Understanding the Human Being: Evolution, Philosophy, and Freedom

Posted on Mar 5, 2025 in Philosophy and ethics

Understanding the Human Being

The human being, through the accruing evolution of the primate family, is characterized by a genome specific to the species. From this emerges a symbolic and social intelligence, processing information in a self-aware manner, allowing us to:

  1. Communicate
  2. Direct our own behavior
  3. Create cultural events that introduce changes in how we utilize our intelligence and our relationship with the social and physical environment.

Ways of Understanding Humanity

Jean-Paul Sartre, a very influential and pessimistic thinker, wrote: “We are born by chance, live by inertia, and die by accident. Man is a useless passion.”

His contemporary, Albert Camus, a British Nobel Laureate for Literature, said: “In humans, there are more things worthy of admiration than contempt.”

Autobiographical vs. Systematic Philosophy

  • The “autobiographical philosophy” refers to individual efforts to respond to fundamental questions of life, knowledge, or reality.
  • The “systematic philosophy” refers to statements or theories that are based strongly enough to claim universal validity beyond mere biographical interest.

Theories on Human Nature

  • Religious theories are based on beliefs whose truth cannot be proven rationally.
  • Philosophical theories must be justified rationally if they are to have universal validity.

Key concepts:

  • The human being is a rational being.
  • The human being is a social being.
  • The human being is a free and moral being.
  • The human being is a metaphysical being.

The Philosophers of Suspicion

  • Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, revolutionized the world of psychiatry and the concept of personality.
  • Karl Marx, a German economist and sociologist, argued for a materialist conception of history, emphasizing the human being as a being who transforms, produces, and manufactures reality.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche is considered the most representative thinker of the philosophy of suspicion, due to his harsh critique of rational values in all their forms and manifestations.

Human Freedom and Morality

  • Physical freedom or liberty to do: This is the absence of coercion or external impediments to acting when desired. A prisoner has limited physical liberty.
  • Inner freedom, freedom of will, or free will: This is the absence of internal factors that impose one option or another.

Existence and Limits of Freedom

  • Determinism denies the existence of freedom in humans.

Types of Determinism:

  • Biological determinism: Asserts that our actions are the result of genetic inheritance.
  • Educational determinism: Education directs our private behavior.
  • Social determinism: Advocates the same idea, but attributes the causes of behavior to society.
  • Indeterminism affirms human freedom.

The Human Being as a Metaphysical Being

  • Life has an inherent sense. Aristotle says that everything that happens in nature has an order or internal telos.
  • Life has a transcendent meaning.
  • Unable to find meaning in life.