As today’s world is increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence and new forms of technological enhancements, the question of the human being becomes ever more pressing: what is it that distinguishes us as humans? I historicise this question by turning to the thought of the thirteenth-century Dominican preacher and teacher Albert the Great (1200–1280), who placed the human being at the heart of his philosophy. For Albert, the human being alone stands ‘between God and the world’; for the human belongs to the natural world but also participates in something divine. This unique position gives the human being a distinctive goal in this life: to achieve human self-perfection. Albert understands self-perfection in two ways: the perfection of the intellect through the study of the natural sciences and the perfection of the affective part of the soul through virtue. To be fully human requires both paths of perfection; for, as Albert states explicitly, a human who perfects his intellect but does not acquire virtue is not wise but foolish. In this lecture, I focus primarily on the affective path of perfection as Albert develops it in his mature ethical commentary Ethica (ca. 1262) whereby the human learns to desire rightly, to act well, and to judge particulars in the changing circumstances of life. I reconstruct this affective path through the figures Albert himself treats: the peasant who can only imitate virtue; the student-expert in the medieval classroom who learns from the teacher; the disciplined human practising virtue in the world; the hero who exceeds ordinary moral virtue; and finally the divinized human united to the Good. By reading these figures together, I show that Albert not only identifies what is unique about humans but illustrates how to become fully human: by perfecting our intellect and by living and judging well in the world through virtue.