According to Rav Solovetchik, we get an understanding of this question from chapters 1 & 2 of Bereshit, each of which describes a different aspect of the creation of Man.
In chapter 1, Man is part of the six days (or epochs) of creation. We are an aspect of the evolutionary process, created beings not creators. We are a complex animal, bound by the laws of nature concerned with “survival of the fittest.” Rav Soloveitchik calls this aspect of the human being Natural Man (Rav Riskin, his student, calls him Bestial Man).
Rav Riskin explains that for this man, physical prowess and courageous bravery is primary. Might makes right but this too must pass, for even the most powerful human being is, after all, only physical and mortal, a broken potsherd, a withering flower and a passing dream.
In Chapter 1, we only encounter the name of God- E-lohim. A name that connotes strict boundaries like those of nature and in nature, it is the strong that survive and succeed.
Chapter 2, however, tells a very different story. This chapter begins “when no shrub of the field was yet on earth and no grasses of the field had yet sprouted because there was no human being to till the earth” (Bereshit 2:5), and so “A-donai (Hashem) Elohim formed the human being from dust of the earth into whose nostrils He exhaled the soul of life.”
In Chapter 2, explains Rabbi Riskin, the entire physical world is waiting for the human being to activate it, to complete and perfect it, to redeem it;
Yes, we are animal and physical, yet it is an eternal and spiritual God who “exhaled” part of His own spiritual being within the human physical form. In the famous words of the sacred Zohar and the Alter Rebbe, “whoever exhales, exhales from within Himself, from His innermost, essential being” (as it were) and thus, the human being is imbued with an “aspect” of the Divine, of God Himself. This, says Rav Soloveitchik is Celestial Man, or Godly Man.
In Chapter 2, we encounter God’s essential name, A-donai (Hashem), reflecting mercy and love as the driving “forces” of creation.
So what is Man? A struggle, an inner conflict and battle between “Adam 1” and “Adam 2” (in the words of Rav Soloveitchik.)
And as humans, what is our role? “Hashem Elohim….placed (the human) in the Garden of Eden to till it (le’abed, “to develop and perfect it”) and to preserve it (le’shomrah, “to take responsibility for it”).
So says Rav Riskin, “the world is an imperfect creation, filled with darkness as well as light, with evil as well as good (Isaiah 45:7) and the human being will engage in a perennial struggle between the bestial and celestial within himself. But the Bible promises that “at the door of life, until the very opening of the grave, sin crouches, its desire energized to conquer [the human], but the human will conquer sin, will overcome evil” (Bereshit 4:7).
Every human being must find within himself the God-given strength to be an emissary towards perfecting this world in the Kingship of the Divine (Aleynu): to recreate himself, to properly direct his/ her children, to make an improvement within his/her community and society. May we not falter on this God-given opportunity to bring us closer to redemption.”