Human nature is the concept that there is a set of inherent In philosophy, essence is the attribute or set of attributes that make an object or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it loses its identity. Essence is contrasted with accident: a property that the object or substance has contingently, without which the substance can still retain its identity. The distinguishing characteristics, including ways of thinking Thoughts are forms conceived in the mind, rather than the forms perceived through the five senses. Thought and thinking are the processes by which these concepts are perceived and manipulated. Thinking allows beings to model the world and to represent it according to their objectives, plans, ends and desires. Similar concepts and processes include, feeling Feeling is the nominalization of "to feel". The word was first used in the English language to describe the physical sensation of touch through either experience or perception. The word is also used to describe experiences, other than the physical sensation of touch, such as "a feeling of warmth". In psychology, the word is and acting, that humans Humans are a species of animal known taxonomically as Homo sapiens , and are the only extant member of the Homo genus of bipedal primates in Hominidae, the great ape family. However, in some cases "human" is used to refer to any member of the genus Homo tend to have.

The question of what causes these distinguishing characteristics of humanity and how fixed human nature is (e.g. nature versus nurture The nature versus nurture debates concern the relative importance of an individual's innate qualities versus personal experiences ("nurture", i.e. empiricism or behaviorism) in determining or causing individual differences in physical and behavioral traits) has important implications in ethics Ethics is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good vs. bad, noble vs. ignoble, right vs. wrong, and matters of justice, love, peace, and virtue, politics Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, but politics has been observed in other group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. It consists of "social relations involving authority or power" and refers to and theology Theology is the study of a god or, more generally, the study of religious faith, practice, and experience, or of spirituality because they are seen as providing standards or norms that humans can use when judging how best to live. The complex implications of such discussion are often themes which are dealt with in art Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, photography, sculpture, and paintings. The meaning of art is explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics.

The branches of science associated with the study of human nature include sociology Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social activity, often with the goal of applying such knowledge to the pursuit of social welfare. Subject matter, sociobiology Sociobiology is a synthesis of scientific disciplines which attempts to explain social behavior in animal species by considering the Darwinian advantages specific behaviors may have. It is often considered a branch of biology and sociology, but also draws from ethology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, population genetics and other and psychology Psychology is the scientific study of human or other animal mental functions and behaviors. In this field, a professional practitioner or researcher is called a psychologist. Psychologists are classified as social or behavioral scientists. Psychological research can be considered either basic or applied. Psychologists attempt to understand the, particularly evolutionary psychology Evolutionary psychology attempts to explain psychological traits—such as memory, perception, or language—as adaptations, that is, as the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection. Adaptationist thinking about physiological mechanisms, such as the heart, lungs, and immune system, is common in evolutionary biology and developmental psychology Developmental psychology, also known as human development, is the scientific study of systematic psychological changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult development, aging, and the entire life span. This field examines.

Brief history of the concept

In pre-modern scientific understandings of nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. It ranges in scale from the subatomic to the cosmic, human nature is understood with reference to final Each of these "causes" was a different sense of the Greek word aition, which Aristotle thought was ambiguous and needed to be clarified. The distinction between them can be understood using a wooden table as an example. The material cause is the wood out of which the table is made; the formal cause is the form or shape of the table; the and formal "Cause" means: in one sense, that as the result of whose presence something comes into being—e.g. the bronze of a statue and the silver of a cup, and the classes which contain these; (b) in another sense, the form or pattern; that is, the essential formula and the classes which contain it—e.g. the ratio 2:1 and number in general is causes Causality is the relationship between an event and a second event (the effect), where the second event is a consequence of the first. Such understandings imply the existence of an ideal, "idea," or "form Plato's theory of Forms or theory of Ideas asserts that non-material abstract forms (or ideas), and not the material world of change known to us through sensation, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality. When used in this sense, the word form is often capitalized. Plato says that these Forms are the only true objects of study" of a human which exists independently of individual humans. (This in turn is sometimes understood to imply the existence of a divine interest in human nature.)

The existence of an invariable human nature is a subject of much historical debate, continuing into modern times. Most famously, Darwin Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist[I] who established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection. He published his theory with compelling evidence for evolution in his 18 gave a widely accepted scientific argument that humans and other animal species have no truly fixed nature, at least in the long term. Before him, the malleability of man, even within one lifetime, had been asserted by Jean Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a major Genevois philosopher, writer, and composer of the 18th-century Enlightenment. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution and the development of modern political and educational thought.^[1]

Since the mid-19th century, the concept of human nature has been called into question by thinkers such as Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism, Marx Marx's theory of human nature occupies an important place in his critique of capitalism, his conception of communism, and his 'materialist conception of history'. Marx, however, does not refer to "human nature" as such, but to Gattungswesen, which is generally translated as 'species-being' or 'species-essence'. What Marx meant by this is, Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (German pronunciation: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈniːtsʃə]; in English UK: /ˈniːtʃə/, US: /ˈniːtʃi/) was a 19th-century German philosopher and classical philologist. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and, Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, existentialism, and Marxism, and his work continues to influence fields such as Marxist philosophy, sociology, and, a number of structuralists Structuralism is an approach to the human sciences which attempts to analyse phenomena semiotically ; or more loosely as a system of interrelated parts. Its genesis was in the theoretical linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), but various intellectuals, perhaps most notably Claude Lévi-Strauss, expanded its application. The and postmodernists Postmodernism is a tendency in contemporary culture characterized by the rejection of objective truth and global cultural narrative. It emphasizes the role of language, power relations, and motivations; in particular it attacks the use of sharp classifications such as male versus female, straight versus gay, white versus black, and imperial versus.

Scientific perspectives such as behaviorism Behaviorism , also called the learning perspective (where any physical action is a behavior), is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do—including acting, thinking and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors. The behaviorist school of thought maintains that behaviors as such can be, determinism Determinism is the philosophical view that every event, including human cognition, behaviour, decision, and action, is causally determined by previous events. Determinism proposes there is a predetermined unbroken chain of prior occurrences back to the origin of the universe, and the chemical model within modern psychiatry Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders—which include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual disorders. The term was first coined by the German physician Johann Christian Reil in 1808. It literally means the 'medical treatment of the mind' . A medical doctor specializing in and psychology Psychology is the scientific study of human or other animal mental functions and behaviors. In this field, a professional practitioner or researcher is called a psychologist. Psychologists are classified as social or behavioral scientists. Psychological research can be considered either basic or applied. Psychologists attempt to understand the, are neutral regarding human nature. They can be offered to explain its origins and underlying mechanisms, or to demonstrate capacities for change and diversity which would arguably violate the concept of a fixed human nature.

Metaphysics and ethics

There are a number of perspectives regarding the fundamental nature and substance of humans. These are by no means mutually exclusive, and the following list is by no means exhaustive:

• Philosophical naturalism The ideas and assumptions of philosophical naturalism were first seen in the works of the Ionian pre-Socratic philosophers. One such was Thales, considered to be the father of science, as he was the first to give explanations of natural events without the use of supernatural causes. These early philosophers subscribed to principles of empirical (which includes materialism In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance. As a theory, materialism is a form of physicalism and belongs to the class of monist ontology. As such, it is and rationalism In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive" (Bourke 263). Different degrees of emphasis on this method or) encompasses a set of views that humans are purely natural phenomena; sophisticated beings Being , is an English word used for conceptualizing subjective aspects fundamental to the self —related to and somewhat interchangeable with terms like "existence" and "living". In its objective usage —as in "a being," or "[a] human being" —it refers to a discrete life form that has properties of mind ( that evolved to our present state through natural mechanisms such as evolution Evolution is the change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms through successive generations. After a population splits into smaller groups, these groups evolve independently and may eventually diversify into new species. Ultimately, life is descended from a common ancestory through a long series of these speciation events,. Humanist philosophers Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. The term has a complex history and is used to mean several things, most notably, an educational movement, associated especially with the Italian Renaissance, that emphasized the study of Greek and Roman literature, rhetoric, and moral philosophy – determine good Value theory encompasses a range of approaches to understanding how, why, and to what degree humans should value things, whether the thing is a person, idea, object, or anything else. This investigation began in ancient philosophy, where it is called axiology or ethics. Early philosophical investigations sought to understand good and evil, and the and evil Evil is the intention of causing harm or destruction while threatening or deliberately violating morality. Largely due to the subjectivity of the word morality , there is no agreement about whether evil is a matter of social custom or universally correct principle that overrides custom. Evil, however, is most commonly used to refer to any by appeal to universal human qualities, but other naturalists regard these terms as mere labels placed on how well individual behaviour conforms to societal expectations, and is the result of our psychology Psychology is the scientific study of human or other animal mental functions and behaviors. In this field, a professional practitioner or researcher is called a psychologist. Psychologists are classified as social or behavioral scientists. Psychological research can be considered either basic or applied. Psychologists attempt to understand the and socialization.

• Abrahamic religions The Abrahamic religions are historically the world's three primary monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which share a common origin and values. The origins of Abrahamic religion are found in Judaism, which began in the first and second millennium BCE in ancient Israel and Judah during which time the Hebrew Bible was composed (most notably Judaism Judaism is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people. Judaism, originating in the Hebrew Bible and explored in later texts such as the Talmud, is considered by Jews to be the expression of the covenantal relationship God developed with the Children of Israel. According to traditional Rabbinic Judaism, God revealed, Christianity Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented in the New Testament. Christianity comprises three major branches: Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy (which parted ways with Catholicism in 1054 A.D.) and Protestantism (which came into existence during the Protestant Reformation of the 16th and Islam Islam (Arabic: الإسلام‎ al-’islām, pronounced [ʔislæːm] [note 1]) is the monotheistic religion articulated by the Qur’an, a text considered by its adherents to be the verbatim word of their one, incomparable God (Arabic: الله‎, Allāh), and by the Prophet of Islam Muhammad's teachings and normative example (in Arabic called) hold that a human is a spiritual being The English word spirit has many differing meanings and connotations, all of them relating to a non-corporeal substance contrasted with the material body. The spirit of a human being is thus the animating, sensitive or vital principle in that individual, similar to the soul taken to be the seat of the mental, intellectual and emotional powers. The which was deliberately created (ex nihilo The Latin phrase ex nihilo means "out of nothing". It often appears in conjunction with the concept of creation, as in creatio ex nihilo, meaning "creation out of nothing" — chiefly in philosophical or theological contexts, but also occurs in other fields) by a single God God is the English name given to the singular omnipotent being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism in his image (according to the former two), and exists in continued relationship with God. Good and evil are defined in terms of how well humans conform to God's character or God's law.

• Polytheistic Polytheism is the belief of multiple deities, called gods or goddesses, or both. These are usually assembled into a pantheon, along with their own mythologies and rituals. Many religions, both historical and contemporary, have a belief in polytheism, such as Shinto, Ancient Greek Polytheism, Roman Polytheism, Germanic Polytheism, Slavic polytheism, or animistic Animism is a philosophical, religious or spiritual idea that souls or spirits exist not only in humans but also in animals, plants, rocks, natural phenomena such as thunder, geographic features such as mountains or rivers, or other entities of the natural environment. Animism may further attribute souls to abstract concepts such as words, true notions vary, but generally regard humans as citizens in a world populated by other intelligent spiritual or mythological The term mythology can refer to either the study of myths or a body of myths. For example, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece. The term "myth" is often used colloquially to refer to a false story; however, the academic beings, such as gods, demons, ghosts, etc. In these cases, human evil is often regarded as the result of supernatural influences or mischief (although it may have many other causes as well).

• Holistic, pantheistic, and panentheistic spiritual traditions regard humanity as existing within God or as a part of the divine cosmos. In this case, human "evil" is usually regarded as the result of ignorance of this universal Divine nature. Traditions of this kind include the Indian religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism and other forms of Eastern philosophy, as also schools of western philosophy such as Stoicism, Neoplatonism, or Spinoza's pantheistic cosmology. Certain kinds of polytheism, animism, and monism have similar interpretations.

• Some astrologers believe that a person's personality and many of the challenges they will face in life are determined by the placements of the planets, each represents different aspects of their mental and physical nature. At the time of birth they may use many different techniques to 'guesstimate' the issues that will unfold throughout their lives and the actions that can be taken to gain the best results.

Free will and determinism

The issue of free will and determinism underlies much of the debate about human nature. Free will, or agency, refers to the ability of humans to make genuinely free choices (in some sense). As it relates to humans, the thesis of determinism implies that human choices are fully caused by internal and external forces.

• Incompatibilism holds that determinism and free will are contradictory (i.e. both cannot be true). Incompatibilist views can either deny or accept free will.
  • Incompatibilist views holding to free will include:
    • Libertarianism holds that the human perception of free choice in action is genuine, rather than seemingly genuine, so that some of our actions are performed without there being any compulsion by internal or external forces to do so (i.e., indeterminism).
    • Thomism holds that humans have a genuine experience of free will, and this experience of free will is evidence of a soul that transcends the mere physical components of the human being.
  • Incompatibilist views that deny free will include:
    • Determinism refers to the logic that humans, like all physical phenomena, are subject to cause and effect. Determinism also holds that our actions stem from environmental, biological, or theological factors. A common misconception is that all determinists are fatalists, who believe that deliberation is pointless as the future is already caused; when in fact most determinists hold the idea that we should deliberate on our actions and that deliberating on our actions is part of the complex interplay between cause and effect.
    • Predestination is the position that God orchestrates all the events in the universe, human and otherwise, according to his will; however he does it in a way that includes the free choices of humans.
    • Biological determinism and social determinism are the views that human actions are determined by their biology and social interaction, respectively. The debate between these two positions is known as nature versus nurture.
• Compatibilism is the view that free will and determinism can conceptually coexist. Compatibilist views include:
  • Human compatibilitism is the view that they are compatible because free will is merely the hypothetical ability to choose differently if one were differently disposed according to the physical factors of determinism.
  • Molinism is the view that God is able to predestine all events on Earth because he knows in advance what people will freely choose.
  • Contemporary compatibilists seek definitions of free will that permit determinism.

Spiritual versus natural

Another often-discussed aspect of human nature is the existence and relationship of the physical body with a spirit or soul that transcends the human's physical attributes, as well as the existence of any transcendent purpose. In this area, there are three dominant views:

• The philosophical naturalist position is that humans are entirely natural, with no spiritual component or transcendent purpose. Subsets of the naturalist view include the materialist and physicalist positions, which hold that humans are entirely physical. However, some naturalists are also dualists about mind and body. Naturalism, combined with the natural and social sciences, views humans as the unplanned product of evolution, which operated in part by natural selection on random mutations. Philosophical naturalists do not believe in a supernatural afterlife. While philosophical naturalism is often assailed as an unacceptable view of human nature, it is promoted by many prominent philosophers and thinkers. The philosophical naturalist often will view religious belief as similar to superstition and as the product of unsound or magical thinking.

• In contrast to materialism, there is the Platonic or idealist position. It can be expressed in many ways, but in essence it is the view that there is a distinction between appearance and reality, and that the world we see around us is simply a reflection of some higher, divine existence, of which the human (and perhaps also the animal) soul/mind or spirit may be part. In his Republic, Book VII, Plato represents humankind as prisoners chained from birth inside an underground cave, unable to move their heads, and therefore able to see only the shadows on the walls created by a fire outside the cave, shadows that, in their ignorance, the cave dwellers mistake for reality. For Plato, therefore, the soul is a spirit that uses the body. It is in a non-natural state of union, and longs to be freed from its bodily prison (cf. Republic, X, 611).

• Between materialism and idealism lies the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose system of thought is known as Thomism. His thought is, in essence, a synthesis of Christian theology and the philosophy of Aristotle. Aristotle describes man as a "rational animal," i.e., a single, undivided being that is at once animal (material) and rational (intellectual soul). Drawing from Aristotelian hylomorphism, the soul is seen as the substantial form of the body (matter). The soul, as the substantial form, is what is universal, or common, to all humanity, and therefore, is indicative of human nature; that which differentiates one person from another is matter, which Aquinas refers to as the principle of individuation. The human soul is characterized as spiritual, immortal, substantial, and subsistent: it is the spiritual and vital principle of the human being, but is also dependent on the body in a variety of ways in order to possess these characteristics. Thus, no division is made between the "physical" and the "spiritual," though they are in fact distinct. This position differentiates Thomism from both materialism and idealism. Unlike idealism, it holds that the visible universe is not a mere shadow of a transcendent reality, but instead is fully real in and of itself. However, unlike materialism, Thomism holds that empiricism and philosophy, when properly exercised, lead inevitably to reasonable belief in God, the human soul, and moral objectivism^{[disambiguation needed]}. Thus, to a Thomist, it is obvious from the evidence that there is a God and an eternal soul.

In addition to these traditional philosophical distinctions between the soul and body, recent adaptations in humanistic psychology attempt to explain the natural transcendent purpose of human life. Richard Shweder of the University of Chicago separated human morality into three components: the ethic of autonomy, the ethic of community, and the ethic of divinity. The idea of religious fundamentalist countries is to uphold the ethic of divinity, which consists of protecting the divinity that exists in each person, even if that means imposing religious and moral laws on people of other faiths. Abraham Maslow, one of the founders of humanistic psychology attempted to demonstrate that spiritual life can be rationally explained as a naturalistic meaning. He claims that 'peak experiences'- moments of extreme self -transcendence, are the same amongst religious and secular people alike. Peak experiences make people see beyond the two dimensional world of self-advancement and try live a nobler life. Religions can thus be explained in a naturalistic sense as the coordination of transcendent ideas in order to maximize 'peak experiences'.^[2]

State of nature

State of nature refers to philosophical assertions regarding the condition of humans before social factors are imposed, thus attempting to describe the "natural essence" of human nature.

• Views which see humans as inherently good:
  • According to John Locke, humans in the state of nature have perfect freedom to order their actions according to the laws of nature. Locke agreed with Thomas Hobbes, that people could do so without having to ask permission to act from any other person, because people are of equal value. People only leave the state of nature when they consent to take part in a community in order to protect their property rights.
  • According to Pelagius, humans in the state of nature are not tainted by original sin, but are instead fully capable of choosing good or evil.
  • According to social determinism and biological determinism, human behavior is determined by biological and social factors, so people are never truly to blame for actions generally considered "bad" nor truly credited with actions generally considered "good."
• Views which see humans as inherently bad:
  • According to Hobbes, humans in the state of nature are inherently in a "war of all against all," and life in that state is ultimately "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." To Hobbes, this state of nature is remedied by a strong government. According to Locke, human nature is rather the law of reason. What is reasonable is natural, what is natural is good. When humans do the illogical bad happens. According to Rousseau, humans are born natural, contain the urge to survive and natural pity.
  • According to the Protestant doctrine of original sin, humans are inherently corrupt creatures stained by the sin of Adam, and can only be redeemed by the grace of God through faith in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, whom they believe to be His morally perfect Son. Who will in turn save us all from sin. In Christian theology, the virgin birth of Jesus is believed to make this possible, as original sin is thought to pass from the seed of man. Catholicism, however, holds that the natures of both Jesus and His mother Mary, as a holy vessel for the Messiah, were uncorrupted by original sin.
  • According to Bertrand Russell moral evil or sin is derived from the instincts that have been transmitted to us from our ancestry of beasts of prey. This ancestry originated when certain animals became omnivorous and employed predation (killing and thievery) in order periodically to ingurgitate the flesh as well as the fruit and produce of other once-living things to support metabolism in competition with other animals for scarce food-animal and food-plant sources in the predatory environment in which we evolved. Thus, the simple fact that we humans must eat other life or else starve, die and rot is the probable primordial origin of contemporary and historical moral evil; i.e., the bad things we do to each other by lying, cheating, slandering, thieving and slaughtering.
• View which sees humans as having a "wounded human nature"
  • According to the Catholic Church, humans were created good but were wounded by their own free decision to sin. Humans were in a state of "original holiness and justice," but lost these due to original sin, committed by Adam and passed on by him as a state of nature to his descendants. According to its Catechism of the Catholic Church, "human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence. Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle." (CCC 405) [2]

Morality

There are a number of views regarding the origin and nature of human morality

• Moral realism or moral objectivism holds that moral codes exist outside of human opinion—that certain things are right or wrong regardless of human opinion on the topic. Objective morality may be seen as stemming from the inherent nature of humanity, divine command, or both.
• Moral subjectivism holds that moral codes depend on human opinion.
• Moral relativism holds that moral codes are a function of human values and social structures, and hold no meaning outside social convention.
• Moral absolutism is the view that certain acts are right or wrong regardless of context.
• Moral universalism compromises between moral relativism and moral absolutism and holds that there is, or should be, a common universal core of morality.
• Moral nihilism is the view that no morality exists.
• Amoralism is the view that the concepts of moral right and wrong do not have meaning.

Purpose

• Materialism and philosophical naturalism hold that there is no external purpose to human life. Proponents of this view often adopt the philosophy of secular humanism.
• Teleology holds that there is inherent purpose to human existence. This purpose may arise from the inherent nature of humanity itself (what a human is "supposed to be," as in the case of objectivist philosophy), from mankind's relationship to the divine (what God wants humanity to be, as in the case of religion), or from both (as when the divine commands are seen as being in accord with the inherent nature of humanity and humanity's best interests).
• Nihilism argues that existence is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.

Psychology and biology

A long standing question in philosophy and science is whether there exists an invariant human nature. For those who believe there is a human nature, further questions include:

• What determines/constrains human nature?
• To what extent is human nature malleable?
• How does it vary between people and populations?

Since human behavior is so diverse, it can be difficult to find absolutely invariant human behaviors that are of interest to philosophers. A lesser (but still scientifically valid) standard for evidence pertaining to "human nature" is used by scientists who study behavior. Biologists look for evidence of genetic predisposition to behavioral patterns. Human behavior can be influenced by the environment, so penetrance of genetically predisposed behavioral traits is not expected to reach 100 percent. A type of human behavior for which there is a strong genetic predisposition can be considered to be part of human nature. In other words, human nature is not seen as something that forces individuals to behave in a certain way, but as something that makes individuals more inclined to act in a certain way than in another.

An enduring evolutionary psychology controversy often revolves around "human nature". Common evolutionary psychology explanations posit that the mind is made up of a massive number of interacting adaptations or "mental modules", the genes for which are a common human inheritance and result in a common human phenotype in the typical environments in which humans find themselves, and which constitute "human nature". This view has been critiqued as essentialist, as neglecting "natural" genetic, environmental and individual variation (and that the closest you can come is norms of reaction), and as equivocating between the levels of genes, developmental programs, and actual human psychology/culture, and between individuals and population averages.^[3]

Tabula rasa

John Locke's philosophy of empiricism saw human nature as a tabula rasa. In this view, the mind is at birth a "blank slate" without rules, so data is added, and rules for processing them are formed solely by our sensory experiences.^[4]

The contrary view is seen in E. O. Wilson's sociobiology and the closely related theory of evolutionary psychology. See below.

Behavioral genetics

The nature versus nurture debate. Behavioral genetics

Human genetic variation

Human genetic variation is the genetic diversity of humans and represents the total amount of genetic characteristics observed within the human species. No two humans are genetically identical, even monozygotic twins, who develop from a single zygote, have infrequent genetic differences due to mutations occurring during development and gene copy number variation has been observed.^[5] Differences between individuals, even closely related individuals, are the key to techniques such as genetic fingerprinting. Alleles occur at different frequencies in different human populations, with populations that are more geographically and ancestrally remote tending to differ more.^[6]

Arguments for invariance

All individuals and all societies have a similar facial grammar. Everyone smiles the same, and the way we use our eyes to convey cognition or flirtatiousness is the same. Evaluations of facial attractiveness are consistent across races and cultures with a preference for symmetry and proportion which are explained by scientists as markers of health during physical development attributable to good genes or a good environment. Human females find male faces that are rated more masculine and aggressive, less feminine and sensitive, more attractive during ovulation, the stage of their menstrual cycle when women are most fertile.^[7]

No success has ever been scientifically demonstrated in re-assigning an individual's handedness. Although individuals may change their external behavior (picking up scissors with their right hand instead of the left, for instance), their internal inclination never changes. Even people who lose a limb, who physically do not possess the ability to pick up scissors with their left hand, will try to do so if they are 'left-handed.' The percentage of left-handers in all cultures at all times remains constant (because left-handedness is a recessive trait^{[citation needed]}).

Newborn babies, far too young to have been acculturated to do so, have measurable behaviors such as being more attracted to human faces than other shapes and having a preference for their mother's voice over any other voice.

In his book Human Universals^[8] , Donald E Brown presents his case and identifies approximately 400 specific behaviors that are essentially invariant among all humans.

Arguments for social malleability

The Duke of Wellington is said to have become indignant upon hearing someone refer to habit as "second nature." He replied, "It is ten times nature!"

William James likewise referred to habit as the fly-wheel of society. Habits, though, are by definition acquired, and different habits will be both the effect and the cause of very different societies.

Different human societies have held very different moral codes. Thus, regardless of whether objective morality exists or not, humans are clearly capable of imposing a wide variety of different moral codes on themselves.

Some have argued that the role for nurture comes not from the absence of impulses in human nature but from the plethora of such impulses—so many, and so contradictory, that nurture must sort them out and put them into a hierarchy.

Some believe there is no single universal law of behavior that holds true for all human beings. There are many such laws that apply to the majority of individuals (for example, the majority of individuals try to avoid dying), but there are always exceptions (some individuals commit suicide). Most animals, including humans, have an innate self-preservation instinct (fear of injury and death). The fact that humans may override this basic instinct is seen as evidence that human nature is subordinate to the human mind, and/or various outside factors. However, this may not be entirely unique to the human mind, as certain animals are observed to willfully commit suicide.

Finally, it has been noted that recent advancements in biology have opened the door to genetic manipulation. This means that we may soon have the possibility of altering our genes and therefore changing the instincts that are coded in those genes. (See transhumanism)

Influential views of human nature

Many influential schools of thought have defended particular conceptions of human nature, and integrated those conceptions into their other ideas. Among these are Platonism, Marxism and Freudianism.

Plato

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. The soul in Timaeus consisted of a rational propensity, resident in the human head, a spirited tendency, resident in the heart, and an appetitive beast, resident in the belly and genitals. The duty of the 'rational' was keep the other two natures tamed, a belief concording with Sophism, in order to parallel the goodness achieved by the demiurge in the beginning of the universe.

In one disguise or another, Plato's dualism between the soul and the body 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.^[9]

Aristotle

Plato's most famous student made some of the most famous and influential statements about human nature.

• Man is a' conjugal animal (Nicomachean Ethics), meaning an animal which is born to couple when an adult, thus building a household (oikos) and in more successful cases, a clan or small village still run upon patriarchal lines.
• Man is a political animal (Politics), meaning an animal with an innate propensity to develop complex communities the size of a city or town (see division of labor). As a political animal, in contrast to his family and clan life, man thrives in his rationality - most fully in the making of laws and traditions.
• Man is a mimetic animal (Poetics). In this case, Aristotle emphasizes human reason in its purest form. Man loves to use his imagination, and not only to make laws and run town councils.

It is clear that for Aristotle, reason is not only what is most odd about humanity, but it is also what we were meant to achieve at his or her best. Much of Aristotle's position is still very much worth considering, but it should be mentioned that the idea that human nature was "meant" or intended to be something, has become much less popular in modern times.^[10]

Rousseau

Jean Jacques Rousseau, writing before the French Revolution, and long before Darwin, shocked Western Civilization in his Second Discourse by proposing that humans had once been solitary animals, and had learned to be political. The important point about this was the idea that human nature was not fixed, or at least not anywhere near the extent previously suggested by philosophers. Humans are political, and rational, and have language now, but originally they had none of these things.

Rousseau still saw himself as a student of nature, and did not deny the existence of a human nature, but it was only now to be defined in terms of the instinctive passions of the original irrational and amoral human, such as those associated with self preservation. This has been seen as breaking ground for shocking political developments of the 19th and 20th centuries, such as totalitarianism and brain washing.^[11]

He was an important influence upon Kant, Hegel and Marx, but he himself made it clear that he was partly developing the thought of Thomas Hobbes.

Karl Marx

Karl Marx's conception of human nature has been the subject of much misunderstanding. It is often believed that Marx denied that there was any human nature, and said that human beings are simply a blank slate, whose character will depend wholly upon their socialization and experience. It is true that Marx placed enormous importance on the view that people are influenced and, in part, determined by their environments. But at least in one stage of his development he had a very strong concept of human nature.

In that stage, Marx discussed the concept of 'species-essence' (from the German Gattungswesen, sometimes also translated as 'species being'). He believed that under capitalism, we are alienated - that is, divorced from aspects of our human nature. He envisaged the possibility of a society following capitalism which would allow human beings to fully exercise their human nature and individuality. His name for this society was 'communism'. However, it is worth bearing in mind that, since Marx's day, this term has been used with several different meanings, not all of which have been compatible with Marx's original usage.

Marx's understanding of human nature did not only play a role in his critique of capitalism, and in his belief that a better society would be possible (as already indicated). It also informed his theory of history. The underlying dynamic of history, for Marx, is the expansion of the productive forces. In The German Ideology, Marx says that two of the three aspects of social activity which ground history is the tendency of humans to act to fulfill their needs, and thereafter, the tendency to generate new needs ^[12]. This human tendency, for Marx, is what drives the continuing expansion of productive power in human civilization.

After The German Ideology, however, mention of 'species-essence' as such is virtually absent from Marx's writings. Some major interpreters of Marx, such as Louis Althusser, dismiss 'species-essence' as irrelevant to Marx's "later" writings, while others, such as Terry Eagleton and Andrew Chitty, believe it continues to be an important concept in understanding Marx.

Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis

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. Freud also popularized his notions of the id and the desires associated with each supposed aspect of personality.

E.O. Wilson's sociobiology

In his book 'Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge' (1998) Edward O. Wilson claimed that it was time for a cooperation of all the sciences to explore human nature. He defined human nature as a collection of epigenetic rules: the genetic patterns of mental development. Cultural phenomena, rituals etc. are products, not part of human nature. Artworks, for example are not part of human nature, but our appreciation of art is. And this art appreciation, or our fear for snakes, or incest taboo (Westermarck effect) can be studied by the methods of reductionism. Until now these phenomena were only part of psychological, sociological and anthropological studies. Wilson proposes it can be part of interdisciplinary research.

An example of this fear is discussed in the book An Instinct for Dragons^[13], where anthropologist David E. Jones suggests a hypothesis based on that humans just like monkeys have inherited instinctive reactions to snakes, large cats and birds of prey. Folklore dragons have features that are combinations of these three, which would explain why dragons with similar features occur in stories from independent cultures on all continents. Other authors have suggested that especially under the influence of drugs or in children's dreams, this instinct may give raise to fantasies and nightmares about dragons, snakes, spiders, etc., which makes these symbols popular in drug culture and in fairy tales for children. The traditional mainstream explanation to the folklore dragons does however not rely on human instinct, but on the assumption that fossils of, for example, dinosaurs gave raise to similar fantasies all over the world.

See also

• Human condition
• Nature
• Nature (philosophy)
• Norm (sociology)
• Norm (philosophy)
• Normality (behavior)
• Common sense
• Homo sapiens
• Humanism
• Cynicism
• Nature versus nurture
• Tabula rasa
• Diathesis-stress model
• Differential susceptibility hypothesis
• Defence mechanism
• Enneagram of Personality
• Aggressionism

References

1. ^ Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Social Contract, Translated by Maurice Cranston, Published by Penguin Classics, 1968, ISBN 0140442014, pg. 136
2. ^ Haidt, Jonathan. The Happiness Hypothesis. Basic Books, NY, 2006
3. ^ Buller, David J. (2005). Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology And The Persistent Quest For Human Nature. MIT Press: 428.
4. ^ Locke, John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Kenneth P. Winkler (ed.), Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis, IN, 1996, pp. 33–36.
5. ^ [1]
6. ^ Genes, Peoples, and Languages By L. L. (Luigi Luca) Cavalli-Sforza ISBN 0520228731
7. ^ "Women's choice of men goes in cycles". BBC News. 1999-06-24. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/376321.stm. Retrieved 2010-05-04.
8. ^ Brown, Donald (1991). Human Universals. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 007008209X.
9. ^ Ferguson, Everett, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003, ISBN 0802822215, Pg. 335-337
10. ^ Aristotle, The Politics of Aristotle: With an Introduction, Two Prefactory Essays and Notes Critical and Explanatory, Clarendon Press, 1887, Pg. 189-190
11. ^ Delaney, James, Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006, ISBN 0826487246, pg. 49-52
12. ^ http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm#a3
13. ^ David E. Jones, An Instinct for Dragons, New York: Routledge 2000, ISBN 0-415-92721-8

Further reading

• Noam Chomsky & Michel Foucault, The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature (Full Text) (New Press, 2006)
• Newcastle University debate on Steven Pinker's book The Blank Slate
• Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion (Norton).
• David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature (Oxford University Press, 2007, originally 1739/1740).
• Christopher J. Berry, Human Nature (MacMillan, 1986).
• Martin A. Miller, Freud and the Bolsheviks: Psychoanalysis in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union (New Haven, CT 1998).
• Louis P. Pojman, Who Are We? (Oxford University Press, 2005).
• Harvey B. Sarles, Language and Human Nature (University of Minnesota Press, 1985).
• Leslie Stevenson, The Study of Human Nature, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 1999).
• Leslie Stevenson & David Haberman, Ten Theories of Human Nature, 4th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2004).
• Edmund O. Wilson, On Human Nature (Harvard University Press, 2004).
• Introduction and Updated Information on the Seville Statement on Violence
• Albert Low, 2008. "The Origin of Human Nature: A Zen Buddhist Looks at Evolution, Sussex Academic Press. ISBN 9781845192600
• www.human-nature.com
• Abel, Donald C., ed. Theories of Human Nature: Classical and Contemporary Readings. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992.
• Arnhart, Larry. Darwinian Natural Right: The Biological Ethics of Human Nature. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998.
• Benthall, Jonathan, ed. The Limits of Human Nature. London: Allen Lane, 1973.
• Berry, Christopher J. Human Nature. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986.
• Cantril, Hadley. Human Nature and Political Systems. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1961.
• Chomsky, Noam. Powers and Prospects: Reflections on Human Nature and the Social Order. London: Pluto Press, 1996.
• Coward, Harold. The Perfectibility of Human Nature in Eastern and Western Thought. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008.
• Cumming, Robert Denoon. Human Nature and History: A Study of the Development of Liberal Political Thought. 2 vols. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1969.
• Curti, Merle E. Human Nature in American Thought: A History. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980.
• Davies, James C. Human Nature in Politics: The Dynamics of Political Behaviour. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1963.
• Forbes, Ian, and Steve Smith, eds. Politics and Human Nature. London: Frances Pinter, 1981.
• Freyberg-Inan, Annette. What Moves Man: The Realist Theory of International Relations and Its Judgment of Human Nature. New York: SUNY Press, 2004.
• Geras, Norman. Marx and Human Nature: Refutation of a Legend. London: Verso, 1983.
• Habermas, Jürgen. The Future of Human Nature. Cambridge: Polity, 2003.
• Heinze, Andrew R. Jews and the American Soul: Human Nature in the Twentieth Century. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004.
• Hewitt, Martin. Welfare and Human Nature: The Human Subject in Twentieth Century Social Politics. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000.
• Jaggar, Alison M. Feminist Politics and Human Nature. Sussex, UK: Harvester Press, 1983.
• Kaplan, Morton A. Justice, Human Nature, and Political Obligation. New York: Free Press, 1976.
• Loptson, Peter. Theories of Human Nature. 3rd ed. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2006.
• Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. 1: Human Nature. London: Nisbet, 1941.
• Paul, Ellen Frankel, Fred Dycus Miller, and Jeffrey Paul, eds. Ethics, Politics, and Human Nature. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991.
• Pennock, J. Roland, and John W. Chapman, eds. Human Nature in Politics. New York: New York University Press, 1977.
• Pinker, Steven. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Norton, 2002.
• Pompa, Leon. Human Nature and Historical Knowledge: Hume, Hegel and Vico. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
• Rosen, Stephen. War and Human Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
• Sayers, Sean. Marxism and Human Nature. London: Routledge, 1998.
• Schuett, Robert. Political Realism, Freud, and Human Nature in International Relations: The Resurrection of the Realist Man. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
• Smith, David Livingstone. The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2007.
• Stephens, William O., ed. The Person: Readings in Human Nature. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2006.
• Stevenson, Leslie, and David L. Haberman. Ten Theories of Human Nature. 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Wells, Robin Headlam, and Johnjoe McFadden, eds. Human Nature: Fact and Fiction. London and New York: Continuum, 2006.

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