On Human Nature
Excerpts from the Western Tradition
This page is a departure from the website’s overall theme. It contains none of my original work but instead consists entirely of words and images borrowed from others. So you might well wonder what this material is doing here. All I can say is that my research in philosophical anthropology has turned up an array of thought and opinion which I find endlessly fascinating, and I hope you do too.
An entry in the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (1999)
Philosophical anthropology. Philosophical inquiry concerning human nature, often starting with the question of what generally characterizes human beings in contrast to other kinds of creatures and things. Thus broadly conceived, it is a kind of inquiry as old as philosophy itself, occupying philosophers from Socrates to Sartre; and it embraces philosophical psychology, the philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, and existentialism.
Psalm 8:4–6 (c. 1000 BC)
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? / For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. / Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet.
Hesiod, The Works and Days (c. 700 BC)
For the gods have hidden and keep hidden what could be men’s livelihood. It could have been that easily in one day you could work out enough to keep you for a year, with no more working. But Zeus in the anger of his heart hid it away because the devious-minded Prometheus had cheated him; and therefore Zeus thought up dismal sorrows for mankind. He hid fire; but Prometheus, the powerful son of Iapetos, stole it again from Zeus to give to mortals.
In anger the cloud-gatherer spoke to him: “Son of Iapetos, deviser of crafts beyond all others, you are happy that you stole the fire, and outwitted my thinking; but it will be a great sorrow to you, and to men who come after. As the price of fire I will give them an evil [Pandora, with her jar of afflictions], and all men shall fondle this, their evil, close to their hearts.”
Before this time the races of men had been living on earth free from all evils, free from laborious work, and free from all wearing sicknesses. But the woman, with her hands lifting away the lid from the great jar, scattered its contents; [and now] troubles by the thousands hover about men.
In anger the cloud-gatherer spoke to him: “Son of Iapetos, deviser of crafts beyond all others, you are happy that you stole the fire, and outwitted my thinking; but it will be a great sorrow to you, and to men who come after. As the price of fire I will give them an evil [Pandora, with her jar of afflictions], and all men shall fondle this, their evil, close to their hearts.”
Before this time the races of men had been living on earth free from all evils, free from laborious work, and free from all wearing sicknesses. But the woman, with her hands lifting away the lid from the great jar, scattered its contents; [and now] troubles by the thousands hover about men.
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You, Perses, should store away in your mind all that I tell you, and listen to Justice [personified in the goddess Dike], and put away all thoughts of violence. Here is the law, as Zeus established it for human beings; as for fish, and wild animals, and the flying birds, they feed on each other, since there is no idea of justice among them; but to men he gave Justice, and she in the end has proved the best thing they have.
Genesis 3:9–19 (c. 500 BC)
And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, “Where art thou?” And he said, “I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” And he said, “Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?”
And the man said, “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.” And the Lord God said unto the woman, “What is this that thou hast done?” And the woman said, “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.” And the Lord God said unto the woman, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”
And unto Adam he said, “Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, ‘Thou shalt not eat of it’: cursed is the ground for thy sake. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
And the man said, “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.” And the Lord God said unto the woman, “What is this that thou hast done?” And the woman said, “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.” And the Lord God said unto the woman, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”
And unto Adam he said, “Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, ‘Thou shalt not eat of it’: cursed is the ground for thy sake. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
Protagoras, the “Great Speech” (in Plato’s Protagoras, c. 450 BC)
There once was a time when the gods existed but mortal races did not. When the time came for their appointed genesis, the gods molded them inside the earth, blending together various compounds of earth and fire. They put Prometheus and Epimetheus in charge of decking them out and assigning to each its appropriate powers and abilities. Epimetheus begged Prometheus for the privilege of doing so. “When I’ve completed the distribution, he said, “you can inspect it.”
Prometheus agreed, and Epimetheus started distributing the abilities. To some he assigned strength without quickness; the weaker ones he made quick. Some he armed; others he left unarmed but devised for them some other means for preserving themselves, such as wings for flight or an underground habitat. He clothed them with thick pelts and tough hides capable of warding off winter storms. He also shod them, some with hooves, others with thick pads of bloodless skin.
But Epimetheus was not very wise, and he absentmindedly used up all the powers and abilities on the nonreasoning animals; he was left with the human race, completely unequipped. While he was floundering about at a loss, Prometheus arrived to inspect the distribution and saw that the human race was naked, unshod, and unarmed, and it was already the day on which they were destined to emerge from the earth into the light.
Prometheus agreed, and Epimetheus started distributing the abilities. To some he assigned strength without quickness; the weaker ones he made quick. Some he armed; others he left unarmed but devised for them some other means for preserving themselves, such as wings for flight or an underground habitat. He clothed them with thick pelts and tough hides capable of warding off winter storms. He also shod them, some with hooves, others with thick pads of bloodless skin.
But Epimetheus was not very wise, and he absentmindedly used up all the powers and abilities on the nonreasoning animals; he was left with the human race, completely unequipped. While he was floundering about at a loss, Prometheus arrived to inspect the distribution and saw that the human race was naked, unshod, and unarmed, and it was already the day on which they were destined to emerge from the earth into the light.
It was then that Prometheus, desperate to find some means of survival for the human race, stole from Hephaestus the art of fire and from Athena wisdom in the practical arts and gave them to the human race. It is because humans had a share of the divine dispensation that they alone among animals worshipped the gods, with whom they had a kind of kinship, and erected altars and sacred images. It wasn’t long before they were articulating speech and had invented houses, clothes, shoes, and blankets, and were nourished by food from the earth.
Protagoras, Truth (c. 450 BC)
Man is the measure of all things—of the things that are, that they are; and of the things that are not, that they are not.
Plato (?), First Alcibiades (c. 370 BC)
Socrates: “What, then, is a human being?”
Alcibiades: “I don’t know what to say.”
Socrates: “Yes, you do. Say that it’s what uses the body [i.e., that it’s the soul].”
Alcibiades: “I don’t know what to say.”
Socrates: “Yes, you do. Say that it’s what uses the body [i.e., that it’s the soul].”
Plato, The Republic (c. 380 BC)
Socrates: “We’ll call the part of the soul with which it calculates the rational part and the part with which it lusts, hungers, thirsts, and gets excited by other appetites the irrational, appetitive part, the companion of certain indulgences and pleasures.”
Glaucon: “Yes. Indeed, that’s a reasonable thing to think.”
Socrates: “Then, let these two parts be distinguished in the soul. Now, is the spirited part by which we get angry a third part, or is it of the same nature as either of the other two?”
Glaucon: “Perhaps it’s like the appetitive part.”
Socrates: “But what happens if [a person] believes that someone has been unjust to him? Isn’t the spirit within him boiling and angry, fighting for what he believes to be just? Won’t it endure hunger, cold, and the like and keep on till it is victorious, not ceasing from noble actions until it either wins, dies, or calms down, called to heel by the reason within him, like a dog by a shepherd?”
Glaucon: “Spirit is certainly like that.”
Socrates: “You well understand what I’m trying to say. But also reflect on this further point.”
Glaucon: “What?”
Socrates: “The spirited part seems to be the opposite of something appetitive, for in the civil war in the soul it aligns itself far more with the rational part.”
Glaucon: “Absolutely.”
Glaucon: “Yes. Indeed, that’s a reasonable thing to think.”
Socrates: “Then, let these two parts be distinguished in the soul. Now, is the spirited part by which we get angry a third part, or is it of the same nature as either of the other two?”
Glaucon: “Perhaps it’s like the appetitive part.”
Socrates: “But what happens if [a person] believes that someone has been unjust to him? Isn’t the spirit within him boiling and angry, fighting for what he believes to be just? Won’t it endure hunger, cold, and the like and keep on till it is victorious, not ceasing from noble actions until it either wins, dies, or calms down, called to heel by the reason within him, like a dog by a shepherd?”
Glaucon: “Spirit is certainly like that.”
Socrates: “You well understand what I’m trying to say. But also reflect on this further point.”
Glaucon: “What?”
Socrates: “The spirited part seems to be the opposite of something appetitive, for in the civil war in the soul it aligns itself far more with the rational part.”
Glaucon: “Absolutely.”
Socrates: “Then is it also different from the rational part, or is it some form of it, so that there are two parts in the soul, the rational and the appetitive, instead of three? Or rather, is the spirited part a third thing in the soul that is by nature the helper of the rational part, provided that it hasn’t been corrupted by a bad upbringing?”
Glaucon: “It must be a third.”
Socrates: “It isn’t difficult to show that it is different. Even in small children, one can see that they are full of spirit right from birth, while as far as rational calculation is concerned, some never seem to get a share of it, while the majority do so quite late.”
Glaucon: “That’s really well put. And in animals too one can see that what you say is true.”
Socrates: “Well, then, we’ve now made our difficult way through a sea of argument. We are pretty much agreed that the same number and the same kinds of classes as are in the city are also in the soul of each individual.”
Glaucon: “It must be a third.”
Socrates: “It isn’t difficult to show that it is different. Even in small children, one can see that they are full of spirit right from birth, while as far as rational calculation is concerned, some never seem to get a share of it, while the majority do so quite late.”
Glaucon: “That’s really well put. And in animals too one can see that what you say is true.”
Socrates: “Well, then, we’ve now made our difficult way through a sea of argument. We are pretty much agreed that the same number and the same kinds of classes as are in the city are also in the soul of each individual.”
Isocrates, Oration of Nicocles (c. 370 BC)
For in all other powers which we possess we are in no respect superior to other living creatures; nay, we are inferior to many in swiftness and in strength, and in other resources; but, because there has been implanted in us the power to persuade each other and to make clear to each other what we desire, not only have we escaped the life of wild beasts, but we have come together and founded cities and made laws and invented arts; and, generally speaking, there is no institution devised by man which the power of speech (logos) has not helped us establish.
An entry in a lexicon used in Plato’s Academy (c. 360 BC)
Human being (anthropos). (1) a wingless, two-footed animal with flat fingernails; (2) the only being capable of acquiring rational knowledge.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (c. 350 BC)
Is a human being by nature idle? Or, just as for an eye or a hand or a foot there seems to be some sort of work, ought one also to set down some work beyond all these for the human being? But then what in the world would this be? For living seems to be something shared in even by plants, but something peculiarly human is being sought. Therefore, one must divide off the life that consists in nutrition and growth. Following this would be some sort of life that consists in perceiving, but this seems to be shared in by a horse and a cow and by every animal. So what remains is some sort of life that puts into action that in us which has reason (logos), either in the sense of being persuaded by reason or in the sense of reasoning and thinking things through. [Hence,] the work of a human being is an activity of the soul in accordance with reason, or at least not in opposition to reason.
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It is the generally accepted view that the perfect good is self-sufficient. But by self-sufficient we mean not what is sufficient for oneself alone living a solitary life, but something that includes parents, wife and children, friends and fellow citizens in general; for man is by nature a social being.
Aristotle, Politics (c. 350 BC)
Why should one man rule and another be ruled? This leads straight to a consideration of the soul, for there is in it by nature something ruling, namely the rational part, and something ruled, namely the irrational part. It is evident, then, that things are the same way in other cases as well, so that most things are by nature either ruling or ruled. But it is in different ways that the free man rules the slave, the male rules the female, and the adult rules the child, for while the parts of the soul are present in them all, they are present in different ways. For the slave wholly lacks the deliberative capacity, while the female has it, but without authority, and the child has it, but incompletely.
Aristotle, Metaphysics (c. 350 BC)
All human beings by nature stretch themselves out toward knowledge. A sign of this is our love of the senses; for even apart from their use, they are loved on their own account, and above all the rest, the one through the eyes. For not only in order that we might act, but even when we are not going to act at all, we prefer seeing, one might say, as against everything else. And this is because, among the senses, this one most of all makes us discover things, and makes evident many differences.
By nature, then, the animals come into being having sense perception, though in some of them memory does not emerge out of this, while in others it does. And for this reason, these latter are more intelligent and more able to learn than those that are unable to remember. So the other animals live by images and memories, but the human race lives also by art and reasoning.
And art comes into being whenever, out of many conceptions from experience, one universal judgment arises about those that are similar. For to have a judgment that this thing was beneficial to Callias when he was sick with this disease, and to Socrates, and one by one in this way to many people, belongs to experience. But the judgment that it was beneficial to all such people, marked out as being of one kind, when they were sick with this disease, such as to sluggish or irritable people when they were feverish with heat, belongs to art.
For the purpose of acting, experience doesn’t seem to differ from art at all, and we even see people with experience being more successful than those who have a rational account without experience. Nevertheless, we think that knowing and understanding are present in art more than in experience, and we take the possessors of arts to be wiser than people with experience. For people with experience know the what, but do not know the why, but the others are acquainted with the why and the cause. For this reason we also think the master craftsmen in each kind of work are more honorable and know more than the manual labourers, and are also wiser, because they know the causes of the things they do, while the manual labourers do what they do out of habit.
By nature, then, the animals come into being having sense perception, though in some of them memory does not emerge out of this, while in others it does. And for this reason, these latter are more intelligent and more able to learn than those that are unable to remember. So the other animals live by images and memories, but the human race lives also by art and reasoning.
And art comes into being whenever, out of many conceptions from experience, one universal judgment arises about those that are similar. For to have a judgment that this thing was beneficial to Callias when he was sick with this disease, and to Socrates, and one by one in this way to many people, belongs to experience. But the judgment that it was beneficial to all such people, marked out as being of one kind, when they were sick with this disease, such as to sluggish or irritable people when they were feverish with heat, belongs to art.
For the purpose of acting, experience doesn’t seem to differ from art at all, and we even see people with experience being more successful than those who have a rational account without experience. Nevertheless, we think that knowing and understanding are present in art more than in experience, and we take the possessors of arts to be wiser than people with experience. For people with experience know the what, but do not know the why, but the others are acquainted with the why and the cause. For this reason we also think the master craftsmen in each kind of work are more honorable and know more than the manual labourers, and are also wiser, because they know the causes of the things they do, while the manual labourers do what they do out of habit.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (c. 350 BC)
Since the activity of the intellect (nous) is considered to excel in seriousness, taking as it does the form of contemplation (theoria), and to aim at no other end beyond itself, and since it is evident that self-sufficiency and leisuredness and such freedom from fatigue as is humanly possible result from this activity, then this activity will be the perfect happiness of a human being.
But such a life will be too high for human attainment; for one who lives it will do so not as a human being but in virtue of something divine within him. And yet one should not follow those who advise us to think human thoughts, since we are human, and mortal thoughts, since we are mortal, but as far as possible one ought to put on immortality and to do all things with a view toward living in accord with the most powerful thing in oneself; for even if it is small in bulk, it rises above everything else in power and in worth. Indeed, it would even seem that this is the true self of the human being, since it is the authoritative and better part of him. Therefore, the best and most pleasant life for a human being is the life of the intellect, since the intellect is in the fullest sense the human being.
But such a life will be too high for human attainment; for one who lives it will do so not as a human being but in virtue of something divine within him. And yet one should not follow those who advise us to think human thoughts, since we are human, and mortal thoughts, since we are mortal, but as far as possible one ought to put on immortality and to do all things with a view toward living in accord with the most powerful thing in oneself; for even if it is small in bulk, it rises above everything else in power and in worth. Indeed, it would even seem that this is the true self of the human being, since it is the authoritative and better part of him. Therefore, the best and most pleasant life for a human being is the life of the intellect, since the intellect is in the fullest sense the human being.
Aristotle, On the Soul (c. 350 BC)
But in fact the intellect obviously does not cause motion without desire, while desire causes motion even contrary to reasoning, since a passionate impulse is a kind of desire. And while every act of the contemplative intellect is right, desire and imagination can be both right and not right. For desires come to be opposite to one another, which happens whenever reason and impulses are opposed, and comes about in beings that have perception of time. For the intellect urges one to resist impulses on account of the future, while the impulse urges one to resist reason on account of what is immediate, since what is immediately pleasant appears to be both simply pleasant and simply good, because of want of foresight into what is farther away in time.
Epictetus, Discourses (c. 108 AD)
Consider who you are. First of all a human being, and this means that you have nothing more authoritative than your power of moral choice and everything else is subordinate to it, but it itself is free and independent. Consider, then, what you are separate from in virtue of your rationality. You are separate from wild beasts and from sheep.
And in addition you are a citizen of the cosmos and a part of it—not one of the servile parts but one of its principal parts. For you are able to follow the divine administration and figure out what comes next. So, what is the commitment of a citizen? To have no private advantage, not to deliberate about anything as though one were a separate part but just as if the hand or foot had reasoning power and were able to follow the arrangements of nature, they would never have sought or desired anything except after referring to the whole.
And in addition you are a citizen of the cosmos and a part of it—not one of the servile parts but one of its principal parts. For you are able to follow the divine administration and figure out what comes next. So, what is the commitment of a citizen? To have no private advantage, not to deliberate about anything as though one were a separate part but just as if the hand or foot had reasoning power and were able to follow the arrangements of nature, they would never have sought or desired anything except after referring to the whole.
Porphyry, Introduction to Aristotle’s Categories (c. 269 AD)
I claim that everything possesses both a name and either a definition or a description. For example, this thing has the name “human being,” and is indicated by that name, but there also exists a definition of it, for we say that a human being is a mortal rational animal. For each thing is indicated not only by its name but also by the account that defines and conveys its essence.
But the definitional account must correspond to the name and give an explanation of the thing insofar as that name is used of it. For instance, this entity is called “human being.” This denotes all of it at once, but it also has as a name “animal,” which denotes it in a more compendious fashion. Insofar as it is called “human being,” it has corresponding to this name the account of the human being, “mortal rational animal,” but insofar as it is an animal, it has the account “sentient living entity.” Suppose that one were to say that the entity in question is a human being, and thus indicate it by a name, but then wanted to give its account by saying that it was a sentient living entity. One would then have said something true, but one would not have given the account corresponding to the name “human being.” Such a definition would be superfluous and artificial.
But the definitional account must correspond to the name and give an explanation of the thing insofar as that name is used of it. For instance, this entity is called “human being.” This denotes all of it at once, but it also has as a name “animal,” which denotes it in a more compendious fashion. Insofar as it is called “human being,” it has corresponding to this name the account of the human being, “mortal rational animal,” but insofar as it is an animal, it has the account “sentient living entity.” Suppose that one were to say that the entity in question is a human being, and thus indicate it by a name, but then wanted to give its account by saying that it was a sentient living entity. One would then have said something true, but one would not have given the account corresponding to the name “human being.” Such a definition would be superfluous and artificial.
St. Augustine, The City of God (c. 420)
After Adam and Eve disobeyed, they felt for the first time a movement of disobedience in their flesh, as punishment in kind for their own disobedience to God. The soul, which had taken a perverse delight in its own liberty and disdain to serve God, was now deprived of its original mastery over the body. Because it had deliberately deserted the Lord who was over it, it no longer bent to its will the servant beneath it, being unable to hold the flesh completely in its subjugation as would always have been the case, if only the soul had remained subject to God. From this moment on, the flesh began to lust against the spirit. With this rebellion we are born.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (c. 1266)
It is clear that man is not a soul only, but something composed of soul and body. Plato, who supposed that sensation belonged to the soul, could maintain that man was a soul making use of the body. But one cannot sense without a body; therefore, the body must be some part of man.
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Man has freedom of will: otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards, and punishments would be in vain. In order to make this evident, we must observe that some things act without judgment; as a stone moves downwards; and in like manner all things which lack knowledge. And some act from judgment, but not a free judgment; as brute animals. For the sheep, seeing the wolf, judges it a thing to be shunned, from a natural and not a free judgment, because it judges, not from reason, but from natural instinct. And the same thing is to be said of any judgment of brute animals. But man’s judgment, in the case of some particular act, is not from a natural instinct, but from some act of comparison in the reason; therefore, he acts from free judgment and retains the power of being inclined to various things. For reason in contingent matters may follow opposite courses, as we see in dialectical syllogisms and rhetorical arguments. And forasmuch as man is rational is it necessary that man have a free will.
Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486)
To you, Adam, we have fixed no place in the scale of created beings, no one face or task, so that you will take whatever place and face and task you choose. All other creatures are bound by the laws we have laid down for them, but you are not held in by any bounds, so that you will fix them for yourself. You can sink among the animals, or rise among the angels if you like.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600)
What a piece of work is man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, In form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel, In apprehension how like a god, The beauty of the world, The paragon of animals. And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor Woman neither.
René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (1641)
On the one hand, I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, insofar as I am simply a thinking, non-extended thing; and, on the other hand, I have a distinct idea of body, insofar as this is simply an extended, non-thinking thing. And accordingly, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it.
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)
During the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.
Baruch Spinoza, Political Treatise (1670s)
Men are led by blind desire more than by reason. Yet most people hold that the human mind is not produced by natural causes but is directly created by God and is so independent of other things that it has an absolute power to determine itself and to use reason in a correct way. But experience teaches us only too well that it is no more in our power to have a sound mind than to have a sound body. Again, since each thing, as far as it is able, endeavours to preserve its own being, we cannot have the slightest doubt that, if it were equally in our power to live at reason’s behest as to be led by blind desire, all would be led by reason and would order their lives wisely, which is by no means the case. For everyone is drawn by his own pleasure.
Nor do theologians remove this difficulty by maintaining that the cause of this weakness in human nature is the vice or sin whose origin was the fall of our first parent. For if the first man, too, had as much power to stand as to fall, and if he was in his right mind and with his nature unimpaired, how could it have come about that knowingly and deliberately he fell? Their answer is that he was deceived by the Devil. But who was it who deceived the Devil?
Nor do theologians remove this difficulty by maintaining that the cause of this weakness in human nature is the vice or sin whose origin was the fall of our first parent. For if the first man, too, had as much power to stand as to fall, and if he was in his right mind and with his nature unimpaired, how could it have come about that knowingly and deliberately he fell? Their answer is that he was deceived by the Devil. But who was it who deceived the Devil?
Alexander Pope, Essay on Man (1733)
Know, then, thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic’s pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
The proper study of mankind is man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic’s pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (1740)
Since reason alone can never produce any action, or give rise to volition, I infer, that the same faculty is as incapable of preventing volition, or of disputing the preference with any passion or emotion. This consequence is necessary. Nothing can oppose or retard the impulse of passion, but a contrary impulse; and if this contrary impulse ever arises from reason, that latter faculty must have an original influence on the will, and must be able to cause, as well as hinder any act of volition. But if reason has no original influence, ’tis impossible it can withstand any principle, which has such an efficacy, or ever keep the mind in suspence a moment. Thus it appears, that the principle, which opposes our passion, cannot be the same with reason, and is only call’d so in an improper sense. We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse on Inequality (1755)
It is no light enterprise to separate that which is original from that which is artificial in man’s present nature, and attain a solid knowledge of a state which no longer exists, yet of which it is necessary to have sound ideas if we are to judge our present state satisfactorily.
Leaving aside, then, all the scholarly books which teach us to see men only as men have made themselves, and reflecting instead on the first and simplest operations of the human soul, I believe I can discern two principles antecedent to reason: the first gives us an ardent interest in our own wellbeing and our own preservation, the second inspires in us a natural aversion to seeing any other sentient being perish or suffer, especially if it is one of our own kind. It is from the concurrence and combination that our mind is able to make of these two principles that all the rules of natural law seem to me to flow; rules that reason is afterwards forced to reestablish on other foundations, when, as a result of successive developments, reason has succeeded in suffocating nature.
Leaving aside, then, all the scholarly books which teach us to see men only as men have made themselves, and reflecting instead on the first and simplest operations of the human soul, I believe I can discern two principles antecedent to reason: the first gives us an ardent interest in our own wellbeing and our own preservation, the second inspires in us a natural aversion to seeing any other sentient being perish or suffer, especially if it is one of our own kind. It is from the concurrence and combination that our mind is able to make of these two principles that all the rules of natural law seem to me to flow; rules that reason is afterwards forced to reestablish on other foundations, when, as a result of successive developments, reason has succeeded in suffocating nature.
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776)
The division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual, consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.
Whether this propensity be one of those original principles in human nature, of which no further account can be given; or whether, as seems more probable, it be the necessary consequence of the faculties of reason and speech, it belongs not to our present subject to enquire. It is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals, which seem to know neither this nor any other species of contracts. Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours; I am willing to give this for that.
Whether this propensity be one of those original principles in human nature, of which no further account can be given; or whether, as seems more probable, it be the necessary consequence of the faculties of reason and speech, it belongs not to our present subject to enquire. It is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals, which seem to know neither this nor any other species of contracts. Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours; I am willing to give this for that.
Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1776)
The fact that the human being can have the “I” in his representations raises him infinitely above all other living beings on earth. Because of this he is a person, and by virtue of the unity of consciousness through all changes that happen to him, one and the same person—i.e., through rank and dignity an entirely different being from things, such as irrational animals, with which one can do as one likes. This holds even when he cannot yet say “I,” because he still has it in thoughts, just as all languages must think it when they speak in the first person, even if they do not have a special word to express this concept of “I.”
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement (1790)
Art is distinguished from nature as making is from acting or operating in general. By right it is only production through freedom, i.e. through an act of will that places reason at the basis of its action, that should be termed art. For, although we are pleased to call what bees produce (their regularly constructed cells) a work of art, we only do so on the strength of an analogy with art; that is to say, as soon as we call to mind that no rational deliberation forms the basis of their work, we say at once that it is a product of their nature (of instinct), and it is only to their creator that we ascribe it as art.
If, as sometimes happens, in a search through a bog, we light on a piece of hewn wood, we do not say it is a product of nature but of art. Its producing cause had an end in view to which the object owes its form. Apart from such cases, we recognize an art in everything formed in such a way that its actuality must have been preceded by a representation of the thing in its cause.
If, as sometimes happens, in a search through a bog, we light on a piece of hewn wood, we do not say it is a product of nature but of art. Its producing cause had an end in view to which the object owes its form. Apart from such cases, we recognize an art in everything formed in such a way that its actuality must have been preceded by a representation of the thing in its cause.
Immanuel Kant, Idea for a General History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784)
Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.
Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Logic (c. 1790)
The field of philosophy can be brought down to the following questions: (1) What can I know? (2) What ought I to do? (3) What may I hope? (4) What is Man? Metaphysics answers the first question, morals the second, religion the third, and anthropology the fourth. Fundamentally, however, we could reduce all of this to anthropology, because the first three questions refer to the last one.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part 1 (1808)
[The demon Mephistopheles, addressing God:]
Your suns and worlds are not within my ken,
I merely watch the plaguey state of men.
The little god of earth remains the same queer sprite
As on the first day, or in primal light.
His life would be more difficult, poor thing,
Without your gift of heavenly glimmering;
He calls it Reason, using light celestial
Just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.
To me he seems, with deference to your Grace,
One of those crickets, jumping round the place,
Who takes his flying leaps, with legs so long,
Then falls to grass and chants the same old song;
But, not content with grasses to repose in,
This one will hunt for muck to stick his nose in.
Your suns and worlds are not within my ken,
I merely watch the plaguey state of men.
The little god of earth remains the same queer sprite
As on the first day, or in primal light.
His life would be more difficult, poor thing,
Without your gift of heavenly glimmering;
He calls it Reason, using light celestial
Just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.
To me he seems, with deference to your Grace,
One of those crickets, jumping round the place,
Who takes his flying leaps, with legs so long,
Then falls to grass and chants the same old song;
But, not content with grasses to repose in,
This one will hunt for muck to stick his nose in.
G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1820s)
Evil is [humanity’s] fault. This evil is its self-seeking: its goals relate only to its singularity insofar as it is opposed to the universal, i.e., insofar as it is natural. The crucial thing is that human beings are “by nature” such as they ought not to be; humanity ought to be Spirit (Geist), but natural being is not spiritual being.
The more precise way of representing this evil condition is to say that human beings become evil by thinking, or, as the Bible puts it, that they have eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Animals, stones, and plants are not evil: evil first occurs within the sphere of rupture or cleavage; it is the consciousness of being-for-myself in opposition to an external nature. This separation is the poisoned chalice from which human beings drink death and decay; but along with it there arises being-for-self and for the first time the universally spiritual, laws—what ought to be. Spirit is free; freedom has the essential moment of this separation within itself; [hence,] this point where humanity is firmly posited as evil is also the point where reconciliation has its source.
The more precise way of representing this evil condition is to say that human beings become evil by thinking, or, as the Bible puts it, that they have eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Animals, stones, and plants are not evil: evil first occurs within the sphere of rupture or cleavage; it is the consciousness of being-for-myself in opposition to an external nature. This separation is the poisoned chalice from which human beings drink death and decay; but along with it there arises being-for-self and for the first time the universally spiritual, laws—what ought to be. Spirit is free; freedom has the essential moment of this separation within itself; [hence,] this point where humanity is firmly posited as evil is also the point where reconciliation has its source.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (1845)
Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence.
Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844)
It is true that animals also produce. They build nests and dwellings, like the bee, the beaver, the ant, etc. But they produce only when immediate physical need compels them to do so, while man produces even when he is free from physical need and truly produces only in freedom from such need. Animals produce only according to the standards and needs of the species to which they belong, while man is capable of applying to each object its inherent standard; hence, man also produces in accordance with the laws of beauty. . . .
Let us look at the question in its subjective aspect: only music can awaken the musical sense in man, and the most beautiful music has no sense for the unmusical ear. Thus, the senses of social man are different from those of non-social man. Only through the objectively unfolded wealth of human nature can the wealth of subjective human sensitivity be cultivated or created. Sense which is a prisoner of crude practical need is only a restricted sense. For a man who is starving the human form of food does not exist; it could just as well be present in its crudest form, and it would be hard to say how this way of eating differs from that of animals.
Let us look at the question in its subjective aspect: only music can awaken the musical sense in man, and the most beautiful music has no sense for the unmusical ear. Thus, the senses of social man are different from those of non-social man. Only through the objectively unfolded wealth of human nature can the wealth of subjective human sensitivity be cultivated or created. Sense which is a prisoner of crude practical need is only a restricted sense. For a man who is starving the human form of food does not exist; it could just as well be present in its crudest form, and it would be hard to say how this way of eating differs from that of animals.
Karl Marx, Grundrisse (1857–58)
Production therefore produces not only an object for the subject, but also a subject for the object.
❊ ❊ ❊
The human being is in the most literal sense a zoön politikon [Aristotle’s term, meaning “social animal”], not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society. Production by an isolated individual outside society—a rare exception which may well occur when a civilized person in whom the social forces are already dynamically present is cast by accident into the wilderness—is as much of an absurdity as is the development of language without individuals living together and talking to each other.
Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844)
Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is ours only when we eat, drink, wear, inhabit it, etc., in short, when we use it. Therefore, all the physical and intellectual senses have been replaced by the simple estrangement of all these senses—the sense of having. So that it might give birth to its inner wealth, human nature had to be reduced to this absolute poverty.
The supersession of private property is therefore the complete emancipation of all human senses and attributes.
The supersession of private property is therefore the complete emancipation of all human senses and attributes.
Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (1867)
We presuppose work in a form in which it is an exclusively human characteristic. A spider conducts operations which resemble those of the weaver, and a bee would put many a human architect to shame by the construction of its honeycomb cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his head before he constructs it in wax. At the end of every work process, a result emerges which was already present at the beginning in the worker’s imagination, hence already existed ideally.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (1864)
I agree that man is pre-eminently a creative animal, predestined to strive consciously for an object and to engage in engineering—that is, incessantly and eternally to make new roads, wherever they may lead. But the reason why he wants sometimes to go off at a tangent may just be that he is predestined to make the road, and perhaps, too, that however stupid the “direct” practical man may be, the thought sometimes will occur to him that the road almost always does lead somewhere, and that the destination it leads to is less important than the process of making it, and that the chief thing is to save the well-conducted child from despising engineering, and so giving way to the fatal idleness, which, as we all know, is the mother of all the vices.
Man likes to make roads and to create, that is a fact beyond dispute. But why has he such a passionate love for destruction and chaos also? Tell me that! May it not be because he is instinctively afraid of attaining his object and completing the edifice he is constructing? Who knows, perhaps he only loves that edifice from a distance, and is by no means in love with it at close quarters; perhaps he only loves building it and does not want to live in it.
Man likes to make roads and to create, that is a fact beyond dispute. But why has he such a passionate love for destruction and chaos also? Tell me that! May it not be because he is instinctively afraid of attaining his object and completing the edifice he is constructing? Who knows, perhaps he only loves that edifice from a distance, and is by no means in love with it at close quarters; perhaps he only loves building it and does not want to live in it.
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 2nd ed. (1874)
The main conclusion here arrived at is that man is descended from some less highly organized form. [More specifically,] man is the co-descendent with other mammals of a common progenitor.
The high standard of our intellectual powers and moral disposition is the greatest difficulty which presents itself, after we have been driven to this conclusion on the origin of man. But every one who admits the principle of evolution, must see that the mental powers of the higher animals, which are the same in kind with those of man, though so different in degree, are capable of advancement. No one doubts that they are of the utmost importance to animals in a state of nature. Therefore the conditions are favourable for their development through natural selection. The same conclusion may be extended to man; the intellect must have been all-important to him, even at a very remote period, as enabling him to invent and use language, to make weapons, tools, traps, &c, whereby with the aid of his social habits, he long ago became the most dominant of all living creatures. A great stride in the development of the intellect will have followed, as soon as the half-art and half-instinct of language came into use; for the continued use of language will have reacted on the brain and produced an inherited effect; and this again will have reacted on the improvement of language.
The development of the moral qualities is a more interesting problem. The foundation lies in the social instincts, including under this term the family ties. These instincts are highly complex, but the more important elements are love, and the distinct emotion of sympathy. Animals endowed with the social instincts take pleasure in one another’s company, warn one another of danger, defend and aid one another in many ways. These instincts do not extend to all the individuals of the species, but only to those of the same community. As they are highly beneficial to the species, they have in all probability been acquired through natural selection.
A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives—of approving of some and disapproving of others; and the fact that man is the one being who certainly deserves this designation, is the greatest of all distinctions between him and the lower animals. But I have endeavoured to shew that the moral sense follows from man’s appreciation of the approbation and disapprobation of his fellows; and from the high activity of his mental faculties, with past impressions extremely vivid; and in these respects he differs from the lower animals. Owing to this condition of mind, man cannot avoid looking both backwards and forwards, and comparing past impressions. Hence after some temporary desire or passion has mastered his social instincts, he reflects; and he therefore resolves to act differently for the future,—and this is conscience.
Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale. We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
The high standard of our intellectual powers and moral disposition is the greatest difficulty which presents itself, after we have been driven to this conclusion on the origin of man. But every one who admits the principle of evolution, must see that the mental powers of the higher animals, which are the same in kind with those of man, though so different in degree, are capable of advancement. No one doubts that they are of the utmost importance to animals in a state of nature. Therefore the conditions are favourable for their development through natural selection. The same conclusion may be extended to man; the intellect must have been all-important to him, even at a very remote period, as enabling him to invent and use language, to make weapons, tools, traps, &c, whereby with the aid of his social habits, he long ago became the most dominant of all living creatures. A great stride in the development of the intellect will have followed, as soon as the half-art and half-instinct of language came into use; for the continued use of language will have reacted on the brain and produced an inherited effect; and this again will have reacted on the improvement of language.
The development of the moral qualities is a more interesting problem. The foundation lies in the social instincts, including under this term the family ties. These instincts are highly complex, but the more important elements are love, and the distinct emotion of sympathy. Animals endowed with the social instincts take pleasure in one another’s company, warn one another of danger, defend and aid one another in many ways. These instincts do not extend to all the individuals of the species, but only to those of the same community. As they are highly beneficial to the species, they have in all probability been acquired through natural selection.
A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives—of approving of some and disapproving of others; and the fact that man is the one being who certainly deserves this designation, is the greatest of all distinctions between him and the lower animals. But I have endeavoured to shew that the moral sense follows from man’s appreciation of the approbation and disapprobation of his fellows; and from the high activity of his mental faculties, with past impressions extremely vivid; and in these respects he differs from the lower animals. Owing to this condition of mind, man cannot avoid looking both backwards and forwards, and comparing past impressions. Hence after some temporary desire or passion has mastered his social instincts, he reflects; and he therefore resolves to act differently for the future,—and this is conscience.
Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale. We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
Friedrich Engels, “The Part Played by Work in the Transition from Ape to Man” (1876)
Many hundreds of thousands of years ago, a particularly highly developed race of anthropoid apes lived somewhere in the tropical zone. Owing to their way of living, these apes began to lose the habit of using their hands to walk and adopted a more and more erect posture. This was the decisive step in the transition from ape to man. The hand had become free and could henceforth attain ever greater dexterity; the greater flexibility thus acquired was inherited and increased from generation to generation. Thus the hand is not only the organ of work, it is also the product of work.
Mastery over nature began with the development of the hand, with work, and widened man’s horizon at every new advance. He was continually discovering new, hitherto unknown properties in natural objects. On the other hand, the development of work necessarily helped bring the members of society closer together by increasing cases of mutual support and joint activity, and by making clear the advantage of this joint activity to each individual. In short, men in the making arrived at the point where they had something to say to each other.
First work, after it and then with it speech—these were the two most essential stimuli under the influence of which the brain of the ape gradually changed into that of man. Hand in hand with the development of the brain went the development of its most immediate instruments—the senses. The reaction on work and speech of the development of the brain and its attendant senses, of the increasing clarity of consciousness, power of abstraction and of conclusion, gave both work and speech an ever-renewed impulse to further development.
The animal merely uses its environment, and brings about changes in it simply by its presence; man by his changes makes it serve his ends, masters it. This is the final, essential distinction between man and other animals, and once again it is work that brings about this distinction. Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first. Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature—but that we, with flesh, blood, and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst.
Mastery over nature began with the development of the hand, with work, and widened man’s horizon at every new advance. He was continually discovering new, hitherto unknown properties in natural objects. On the other hand, the development of work necessarily helped bring the members of society closer together by increasing cases of mutual support and joint activity, and by making clear the advantage of this joint activity to each individual. In short, men in the making arrived at the point where they had something to say to each other.
First work, after it and then with it speech—these were the two most essential stimuli under the influence of which the brain of the ape gradually changed into that of man. Hand in hand with the development of the brain went the development of its most immediate instruments—the senses. The reaction on work and speech of the development of the brain and its attendant senses, of the increasing clarity of consciousness, power of abstraction and of conclusion, gave both work and speech an ever-renewed impulse to further development.
The animal merely uses its environment, and brings about changes in it simply by its presence; man by his changes makes it serve his ends, masters it. This is the final, essential distinction between man and other animals, and once again it is work that brings about this distinction. Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first. Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature—but that we, with flesh, blood, and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals (1887)
I regard the bad conscience as the serious illness that man was bound to contract under the stress of the most fundamental change he ever experienced—that change which occurred when he found himself finally enclosed within the walls of society and peace. The situation that faced sea animals when they were compelled to become land animals or perish was the same as that which faced these semi-animals, well adapted to the wilderness, to war, to prowling, to adventure: suddenly all their instincts were disvalued and “suspended”: they were reduced to thinking, inferring, reckoning, coordinating cause and effect, these unfortunate creatures; they were reduced to their “consciousness,” their weakest and most fallible organ!
All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward—this is what I call the internalization of man: thus it was that man first developed what was later called his “soul.” All those instincts of wild, free, prowling man turned backward against man himself: that is the origin of the “bad conscience.”
But let us add at once that the existence on Earth of an animal soul turned against itself, taking sides against itself, was something so new, profound, unheard of, enigmatic, contradictory, and pregnant with a future that the face of the Earth was essentially altered. Indeed, divine spectators were needed to do justice to the spectacle that thus began and the end of which is not yet in sight—a spectacle too subtle, too marvelous, too paradoxical to be played senselessly unobserved on some ludicrous planet!
All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward—this is what I call the internalization of man: thus it was that man first developed what was later called his “soul.” All those instincts of wild, free, prowling man turned backward against man himself: that is the origin of the “bad conscience.”
But let us add at once that the existence on Earth of an animal soul turned against itself, taking sides against itself, was something so new, profound, unheard of, enigmatic, contradictory, and pregnant with a future that the face of the Earth was essentially altered. Indeed, divine spectators were needed to do justice to the spectacle that thus began and the end of which is not yet in sight—a spectacle too subtle, too marvelous, too paradoxical to be played senselessly unobserved on some ludicrous planet!
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)
These things that, by his science and technology, man has brought about on this earth, on which he first appeared as a feeble animal organism and on which each individual of his species must once more make its entry as a helpless suckling—these things do not only sound like a fairy tale, they are an actual fulfillment of every (or of almost every) fairy-tale wish. All these assets he may lay claim to as his cultural acquisition. Long ago he formed an ideal conception of omnipotence and omniscience which he embodied in his gods. To these gods he attributed everything that seemed unattainable to his wishes, or that was forbidden to him. Today he has come very close to the attainment of this ideal, he has almost become a god himself. Only, it is true, in the fashion in which ideals are usually attained according to the general judgement of humanity. Not completely; in some respects not at all, in others only half way. Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on to him and they give him much trouble at times.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (1943)
The passion of man is the reverse of that of Christ, for man loses himself as man in order that God may be born. But the idea of God is contradictory and we lose ourselves in vain. Man is a useless passion.
Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism Is a Humanism” (1945)
What do we [existentialists] mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)
Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female—whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male. She is the inessential in front of the essential. He is the Subject; he is the Absolute. She is the Other.
Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays (1950)
Man is a rational animal—so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favour of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents. On the contrary, I have seen the world plunging continually further into madness. I have seen great nations, formerly leaders of civilization, led astray by preachers of bombastic nonsense. I have seen cruelty, persecution, and superstition increasing by leaps and bounds, until we have almost reached the point where praise of rationality is held to mark a man as an old fogy regrettably surviving from a bygone age.
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (1958)
Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition of plurality, to the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world. Action would be an unnecessary luxury if men were endlessly reproducible repetitions of the same model, whose nature or essence was the same for all and as predictable as the nature or essence of any other thing. Plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives, or will live.
Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (1962)
I believe the ultimate goal of the human science is not to constitute man, but to dissolve him. The preeminent value of anthropology is that it represents the first step in [such] a procedure.
Jared Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee (1992)
A sociologist from Outer Space would immediately classify us as just a third species of chimpanzee, along with the pygmy chimp of Zaire and the common chimp of the rest of tropical Africa. . . . Whatever caused the leap [from animal to human behavior], it must have involved only a tiny fraction of our genes, because we still differ from chimps in only 1.6% of our genes, and most of that difference had already developed long before our leap in behavior. The best guess I can make is that the leap was triggered by the perfection of our modern capacity for language.
Tim Ingold, Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology (1994)
Every author has a favourite word or phrase to fill the vacant space in the statement “man is defined as a ___________ animal,” insisting that it denotes the single key to the essence of humanity. Undoubtedly “language-using” and “rational” would top the list.
E. O. Wilson, On Human Nature, 2nd ed. (2004)
When On Human Nature was written, in the 1970s, two conceptions of the human condition dominated Western thought. Theologians, plus all but the most liberal followers of the Abrahamic religions, saw human beings as dark angels in animal bodies awaiting redemption and eternal life. Human nature, in their view, is a mix of good and evil propensities, which we must sort out with the aid of writings by ancient Middle Eastern prophets.
In contrast, most intellectuals, whether religiously inclined or not, doubted that a human nature exists at all. To them the brain is a blank slate, an engine driven by a few elementary passions but otherwise an all-purpose computer that creates the mind wholly from individual experience and learning. Culture, the intellectual majority in the 1970s believed, is the cumulative learned response to environment and historical contingency.
Meanwhile, an alternative, naturalistic view was gaining strength. Still embryonic in form, it held that the brain and mind are entirely biological in origin and have been highly structured through evolution by natural selection. Human nature exists, composed of the complex biases of passion and learning propensities often loosely referred to as instincts. The instincts were created over millions of years, when human beings were Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. As a consequence, they still bear the archaic imprint of our species’ biological heritage. Human nature can thus be ultimately understood only with the aid of the scientific method. Culture evolves in response to environmental and historical contingencies, as common sense suggests, but its trajectories are powerfully guided by the inborn biases of human nature. This view was encapsulated in the new discipline of sociobiology, which in its human applications was later re-christened evolutionary psychology.
In contrast, most intellectuals, whether religiously inclined or not, doubted that a human nature exists at all. To them the brain is a blank slate, an engine driven by a few elementary passions but otherwise an all-purpose computer that creates the mind wholly from individual experience and learning. Culture, the intellectual majority in the 1970s believed, is the cumulative learned response to environment and historical contingency.
Meanwhile, an alternative, naturalistic view was gaining strength. Still embryonic in form, it held that the brain and mind are entirely biological in origin and have been highly structured through evolution by natural selection. Human nature exists, composed of the complex biases of passion and learning propensities often loosely referred to as instincts. The instincts were created over millions of years, when human beings were Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. As a consequence, they still bear the archaic imprint of our species’ biological heritage. Human nature can thus be ultimately understood only with the aid of the scientific method. Culture evolves in response to environmental and historical contingencies, as common sense suggests, but its trajectories are powerfully guided by the inborn biases of human nature. This view was encapsulated in the new discipline of sociobiology, which in its human applications was later re-christened evolutionary psychology.
Martha Nussbaum, Women and Human Development (2000)
Certain functions [life, health, imagination, emotion, social interaction, and recreation, among others] are particularly central in human life, in the sense that their presence or absence is typically understood to be a mark of the presence or absence of human life; and—this is what Marx found in Aristotle—there is something that it is to do these functions in a truly human way, not a merely animal way. In Marx’s example, a starving person doesn’t use food in a fully human way—by which I think he means a way infused by practical reasoning and sociability. The core idea is that of the human being as a dignified free being who shapes his or her own life in cooperation and reciprocity with others, rather than being passively shaped or pushed around by the world in the manner of a “flock” or “herd” animal. A life that is really human is one that is shaped throughout by these human powers of practical reason and sociability.
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