The Rational Animal: Greek Perspectives on Human Nature

Posted on Nov 17, 2024 in Philosophy and ethics

1) The Greeks: The Rational Animal

1.1 The Homeric Hero

Philosophical thought based on reason emerged in 6th century BC Greece as a tool to explain reality. Before the rise of philosophical reason, nature and existence were explained through myths. Poets like Homer and Hesiod offered myths that included not only physical reality but also human nature. Myths explained who the ancient Greeks were, their origins, etc. Myths presented an ideal model for the Greeks: anthropomorphic gods and heroes (superhuman immortals and demigods, children of a god and a woman, who had achieved great feats and were considered examples of courage and nobility). The gods and heroes transmitted examples of arete (excellence, best). Members of the aristocracy were seen as approaching this ideal model. The virtuous man was not considered entirely free to decide his life, as he was conditioned by the capricious will of the gods.

1.2 The Human in Greek Philosophy

From the sixth century BC, the previous model began to crack. A new political system, democracy, emerged, and myth gave way to reason. Greek thinkers gradually stopped using myth to explain humans. This is the anthropological shift in the 5th century BC.

A. Nature of Sound

Philosophy was born in Greece as a reflection on physis (nature). Humans were considered natural beings within nature, but different from other natural beings because they occupy a special place, are rational animals. Rationality allows humans to know and understand their surroundings, human nature, and relationships with others in society. Humans can choose how to live, choose values and standards to govern the polis (city-state). To the Greeks, humans are intermediate beings between gods and animals, with rational capacity making them special. This makes them moral and political.

B. Political Animal

Greeks lived linked to their polis; a person was not considered a person outside the city. Aristotle (4th century BC) called a man outside his city an “idiot,” stating that the polis was created for humans to live well. The Greek man was considered a citizen before an individual. Therefore, ancient Greek philosophy had a distinctly political focus, always considering the best way to live and organize society.

C. Human Nature

While all philosophers agreed that humans are part of nature, a fundamental dispute existed: what characterizes human beings? What are their essentials? This was addressed in the 5th century BC by the Sophists (sofós = wise), thinkers who traveled Greek cities giving courses on rhetoric, politics, etc. They were the first to oppose nature and culture: against physis, they established nomos (laws and rules of human beings), which are not universally valid but conventional, resulting from agreement between individuals and therefore changeable.

Unlike Socrates or Aristotle, the Sophists believed humans are not political or social by nature but by convention. Among the Sophists:

  • Protagoras, the most important, initiated the Sophist movement, considering human nature characterized by aggressiveness, although humans create culture.
  • Hippias and Antiphon considered nature gives all individuals the condition of free and equal. Inequalities in society are due to social and cultural conventions.
  • Radical Sophists denied that human nature is rational. Humans are governed by instincts and the law of the strongest. Humans are naturally different, and it would not be fair or natural to create a society where all individuals are equal.

Socrates offered a different view. Asked about the essence of man, he said it is the soul. For Socrates, the soul is reason, intelligence, responsible for moral and thinking activity. He despised the body as a mere instrument of the soul. Important ideas:

  • Soul and reason have enkrateia: the ability of self-control.
  • Self-control allows humans to achieve moral virtue and be free.
  • Self-control and freedom make humans autonomous.

According to Socrates, human happiness comes from spiritual order and harmony within the soul. Socrates believed humans can be happy and are the architects of their own happiness or unhappiness.

D. The Problem of Mind-Body Relations

The most important problem in Greek philosophy, with a significant impact on later philosophy, is how the soul and body relate. Reality can be explained from a single principle (monism), two (dualism), or more (pluralism), understood as principles of matter and spirit. This applies to human beings as well.

Answers to the soul-body problem:

  • Anthropological Materialist Monism: all human actions are explained from a single reality, the body, whose physico-chemical processes lead to thinking and emotional activity.
  • Spiritualist: the soul or mind is the principle from which humans are explained.
  • Anthropological Dualism: humans are composed of two different realities, body and mind, whose interaction produces all human activities.

The dualist position was most accepted. Plato was a top defender, arguing:

  • Humans are composed of body and soul, but the soul has absolute priority over the body and is the noblest part, the source of all good, like rational knowledge.
  • The body is just the container for the soul, dragged by passions and animal instincts, leading to errors in knowledge.
  • The human soul is eternal, immortal. When a person dies, the soul leaves the body and accesses another dimension where real knowledge, purely rational and not conditioned by physical senses, can be found. After a while, the soul reincarnates.

For Plato, the soul has three parts, each corresponding to an ideal political state with a different kind of citizen:

  • Rational: source of knowledge and goodness, prudence, wisdom.
  • Irascible or Volitional: source of noble sentiments and will, strength, value.
  • Appetitive: source of passion and sense pleasures, moderation, temperance.

For a balanced and just human being, the rational soul must impose on the will and the instinctive.

1.3 Hellenism

Hellenism (4th century BC to AD) is the last stage of the great Greek civilization. It begins with Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia, whose conquests formed an empire stretching to India. The Hellenistic period extended in subsequent centuries until Rome took full control of the Mediterranean in the second half of the 1st century BC.

The Greek model fused with other forms of thought, and the world was seen as an integrated whole. Alexander the Great aimed to achieve a world state, a cosmopolis, considering the known world as a world city. Alexander died young, but his empire gave rise to a new type of individual. The political ideal was no longer the polis. The question arose: how to govern a vast empire of diverse people? His successors, the Diadochi, divided the conquered territories and established absolute monarchies, where citizens did not participate in politics as they were subject to the monarch’s will.

Philosophical consequences for humans:

  • The new individual moved away from politics, showing disinterest or aversion. For Epicurus, the wise man should not intervene in politics to be happy. For the Stoics, the wise should act in politics, although true freedom is personal and not public.
  • Humans were seen as individuals, leading to the discovery of human individuality. The conflict arose between their role in society (public) and their intimate personality (private life).
  • New philosophical movements like Stoicism and Epicureanism emerged, defending new values: individual liberty, absence of anxiety and pain, self-help, self-control over mind and body.

In this age, a new human ideal emerged: the philanthropist, who devotes their life to others and seeks to promote their development.