What is it to be human? Is that a question, or what?
The Greek philosopher Aristotle is among those many thinkers who argued that there is indeed a “human essence,” some basic or core humanness, upon which is layered what he called “accidents.” That is, one is essentially human and then accidentally male or female, born a Greek or a Bolivian, endowed with certain potentialities that might play out as dancer, lawyer, or mathematician, and so on. That is all “accidental,” a sort of layering on top of what is “essential” about being human.
Much existential thought rejects this idea, maybe most famously in the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s dictum, “Existence precedes essence.” In this view, there is no “essential humanness” or “essential human.” We are not born with a fixed essence, purpose, or nature, but rather we “create” our essence through our choices, actions, and commitments. According to Sartre (in Existentialism is a Humanism), “Man first exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterward.”
People do seem to be “essentially” themselves, as if they have “an essence,” but that could be taken as proof of either position. Indeed, that observation rather argues on the side of accident over essence: people likely become exactly themselves by virtue of the accruing accidents that arise from the interactions of nature and nurture. They each have a scent, as it were, without there being a single “human” scent.
A particular set of genetic instructions is “accidentally” awakened by a given experience, making “personality” an indecipherable, dynamic clash of genetic instruction and experience. Is there “something human” different from this, different from the playing out of millions of instructions in idiosyncratic ways? And how do we factor in those strange things with names like consciousness and self-awareness?
This is all very abstract. And yet a coach must tread this exotic territory. If all human beings have “an essence,” wouldn’t that be important to know and important to factor into the coaching? Or maybe there are multiple “essences,” like “the essence of maleness” and “the essence of femaleness”? Conversely, if all human beings have “zero essence” and are somehow merely the result of an accumulation of accidents, doesn’t that matter with respect to how we are obliged to view our clients?
I think that there is a line to walk that perhaps feels right. I do think that we are “essentially” a particular sort of creature, one that defies definition but that can be located, so to speak, among the other creatures that have evolved into existence. We can be spotted by virtue of our humanness. But the repertoire of human accidents is so huge, from the shape of a given consciousness to the shape of a given nervous system to the array of personal experiences happening even on one afternoon, that teasing out what that “essence” might be is beyond us.
What this amounts to, is that our clients are completely, mysteriously human and also completely themselves. They bear a species resemblance, and that has meaning and import. They are also accidentally (and at this point completely) themselves. Doesn’t this suggest the following gorgeous “quality question” or journal prompt to provide clients? It is:
“Who are you essentially and who are you accidentally?”
Can’t you imagine the different sorts of responses this question might provoke? Whatever the response, the journey to that response would bound to prove eye-opening. In the language of the model of personality that I promote, where personality is made up of original personality, formed personality, and available personality, this question translates to “What do you see as your original personality and what do you see as your formed personality?” Interesting, yes?
Try it out on yourself. “Who are you essentially and who are you accidentally?” See where encountering that question leads. If that journey proves interesting, why not invite clients to take that same journey?
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