the requirements of being a person

What is a black man? And what colour is he? Are the Palestinians even a people?

The so-called superiority of human beings is certainly brought into question by the simple fact (and it is surely a partial truth of history) that human beings have often found it difficult to recognize or acknowledge other people as simply being human. Alternatively, they've struggled to see Women, Blacks, Jews, Foreigners, Muslims, Unbelievers, Gays, etc. etc. as being fully human, "the way a cloud's a cloud".

You could be 3/5 ths of a human being-that's the concession we make to you; or, if you were the Red Man then you couldn't possibly be counted, since you don't qualify, don't meet the requirements.

Don't match up, don't tick all the right boxes; don't have the right colour/language/mind/passport/faith/legal status.

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'We can never say for example that such and such a person has the full set of required characteristics for being a human person and therefore deserves our respect, and that such and such an individual doesn't have the full set and therefore doesn't deserve our respect.'

There is 'an essential mysteriousness that one can't simply deal with by listing it in a number of things that are true about us'

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'In fact, the elephant recognizes the language of his homeland, obeys orders, remembers what he learns, knows the passion of love and the ambition of glory, practices virtues “rare even among men,” such as probity, prudence and equity, and has a religious veneration for the sun, the moon, and the stars.'

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'According to the account of Megasthenes, dwelling upon a mountain called Nulo, there is a race of men who have their feet turned backwards, with eight toes on each foot.

On many of the mountains again, there is a tribe of men who have the heads of dogs, and clothe themselves with the skins of wild beasts. Instead of speaking, they bark; and, furnished with claws, they live by hunting and catching birds.'

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He is Null Achtzehn. He is not called anything except that, Zero Eighteen, the last three figures of his entry number; as if everyone was aware that only a man is worthy of a name, and that Null Achtzehn is no longer a man.

---Primo Levi. 

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