human condition

English

Pronunciation

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Noun

human condition

1. (usually preceded by the) What it means to be human; the experiences, characteristics, and limitations of life shared by all humans, as opposed to other lifeforms.
   • 1894, Thomas Hardy, An Imaginative Woman:

     Neither symboliste nor decadent, he was a pessimist in so far as that character applies to a man who looks at the worst contingencies as well as the best in the human condition.

   • 1970 May 18, “Alive and Well”, in Time:

     Youth dies. Life hurts. Love warms. Understanding heals. The wounds and balms of the human condition are so commonplace that men eventually experience them without noticing.

   • 2006, S. Mark Heim, Saved from Sacrifice‎^[1], →ISBN, page 8:

     Christian theology traditionally sees three elements of the human condition that are in need of transformation: sin (estrangement from God), evil (estrangement among humans), and death (mortality, and our estrangement from nature).

   • 2023 June 13, Dwight Garner, “Cormac McCarthy, Novelist of a Darker America, Is Dead at 89”, in The New York Times‎^[2], →ISSN:

     Mr. McCarthy’s fiction took a dark view of the human condition and was often macabre. He decorated his novels with scalpings, beheadings, arson, rape, incest, necrophilia and cannibalism.

Translations

characteristics, key events and situations which compose the essentials of human experience

• Catalan: condició humana f
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 人類條件／人类条件 (rénlèi tiáojiàn), 人性 (zh) (rénxìng)

• Danish: conditio humana
• Finnish: ihmisyys (fi)
• French: condition humaine f
• German: conditio humana f
• Italian: condizione umana f
• Japanese: please add this translation if you can
• Russian: человече́ская ситуа́ция m (čelovečéskaja situácija), челове́ческое усло́вие n (čelovéčeskoje uslóvije)
• Serbo-Croatian: ljudska situacija f
• Spanish: condición humana f

References

• “human condition”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.