Stephen R. L. Clark

The idea that humanity is a natural kind is implicit in a good deal of modern moral and political practice, and in anthropological and archaeological inquiry. I argue in the first section that biological species are not natural kinds, and in the second section that we therefore cannot rely upon the claim that 'humankind is all one species' to validate our political or anthropological assumptions. The third section suggests that two possibilities are open to us. Either we must acknowledge that we are individual organisms having largely unpredictable similarities with or differences from other creatures, that we cannot take it for granted that all tool- makers or all artists will also have other familiar 'human' or 'personal' characteristics, and that there is no essential or puzzling difference between (say) 'domestication' and 'slavery'. Alternatively, we must insist that the natural kind of 'persons' is a Platonic. Form, and not to be identified with the biological taxon of 'human beings'.