What does it mean to be human? It’s an age-old question, made newly urgent by advances in technology, artificial intelligence, and fast-moving social and political change.
Funded with a $1 million grant from the Henry Luce Foundation and led by three scholars in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University Bloomington, the “Being Human” project will study what makes us human — from the terrible to the playful, in different places and times, in areas from imaginative arts to empirical sciences.
The grant is funded through the Luce Foundation’s Theology Program. IU is one of only a small number of research institutions to receive $1 million grants through this program.
The question of being human is, among other things, a religious question, said professor Constance Furey, co-recipient of the grant.
“Because theology and religion are inspired as much by what we don’t know as what we do, they enable the sort of open-minded thinking we urgently need right now, about what it means to be a human living on and with the Earth,” said Furey, chair of the Department of Religious Studies.
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