Human nature

:For the film, see Human Nature (film).

Influential views of human nature

As a general rule, any -ism important enough to be both defended and attacked, probably states or implies a distinctive view about human nature. Platonism, Marxism and Freudianism may serve as examples of this rule.

Related Topics:
Platonism - Marxism - Freudianism

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Plato took a conception of reason and the examined life that he learnt from Socrates and built both a metaphysics and, more to our point, an anthropology around it. There was an intellectual soul, resident in the human head, and there was a appetitive beast, resident in the belly and genitals. The duty of the former is to keep the latter tamed and, in time, to welcome death as an escape from this uncomfortable co-habitation.

Related Topics:
Plato - Reason - Socrates - Metaphysics - Anthropology - Intellectual - Soul - Head - Appetitive - Belly - Genital - Tamed - Death - Co-habitation

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In one disguise or another, Plato's dualism was immensely influential. It insinuated itself deeply into Christian theology — a process that began, perhaps, as early as the Gospel of John. Descartes' famous contrast between the soul that thinks and the body that is extended is a distinctive take on Plato, as is Kant's contrast between the noumenal and the phenomenal aspects of human nature.

Related Topics:
Dualism - Theology - Gospel of John - Descartes - Kant

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What all these views have in common is the following structure: "there exists an invariant human nature, and my theory discloses it better than other theories." This structure does allow for progress in history — because coming to know ourselves better is progress. But human nature itself, as the object of that knowledge, is considered a constant. Indeed, in Kantianism, human nature in the really-real sense can't be said to change because change requires time, and time is a feature only of the less-real, phenomenal, world.

Related Topics:
Progress - Kantianism - Time

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Hegel represents an important break with this Platonic hegemony. Building on his concept of the dialectic, everything is, so to speak, up for grabs: as humans come to know themselves better, the object of knowledge necessarily changes.

Related Topics:
Hegel - Dialectic

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Karl Marx inherits that Hegelian dialectic, and with it, a disdain for the notion of an underlying invariant human nature. Sometimes Marxists express their views by contrasting ?nature? with ?history.? Sometimes they use the phrase ?existence precedes consciousness.? The point, in either case, is that who a person is, is determined by where and when he is — social context takes precedence over innate behavior; or, in other words, the main feature of human nature is adaptability.

Related Topics:
Karl Marx - Marxist - Existence - Consciousness

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"Human Nature" is often used as a counter argument to Marxism. However, it is not that Marxists entirely reject the concept of human nature, rather they contend that many of the behaviours exhibited by humans in Western capitalist societies - particularly excessive self-interest, and lack of social responsibility - are by no means fixed or innate.

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In one sense, this position is as far from Plato as is possible. But in another sense, it comes back around to a Platonizing dualism, except that the beast and the mind aren?t at war within each human body, as Plato suspected — for Marxists, the beast is the past and its burdens, while the mind awaits in the future.

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In this spirit, Marx once wrote that all of what we call history would be better seen as pre-history, and that once the abolition of social classes and communism are achieved, only then will the true history of the human race begin.

Related Topics:
The abolition of social classes - Communism

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The Austrian school of economics, in the years around 1871–1940, developed its own views largely in opposition to Marx, and in opposition to a group of historicist scholars. In the process, they developed a distinctive view of human nature.

Related Topics:
Austrian school - 1871 - 1940 - Historicist scholars

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In structural terms, their view returned to that of the thinkers mentioned in this survey prior to Hegel. Like Descartes or Kant, these thinkers believed that there exists an invariant human nature, but that progress is possible in history through the more complete understanding of that nature. They conceived of human nature in terms of bounded rationality and of the pursuit of marginal utility, and they believed that the pursuit of this utility in the marketplace would create a condition of spontaneous order that will be more rational than any alternative that might be planned, given the bounded rationality of any possible planners.

Related Topics:
Bounded rationality - Marginal utility - Spontaneous order

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During the same period of time, Austria also hosted the development of psychoanalysis. Its founder, Sigmund Freud, believed that the Marxists were right to focus on what he called "the decisive influence which the economic circumstances of men have upon their intellectual, ethical and artistic attitudes." But he thought that the Marxist view of the class struggle was a too shallow one, assigning to recent centuries conflicts that were, rather, primordial. Behind the class struggle, according to Freud, there stands the struggle between father and son, between established clan leader and rebellious challenger. In this spirit, Freud heavily criticized the Soviet Union, writing in 1932 that its leaders had made themselves "inaccessible to doubt, without feeling for the suffering of others if they stand in the way of their intentions."

Related Topics:
Psychoanalysis - Sigmund Freud - Soviet Union - 1932

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Compare with:

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• tabula rasa
• human condition