Becoming Human

Becoming Human, volume 1, explores the intellectual and literary history of late eighteenth-century Germany through the lens of emerging anthropology. Chad Wellmon examines how thinkers like Immanuel Kant, Goethe, and Wilhelm von Humboldt addressed the fundamental question of what defines the human. This work of philosophy and literary criticism investigates the unstable distinctions between nature and culture, mind and body, and human and animal that characterized the Enlightenment era.

This scholarly text analyzes the crisis of anthropological discourse and its role in shaping modern self-understanding. By studying movements in German humanism, the book traces how modernity became a reflexive project, forced to derive its own norms and identity. Becoming Human serves as a significant study in European philosophy and German literary criticism, offering deep insights into the historical roots of modern humanism and the complex evolution of anthropological thought.