To be fully human ourselves, we must acknowledge and honor the humanity of others. Those around us, with whom we interact daily — parents, co-workers, classmates, neighbors, fellow shoppers, clerks, police officers, etc. — cannot be reduced to mere objects that exist for the satisfaction of our own wants and desires. We cannot, for example, think of the waiter at a restaurant as existing merely to feed us. Any mistreatment, on our part, of him during the meal, whether it be perceived to be warranted or no, is to forget that he is living his own life in fulfillment of his own dreams and desires. To forget this about him is to forget he is a human being.

In some sense, this is what we are doing when we deconstruct literature — or any text for that matter. In deconstructing, we assume that the book exists for no other reason than to provide us, the readers, with a pragmatic “truth,” by which we can learn something that will work for us. By work, I mean nothing more than that it will be useful to us to further our personal wants and desires. Reading this way, we approach the book, take what we need from it and move on. Were we to engage in a discussion about the book, we would be less interested in trying to understand what the author meant by it or what anyone else thinks it might mean — unless, of course, their understanding would be more useful to us in accomplishing our own goals.

What if, though, the author exists, or existed, as a real human being with her own dreams and desires? What if she actually did intend to communicate something true, good, or beautiful (or even if she didn’t) to her readers? Am we honoring the humanity of the author when we ignore her desires and seek only to get what works from her for the service of our own ends? Furthermore, to really honor the humanity of others, we must also include other readers in this line of thought. For other readers are also human beings with their own existence, independent of any self-referential existence to us, and those readers imbibe the author’s thoughts and understand them through their own experiences. To reject that they and their views should be heard is to reject that they are human beings.

On what grounds can we expect to be, much less be treated as, fully human if we grant no acknowledgment to the humanity of others? This is without regard, or should be, to their proximity, moreover, in space or time. We must acknowledge the humanity of others, the waiter who serves us at the restaurant, the driver who taxis us around the city, the author who leaves us her novel; whether we will come to interact with their humanity in the past, present, or future. It is the acknowledgment of and honoring of the humanity of others that will help us to become human ourselves.