Human nature is one of those things that everybody talks about but no one can define precisely. Every time we fall in love, fight with our spouse, get upset about the influx of immigrants into our country, or go to church, we are, in part, behaving as a human animal with our own unique evolved nature—human nature
Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20070622-000002.xml
BUT ... can we universally explain it? Do any of the theories we;ve looked at help us? Why ? Why not?
What do you think the explanation is?
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9 comments:
I think that humanism is a theory that helps us define human nature. Humans are social beings and a lot of our personalities are determined by the our families, the people we know and the customs and rules we abide by. i think that this is further shown through the fact that we consider beings who have for some reason not been exposed to the social world (for example, hermits, feral children etc.) as somewhat inhuman.
i like the idea of existentialism, the idea that we decide who we are instead of our social or economic status. but we follow societies rules because we are not prepared to accept existentialism.
also could the way humans work as a group could be seen as selfishness/egoism? because people keep us company which makes us happy so we want to please them? or that we follow societies rules because if everyone folows those rules that makes life easier for us
I agre with Natalia that humanism seems the most helpful in defining human nature. Unlike Marxiam and existentialism, I think that humanism can at least partly explain human beings as both social and individual creatures. Humanism believes that each human being is valued for their own uniqueness, which explains diversity. At the same time, forming communities may meet some of our needs, which is one of the goals of humanism.
i think that if you take a bit of humanism, existentialism and marxism that it brings together a collaborative result. The fact that our surroundings and us and the people around us define our nature, purpose and us as people.
Although i think that in some way it is foolish to come up with these theories of human nature, because we may not all have the same nature just because we are the same race. In addition to that we are all different and everyone that is different will fall into a different category than another.
Humanism and Marxism have undeniable links.
Humanism is about society and how society is taken as group and not seen as individuals. It focuses on society working together.
Marxism is all about society and classes, unlike humanism, marxism believes that these classes are extremely significant and that in the end the world will all be communist with it being 'run by the worker for the worker'... which in my opinion is essentially humanism - society working together to benefit one another.
I think that marxism doesn't necessarily work because it could only occur in an ideal world... and our world is far from ideal. We have to take into account aspects that Natalia mentioned such as hermits who don't really have a class since they are individuals and marxism only focuses on society as a general group.
I believe that human nature is about society, that in some shape or form we as humans share some sort of societal need whether it be as a proletariat or an existentialist. I believe that existentialism can fit into humanism - every society needs at least one rebel and the existentialist could be just that: the person living by there own rules and taking responsibility for their actions whilst living within society.
The source talks about human beings as behaving as human animals. I think that humanism as a theory works well that if we were to think about ourselves as more of a species than anything else it helps us better explain our condition and what affects the way we behave. Innate human instinct or even animalistic nature is what makes us who we are and how we behave. This would explain our social interaction with other human beings for us to advance forward as a species.
I think that it is impossible to define human nature using any one of the theories that we have studied so far. We may like certain aspects of each theory but these ideas are difficult to bring together because the theories often contradict one another. For example, existentialism focuses mainly on the individual creating their own purpose without following society's rules. Whilst humanism agrees that it is important for the individual to create their own purpose, forming society's and having a universal human condition is contradictory to existentialism. Can we really pick and choose which parts of different theories we like?
It seems to me that there is so much diversity within humans that these three theories only explain three different aspects of human nature which are not all applicable to every human. It appears that there is an element of the unknown within everything in life. We cannot completely understand ourselves just as we cannot completely understand the world around us.
I think that humanism explains why naturally want to interact with other people and form societies and groups that work together to achieve goals and create things. However I think it doesn't really explain why humans are also capable of working together to cause destruction or harm to other people, for example in starting wars. I think this seems to go against the humanist ideal of doing what we can to help others.
I think that human nature can be defined by human needs, as they tend to be basic instincts upon which humans act. I feel that humanism can greatly define human nature as it is a sense of belief in ourselves, and building up the image of a human, which humans can be seen to do constantly e.g. the idea that God created humans in his image, meaning that it is believed that we are created in teh image of the 'greatest being'. I feel that marxism can i na sense go against and for human nature, as is seems that some bare instincts lead to helping others and equality, however some bare insticts are to survive which puts yourself by default, above others. I think that human nature can be defined by bare instincts, the ones that we have from when we are born, as these are our 'natural' instincts and therefore are an intigrate part of us.
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