The human being is an anomaly in the natural world. While other species arrive with a comprehensive set of instincts, a biological blueprint that dictates their behavior, habitat, and social structures, humans enter existence remarkably unformed. We are, in the words of the philosophical anthropologist Arnold Gehlen, "deficient beings" (
Mängelwesen), biologically under-equipped for immediate survival in any specific environment but endowed with a compensatory surplus of plasticity. Unlike the specialist predator designed for the savannah or the aquatic mammal adapted to the sea, the human is a generalist, defined not by a specific niche but by an openness to the world. This lack of specialization is not a defect; it is the very foundation of our freedom. It forces us to build a "second nature", culture, language, technology, and identity, to bridge the gap between our biological insufficiency and the demands of existence.
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