What Does It Mean To Be Human?

In the absence of divine direction, how do we decide for ourselves the behaviours that would best serve our own interests, and those of other creatures, and of the planet as a whole? What might we turn to and draw upon to help us in making our own rules and in establishing our own moral principles?

Bryan Gould was a New Zealand Rhodes Scholar who obtained a fist-class postgraduate law degree at Oxford and then joined the British Diplomatic Service, serving first in the Foreign Office and then in the Embassy in Brussels. He returned to Oxford as a law don at Worcester College, before embarking on a political career as a Labour MP, first in Southampton and - after a few years in television - then in Dagenham. He unsuccessfully contested the Labour Party leadership and returned to New Zealand in 1994 as Vice-Chancellor of Waikato University.