Man is a process, the product of his own actions

Evidence

This is the primary and principal question that philosophy asks. How is it to be answered? The definition can be found in man himself, that is, in each individual man. But is it correct? In every individual man one can discover what every “individual man” is. But we are not interested in what every individual man is, which then comes to mean what every individual man is at every individual moment. Reflecting on it, we can see that in putting the question “what is man?” what we mean is: what can man become? That is, can man dominate his own destiny, can he “make himself”, can he create his own life? We maintain therefore that man is a process, and, more exactly, the process of his actions. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1256

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gramsci’s grounding definition of the human as self-making process, anchored to historical conditions rather than abstract essence.
• SEED: An essay angle on how the question ‘what is man’ in modern identity politics is always really a question about what groups can become under given conditions.
• XREF: connects to: Mechanism replaced process and becoming with structure and identity. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 1023; das Man drains personal responsibility by taking over decisions that should be our own — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 264