Abstract
What does it mean to think of ourselves that we are human? Drawing on the writings of the mystic Ramon Llull, the cosmology of the Kelabit of Borneo, and the philosophy of José Ortega y Gasset, I argue that a human life is one that is led, and that to lead life means to undergo an education. I take from the theology of Henry Nelson Wieman the idea of undergoing as an exercise of creative imagination, and from the philosophy of Jan Masschelein the idea that this involves an education in the sense of ‘leading out’ or exposure. In this leading out, the imagination feels its way forward, trailed by a perception already accustomed to the ways of the world. Here, submission leads and mastery follows, and not vice versa. Our humanity, then, is not given from the start, but is continually fashioned in the course of what we do, in a never-ending process of attention and response, of lives lived in relation with others.
