What Does It Mean to Be Human?
By Frederick Franck
In an inspirational act of faith and hope, nearly one hundred contributors–social activists, thinkers, artists and spiritual leaders–reflect with poignant candor on our shared human condition and attempt to define a core set of human values in our rapidly changing socity.
Contributors include:
- The Dalai Lama
- Wilma Mankiller
- Oscar Arias
- Jimmy Carter
- Alexander Eliot
- Cornel West
- Jack Miles
- Mother Teresa
- Nancy Willard
- Elie Wiesel
- James Earl Jones
- Joan Chittister
- Mary Evelyn Tucker
- Vaclav Havel
- Archbishop Desmund Tutu
What Does It Mean To Be Human? is a vital meditation on the endless possibilities of our humanity.
Compiled by Frederick Franck, Janis Roze, Richard Connolly
Edition: reprint, revised
Published by Macmillan, 2001
ISBN 0312271018, 9780312271015
Alexander Eliot ALEXANDER ELIOT is a pilgrim mythologist, contemplative traveler, and author of The Timeless Myths, The Global Myths, and The Universal Myths…
My father (the painter Henry Koerner) considered Alex Eliot one of his two best friends. Eliot, and the other friend (Sam Rosenberg) he got to know in the Office of War Information (OWI), and then again when Eliot reviewed my father’s first US show in 1948 in TIME. It was through Eliot that my father became a cover artist for TIME, painting almost 60 cover portraits. I remember Eliot mainly from stories; then, in 1979, when I was working on the myth of Daedalus, I visited him with my parents in his home in central Massachusetts. He explained to the essence of the labyrinth, how it was based perhaps on a bird dance, but that the key was that its pattern was taught to Theseus by Ariadne, as a set of moves, left and right, forward and back, etc. I remember how he danced that pattern. SIGHT AND INSIGHT influenced me profoundly: I only read a bit of it, but it gave me a sense of what writing about art might be. My father attributes a good proportion of his artistic career to Eliot, and I’m proud to say that, as the next generation, I was shaped, too, by him.