ABSTRACT
The idea of human uniqueness – of exceptionality in relation to all the life forms that made up the non-human world – occupied a cherished position in ancient and biblical anthropology. Both such traditions addressed in different registers the question of people’s relationship to the natural world, the origin of the first humans, and the original state of humankind. In combination, the traditions emphasised the attributes of reason and soul as the defining measures of humanness. But during the period of so-called Enlightenment – a diverse and amorphous intellectual movement most often identified with eighteenth-century Europe – and especially in its Scottish variant, two loosely formulated notions became intricated through some quite specific writings. First was the idea that there existed a universal unity to the human. The second idea held that human potentiality was realised in a movement out of nature.Their elaboration in terms of each other forms the focus of this chapter.
