26, 2003, at 04:32 , Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

> At 18:01 25.10.2003, David Barrow wrote:
[snip]
> What's wrong with _human_ as a noun, BTW?
> Buddhists use it on a regular basis, but if
> it is too modern for Bible translators they
> could IMHO use _people_ for _anthropoi_.
>
> (Well, I guess that strictly angels should
> count as 'people' too.
I guess they probably should; but 'people' would
generally be OK for _anthropoi_ IMO.

> To my Buddhist feelings
> some non-human beings, and certainly the
> Bodhisattvas and the (lower-case) gods, would.)
Were not Bodhisattvas once members of the human race
just like most of those Christian revere as saints.  It
would seem quite natural to me to talk about 'those
people who now enjoy the beatific vision'.

Philip's observations also remind me that "person" is no
good as a synonym for _anthropos_.  Certainly angels are
considered different persons; I mean Michael, Gabriel and
Raphael are certainly considered as different persons.
Those archangels BTW are numbered among the saints by
Orthodox and Catholics.  Abd individual angels must surely
be separate persons.

 From the Orthodox, Catholic and mainstream Protestant point
of view, God is worshipped as three _persons_: God, three in
one & one in three, without confusion of persons.

This is, I hope, not a signal for a long OT thread on "whether
angels exist or not", "whether Bodhisattvas and/or saints exist",
"whether the doctrine of the Trinity is true" etc.  There are
IMNSHO other lists for those who want to discuss such things; I
merely make these observations as _semantic_ observations (i.e.
linguistic observations).

Even if one has no religious belief or subscribes to different
religious beliefs than David, Philip or myself, we can still
imagine other peoples/creatures such as fairies, dwarfs/ dwarves,
gnomes, sylphs, undines, Jinns, orcs, ghouls, demons etc. We
would surely regard imagined individuals as 'persons'.  We
find it quite easy to create stories where animals speak and
behave as persons.  We can imagine different races/ peoples who
inhabit planets in far flung places throughout the universe. We
do, surely, regard individual daleks, Klingons etc as persons.

Nope - a 'person' most certainly does not have to be a human.
And I believe Philip is right in saying that 'people' does not
necessarily imply humans.
==============================================================

On Sunday, October 26, 2003, at 05:52 , Nik Taylor wrote:

> Tristan McLeay wrote:
>> It's just wrong. One simply doesn't say 'he's a human'
>
> Sure you do.
Yep - I've been used to such usage almost ever since I can remember;
certainly since my first encounter with science fiction more than
half a century ago.  The use of "human" as a common noun is hardly
something new.

> If it's a situation where there's a possibility of the
> entity in question being other than human, say, in the context of
> fantasy or sci-fi.  "He's a human" would make perfect sense to contrast
> with "He's a dwarf" or "He's a Vulcan" or whatever.
Absolutely - and the individual human, dwarf or Vulcan is an individual
person.

> And "humans" is a
> perfectly common usage in the normal world.
Yep - but would still sound stilted in certain contexts, unfortunately.

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com    (home)
raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk   (work)
===============================================

Replies