The human is a historical point of arrival, not a given starting point.

Evidence

The problem of what is man is always therefore the so-called problem of “human nature” or that of so-called “man in general”. It is thus an attempt to create a science of man (a philosophy) which starts from an initially “unitary” 430 concept, from an abstraction in which everything that is “human” can be contained. But is the “human” a starting-point or a point of arrival, as a concept and as a unitary fact? Or might not the whole attempt, in so far as it posits the human as a starting-point, be a “theological” or “metaphysical” residue? Philosophy cannot be reduced to a naturalistic “anthropology”: the nature of the human species is not given by the “biological” nature of man. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1268

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallel to Foucault’s later critique of ‘man’ as a recent invention and to the anti-essentialist critique of ‘human nature’ the Islamophobia readings will deploy against biological-cultural definitions of the Other. — connects to: The ego is a late product of projection, not a primordial given. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 149; Woman is a historical situation, not an immutable essence — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 675; Personhood is conditioned by accumulated sedimentations, not by single defining moments. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 701
• DEEPTHINKING: The question ‘is the human a starting-point or a point of arrival?’ resists one-sentence summary and anchors a whole anti-essentialist method of inquiry.