Theme
Human nature
12 philosophers, 3 traditions
Are human beings born good, bad or neither, and what does that mean for how they should live and be governed? Chinese, Greek, Islamic and European thinkers answered very differently.
Claims about human nature rarely stay descriptive: whether people are naturally cooperative or quarrelsome, good or bad, is often taken to settle what kind of ethics or society is possible for them. The question was argued most directly in early China. Mencius held that human nature is good, meaning that people tend to become good in conditions that suit them; Xunzi answered that what we are born with leads us into harm unless ritual and teaching reshape it, though both agreed that anyone can become good. The Analects of Confucius had said little, but stressed habituation over birth.
Later Chinese thinkers kept the question alive. Zhu Xi followed Mencius while explaining wrongdoing by the different endowments of qi that people are born with, and Dai Zhen defended ordinary desires and feelings as part of a good human nature rather than obstacles to it.
Elsewhere the question took other forms. Aristotle thought human beings political by nature, able to flourish only in a community. Ibn Taymiyya held that people are born with a natural disposition towards God. In early modern Europe, Hobbes argued that without government human beings would fall into a war of all against all, while Rousseau insisted that they are naturally good and that society corrupts them.
Through time
6th century BCE
Confucius
The Analects says little about human nature, but one remark puts the weight on nurture: “By nature people are close, by habituation they are miles apart.” What we become depends on training our dispositions through ritual and the classics.
4th century BCE
Aristotle
Human beings are political animals by nature, in the strong sense that they can flourish as humans only within a political community, not merely because they enjoy company or gain from trade.
Mencius
Human nature is good: people tend to become good when raised in conditions that suit them, as an orange seed tends to become a fruiting tree even though many never do. When people go wrong, the fault lies with their surroundings and their own neglect.
Drew on Confucius
3rd century BCE
Xunzi
Human nature, what we have from birth, is bad: followed without reflection, our inborn desires lead us to harm one another. Yet anyone can become good, by reshaping that nature through ritual, music and teaching.
About 1400 years later
12th century
Zhu Xi
Following Mencius, people are basically good, well-meaning and moved by others’ suffering. But each is born with a particular endowment of qi and raised in a particular setting, which explains why some become bad and why self-cultivation is needed.
14th century
Ibn Taymiyya
People are created with a natural constitution (fiṭra) turned towards God. As an infant instinctively seeks milk, human beings are disposed to believe in and worship God alone, and many basic truths of reason come with that inborn nature.
16th century
Desiderius Erasmus
Humans are rational beings, made of spirit, soul and flesh; the soul can rise towards the spirit or sink to the level of the body. Since the will is free, education counts for more than nature in making us what we are.
17th century
Thomas Hobbes
Without a common authority to settle disputes, people’s fear of one another, their competition for scarce goods and the vanity of a few would turn their natural liberty into a state of war.
Argued against Aristotle
18th century
Montesquieu
Human character varies with climate and geography: cold makes people bold and frank, heat makes them more sensitive and fearful. These influences are real but not irresistible, and good laws can counteract them.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Human beings are good by nature and corrupted by society. Their original drives are self-preservation and compassion; social life adds amour propre, the need to be valued by others, which Rousseau often treats as the root of our ills.
Drew on and argued against Thomas Hobbes; drew on Montesquieu
Adam Smith
Humans are social through and through: all our feelings, selfish or kind, are shaped by our constant effort to share others’ feelings and have them share ours. Against Hobbes and Mandeville, self-interest is not the whole of human nature.
Drew on Aristotle; argued against Thomas Hobbes
Dai Zhen
Our shared desires and feelings belong to our nature and are no enemy of morality; rightly understood, they guide us to the patterns of a good life. Earlier Neo-Confucians were wrong to treat sensory desire as an obstacle to goodness.
Sources
- Neil Roughley, Human Nature, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy