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What Makes Us Human?
Rethinking the brain, emotion, art, and intelligence in the age of AI
Before I finally decided to read Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, I had heard many people regard it as the greatest novel ever written. What makes it so great? I wondered. Some praised its extraordinary storytelling and its large cast of vivid characters, while others admired its grand and incisive portrayal of his era’s society, from emperors and generals to aristocrats and peasants.
After two months engrossed in the novel, what struck me most was something else: Tolstoy’s deep reflection on human life, which is not about rational thought or intelligence but about doing and living.
Pierre Bezukhov, one of the protagonists, received the finest education in France and inherited enormous wealth from his father. Despite this, he struggled to find his purpose in life. He searched everywhere and tried everything he could. Unexpectedly, he found the answer from a soldier-prisoner: simply to live life by fully embracing each moment.
Another protagonist, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, was a talented intellectual with a deep, philosophical mind. However, as he came to realize the vanity, conceit, and ultimately the pointlessness of everything around him, he fell into a deep depression until he met Natasha Rostova, whose sheer force of…
