ABSTRACT
The restoration projects of human beings are not limited to natural habitats such as the marshlands of southern Iraq and other wetlands around the globe. Even the most cursory glance at newspaper headlines reminds us of frequent efforts to restore human artifacts such as valuable works of art (Michelangelo’s David, to take a recent and controversial example) and historically signicant buildings (such as the British Museum). There is an almost daily recitation of attempts to restore broken ties between individuals or peoples (think, for example, of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to take another recent and controversial example). Indeed, so numerous and ubiquitous are the repair and restoration activities of human beings that it seems quite tting to think of Homo sapiens as Homo reparans (Spelman 2002, 2007): to the venerable and captivating portraits of Homo sapiens as the rational animal, the political animal, the social animal, the animal that really-and-not-just-apparently uses language, the only thinking thing that also has emotions, the only thinking thing that worries about whether it is the only thinking thing, we should add the portrait of the human being as the repairing animal (or, in any event, a repairing animal). And the human as repairing animal, Homo reparans, is called upon to develop and exercise not only the technical skills to carry out repair, but also the capacity to judge what is reparable and what is not, and also to decide, among those things judged reparable, what is worth xing and what is not.
