Human Nature: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives
1. A Rational Animal
Greek philosophy attributed to human beings the opportunity to think and appreciate this feature as one of the most distinctive of humanity. Rationalism posits that reason is the only source of knowledge and rejects faith. Vitalism considered reason as the source of all problems of Western culture, claiming the importance of life, freedom, and chance.
2. An Animal That Is Moved
Psychic life is full of affection. All human experiences have an emotional component. You cannot live without feeling. Romanticism celebrates passion as one of the best creative components of human beings. Emotivism rejects the attempt to base ethics on reason. The discovery of emotional intelligence has led to the claim of emotions in contemporary psychology.
3. An Animal That Speaks
Words allow us to communicate better than animals. Aristotle thought that the ability to articulate thinking in words was a feature that best defines humanity. In contemporary times, problems of vagueness and ambiguities have created a philosophy of language.
4. A Social Animal
From the individual, one is integrated into a social and cultural environment that sustains it, opening a new stage in the evolution of humanity. There are two theories about the origin of society: the classic, according to which society is natural, and the modern, according to which men have voluntarily decided to live together. The social contract is based on establishing a form of association.
5. An Animal That Works
The man is an animal that makes tools with which he changes nature, allowing him to transform his organized effort by the media that surrounds it. Marxism presents the history of mankind as a process of exploitation of some social classes over others. Economic liberalism considers the relationship between employers and employees in very different ways.
6. An Animal Encyclopedia
Humans have the ability to decide their own destiny. Therefore, freedom is the ability that enables people to choose how we live life. Some authors argue that the adventure of freedom is but a dream, and that man is subject to the laws of nature that keep you from being free. This general approach is known as determinism.
7. A Spiritual Animal
All human cultures have raised the issue of transcendence. During the Neolithic, the dead were buried, and it was stated that everything had a soul. The Greeks and Romans had a polytheistic culture. Christianity introduced monotheism and considered God the creator of the universe. There is a view in which man is, above all, a body, and all proceeds and ends its existence on Earth.
Theories of Human Nature
1. Platonism
Plato established dualism in man. The soul rules the body. He also believed that human beings are naturally social. The perfect solution is to train individuals to produce a perfect society. For them, the world should be governed by philosophers. That company would consist of three strata: the elite (the philosophers), the guardians, and artisans.
2. Christianity
For Christianity, man is the image and likeness of God. It also incorporates some of the basic ideas of philosophy, such as dualism and the immortality of the soul. All persons are subject to sin. We can only escape from it in imitation of Jesus.
3. Marxism
It totally contrasts with Christianity, claiming an atheist and materialist view. Belief in God is an invention whose sole purpose is to subdue and enslave the people. According to Marx, human beings need to transform the environment in which they live to ensure survival. The job changes its nature. This process is social; that is, society is born by the need for collaboration. The way it works determines social relations: social classes and the exploitation of some by others. The ideal state is one in which all work reverses the benefit of society.
4. Psychoanalysis
The human personality is marked by a series of phases in which there are well-defined patterns of behavior:
- Oral Stage. Between twelve and eighteen months. This first phase is related to libidinal pleasure in the baby’s feeding time.
- Anal Stage. It extends approximately between eighteen months and four years. Linked to both retain the ability to expel feces.
- Phallic Stage. At this point, the partial drives of previous phases are realized in a certain primacy of the genital. It is the first organization of children regarding libidinal chaos of the previous partial drives, to be completed at puberty.
- Period of Dormancy. The period between six and twelve years old or so, this period involves the consolidation and development of previously acquired traits and abilities, without receiving anything new dynamically.
- Puberty. Puberty refers to the process of physical changes in which the body of a child becomes an adult, capable of sexual reproduction.
Freud is deterministic and pessimistic in his conception of human beings. Sexuality is behind all the acts we perform.
5. Existentialism
Sartre promotes atheism and indeterminism in his conception of human beings. The key element that creates problems in humans is the failure to assume that we are free.
The Good as Pleasure: Hedonism
The philosophy of Epicurus is an exercise of individual freedom through autarky and ataraxia (tranquility of mind); it seeks to achieve a state of happiness. To get rid of happiness is fundamental irrational fears, but it is also important to leave the paideia (traditional education in classical Greece) because it conveys values that cause fear and do not lead to happiness.
Epicurus shows four principles that achieve a happy life:
- There is no reason to fear the gods; moreover, neither the fears nor the prayers are useless.
- Nor is there reason to fear death.
- Pain and evil are easily avoided.
- Pleasure and good are easily available.
The happiness of Epicurus was to ensure a happy life through pleasure. This attitude, called hedonism, which claimed the youth of the ’60s as a substantial part of existence. The concept of hedonism means not only pleasure but also joy and refers both to the pleasures of the flesh and the spirit. Epicurus is more interested in stable and lasting pleasures, characterized by the absence of bodily pain and disturbance in the spirit.
Epicurus makes friendship one of the most important points of happiness because it is the feeling that gives us more pleasure.
Materialism: It arises in opposition to idealism and resolves the fundamental question of philosophy by giving prominence to the material world. In summary, the material is prior to thought.
Determinism: It states that every event, including human thought and action, is causally determined by the unbreakable chain of cause and consequence.