The oneness of humanity is a biological fact, affirmed by more than a century of study in the natural sciences; it is an existential truth upon which all claims to human rights ultimately rest, and it is a feature of social reality that the integrative forces of history will no longer permit us to avoid. As an ontological truth, the oneness of humanity is embodied in those universal moral and intellectual capacities that define the nature and needs of the human spirit. In these remarks, which provide an overview of the themes that animate his most recent book, Our Common Humanity: Reflections on the Reclamation of the Human Spirit (2021), Professor Penn provides a rational Bahá’í-inspired account of what might be meant by the human spirit and links the development and refinement of the human spirit to the realization of that which is most noble in each of us.

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