What is it to be human? Aristotle defined ‘man’ as s a rational animal. And the French rationalist philosopher, Rene Descartes (1596-1650), opined that only humans have souls.   He suggested that animals, by contrast, are mere clockwork automatons preprogrammed through instincts and impulses. John Locke, a 17th century empiricist and an important enlightenment thinker, picked up Aristotle’s tabula rasa concept, stating that human …