Human nature is a philosophical concept that denotes the essential characteristics of a person , distinguishing it and being irreducible to all other forms and genera of being [1] , in one way or another characteristic of all people [2] .
Philosophy , anthropology , psychology , sociobiology , and theology are engaged in the study and interpretation of the nature and essence of man at different levels of generalization. However, among researchers there is no consensus not only about the nature of human nature, but also about the presence of human nature as such.
The definition of man and his nature
The essence of a person in Aristotle is those of his properties that cannot be changed so that he does not cease to be himself [3] . In the philosophy of a single and unambiguous definition of man and his nature does not exist. In a broad sense, a person can be described as being with will [4] , mind , higher feelings , abilities to communication [5] and work [6] .
- Kant , proceeding from the understanding of natural necessity and moral freedom , differentiates anthropology into “ physiological ” and “ pragmatic ”. The first examines that, "... what nature makes of man ...", the second, "... that he, as a free-acting being, does or can make himself out of himself." [7]
- The synthesis of the positions of modern biology ( human is a representative of the Homo Sapiens ) and Marxism ("... the essence of man is not an abstract inherent in an individual. In reality, it is the sum of all social relations" [8] ) leads to the understanding of man as a subject historically - socially - cultural activities, which is a unity of social and biological nature. [9]
Body and Soul
In the concept of materialism, man consists only of the tissues that make up his flesh, yet the abstract components attributed to man, along with the ability to actively reflect reality, are the result of the complex organization of the processes of these tissues. [ten]
In occult and esoteric teachings, a person is understood as a being that combines many planes (“worlds”) ( soul [11] , etheric body [12] , monad [13] , aura , body ).
In Kabbalah, a person is viewed in the “ system of five worlds ”, which are understood as the degree of concealment of the full volume of nature, levels of human consciousness .
In the ancient Indian tradition, man is characterized by a short-term, but organic combination of elements, when the soul and body are closely interconnected in the natural wheel of samsara . Only a person can strive for liberation from empirical existence and find harmony in nirvana , using spiritual practices that involve exercises for the mind and body .
Democritus , like many ancient thinkers , considered man to be a microcosm . Plato represented man as a being, split into material (body) and ideal (soul) beginnings. Aristotle considered the soul and body as two aspects of a single reality. The ancient Greek poet Solon expressed in verse “The Week of Human Life ” [14] the main stages of human life.
In the New Age philosophy, the body is considered as a machine , and the soul is identified with consciousness .
Abrahamic religions call for the disclosure of the spiritual principle:
“... a person occupies such a high place in the series of God's creations, is as a true citizen of two worlds - the visible and invisible - as the alliance of the Creator with the creature, the temple of the Divine and therefore the crown of the creation, it is only because of his spiritual nature. to inculcate the feeling or thought of His infinite Deity, which is laid in his spirit and serves as a constant source, drawing him to his highest center " [15]
In the Christian tradition, it is believed that man is a creation of God. So Augustine calls the human soul a mystery, a mystery for man himself.
On the contrary, from the point of view of evolutionary doctrine , the behavior of man , like animals, is part of his species characteristics, due to the evolutionary development of man as a species and has analogues in closely related species. A long period of childhood is necessary for a person to assimilate the structurally highly developed human brain with large amounts of extragenetic information necessary for advanced abstract thinking, speech [16] and socialization [17] .
The intrinsic value and uniqueness of a person
In the biblical book of Genesis it says ( Gen. 1: 26-27 ) that man is conceived “in the image and likeness of [God]” and created “in the image of God” in order to achieve His likeness independently with the help of God. The goal of man is considered to be eternal life in harmony with the Creator, neighbor and the universe.
Medieval philosophy , from patristic theology to scholasticism and mysticism , as the basis of the relationship between man and God in the world, asserts the value and status of the person himself.
The philosophy of the Renaissance recognizes the self-sufficient value of man. In his creative abilities, man is similar to God, but is actualized without an indispensable correlation with a deity, which determined the philosophy and ideology of humanism [18] . Unlike medieval philosophers, humanists place a person at the center of their interests, not God [19] .
In the philosophy and culture of the New Age , such concepts as the individuality and self-consciousness of man are emphasized. Descartes laid the foundation for modern European rationalism , postulating thinking as the only reliable evidence of human existence : “I think, therefore I exist” ( lat. Cogito Ergo Sum ). Reason becomes the defining characteristic of a person, now considered as a derivative of natural and social circumstances.
According to the Copernican principle, the Earth and the emergence on it of intelligent life in the form of Homo Sapiens is rather not a unique, but an ordinary phenomenon.
Human Origins
From a scientific point of view, man is descended from primates and is a biological species of the Humans (Homo) genus from the hominid family.
According to fundamentalist and related religious ideas, the ancestors of man were created by God in the same form in which man exists now. Figures of the modernist trend in modern theology share an evolutionary point of view on the origin of man, considering it to be consistent with the belief in Divine creation [20] .
Morality and Humanism
One of the assertions of moral absolutism is that a single and universal morality is deducible from the very nature of man. Moral relativism says the opposite: moral norms are relative.
During the time of the slave system, it was often believed that a slave has a different nature and essence that he conveys to his children, and therefore there is nothing immoral about treating him as a slave .
The concept of humanism echoes the concept of humanity - the ability to sympathize with other people, to show kindness towards them.
According to Nietzsche , the nature of the superman allows him to be free from moral [21] and religious norms.
The fate and character of man
In the philosophy of the Ancient East and antiquity, man is represented as a fragment of nature , whose life is predetermined by the laws of fate , and essence is a kind of deity . [22] In the Middle Ages, a person is endowed with free will , which elevates it above nature , making it possible and obligatory to control one’s own destiny. However, superstitions about the dependence of fate on the position of the lines on the palms and on the location of the planets and luminaries exist to this day.
According to Darwin , the nature of man and animals is evolutionary and non-deterministic , that is, subject to change depending on the environment in which the species lives and develops. Social determinism is inclined to believe that the behavior of groups of people is due to the conditions in which they are located, this is due, for example, to the class struggle .
Some hypotheses (concept of tabula rasa , behaviorism ) state that a person is formed mainly through education , others (biological or genetic determinism) - that his character is an innate feature of the organism, and education can only mask its manifestations.
John Locke believed that people are doing well because it is natural for intelligent beings, for him a social contract is a natural one-off process. Thomas Hobbes, on the other hand, believed that it was natural for people to be selfish and to strive to meet their needs , and they concluded a social contract out of a sense of self-preservation , fearing "a war of all against all."
The Christian church believes that original sin has spoiled the nature of man, from which there appeared in him a tendency to deviate from the norms expressed in the precepts of God . The heresiarch Pelagius, on the other hand , sees in the original sin only a single act of rejecting a person’s free will from good [23] .
Non-classical philosophy of the XIX — XX centuries about human nature
In non-classical philosophy of the second half of the XIX - XX centuries, it is possible to distinguish such basic approaches in understanding the nature and essence of man, such as: [24]
- Naturalizing -
- Biological models of man, describing him in a number of other complex organisms ( positivism , neobieviorism , bioethics , etc.).
- Rising to the “ philosophy of life ” description of a man as a “failed animal”, because of its biological inferiority, doomed to search for “unnatural” ways of existence ( Nietzsche , Freudianism , philosophical anthropology ).
- Existential -
- Actualization of a unique individual human existence, “ existence ”, in its fundamental irreducibility to some general laws ( existentialism , phenomenology , personalism ).
- The sociological approach considers a person in the context of social connections:
- Marxism regards man as an active subject , in the process of practical activity transforming nature and himself.
- Structuralist concepts of a person consider it as an element or function of fundamental social structures (political, ideological, semantic, etc.).
Comparing the nature of humans and animals
From the point of view of many religions and idealistic philosophies , humans and animals belong to different categories of creatures, [25] despite the outward and genetic similarity between humans and primates , while it is argued that animals do not have the following qualities (or are in their infancy):
- mind that
- the will to self-improvement, [26]
- spirituality , [27]
- high level of abstraction, [28]
- conscience
- aesthetic feelings
- religiosity ( belief in supernatural, higher or absolute reason )
People can call a cruel, bloodthirsty person inhuman, denying his likeness with people and emphasizing his likeness with animals. Others believe that animals cannot be evil [29] , and their cruelty is manifested only from cruel treatment or only under certain conditions.
At the same time, there is reason to believe that animals are characterized by thinking , mutual assistance , a sense of justice [30] , beauty [31] , and even an analogue of superstition [32] .
In addition, some ethologists draw analogies between human morality and the system of instinctive prohibitions characteristic of animals, which Konrad Lorenz called "natural morality." Due to the fact that innate instincts have a relatively weak effect on human behavior, some ethologists claim that a person is an animal with relatively weak morality (meaning by this “natural morality”), which can lead to terminological confusion. [33]
From this point of view, some ethologists associate the religiosity of a person with certain peculiarities of animal behavior, such as ritualism , hierarchical relations, and the like, reducing religiosity in people to atavism [34] , an instinct that was useful in conditions familiar to the life of animal ancestors, but turned out to be harmful in human society.
The fact that for some people the idea of the proximity of people with the higher anthropoids is unacceptable is the fact that ethologists explain by the action of the mechanism of ethological isolation of close species. [35] The differences between humans and animals lie in both the quantitative development of some traits and the qualitative leaps associated with them. [36]
The notion of human culture
After Plato defined a person as a “bipedal, devoid of feathers,” Diogenes , plucking a rooster, declared that he was a person according to Plato. [37]
| A person can believe and not believe ... that is his business! A person is free ... he pays for everything himself: for faith, for unbelief, for love, for mind - a person pays for everything himself, and therefore he is free! .. A person is the truth! What is a man? .. It's not you, not me, not them ... no! - it's you, me, they, old man, Napoleon, Mohammed ... in one! (He draws a figure of a man in the air with his finger.) Do you understand? This is huge! In this - all beginnings and ends ... Everything is in man, everything is for man! There is only a man, yet the rest is the business of his hands and his brain! Person! It's great! It sounds ... proud! Person! We must respect the man! Do not regret ... do not humiliate him with pity ... respect is necessary!Maxim Gorky - " At the bottom " |
| The ideal of the earthly man was built for thousands of years on the experience of ancestors, on the experience of the most diverse forms of our living planet. The ideal of a galactic person, apparently, should be built on the experience of galactic life forms, on the experience of stories of different minds of the galaxy .Strugatsky - " Kid " |
Notes
- ↑ Khomich E. V. Man // History of Philosophy: Encyclopedia. - Mn .: Interpressservice; Book House. 2002. - p. 1247
- ↑ Buller, David J. (2005). Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology And The Persistent Quest For Human Nature. MIT Press: 428.
- ↑ Bertrand Russell - History of Western Philosophy - Chapter XXII
- ↑ Man // The Great Soviet Encyclopedia : [in 30 t.] / Ch. ed. A. M. Prokhorov . - 3rd ed. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1969-1978.
- ↑ Man // Russian Dictionary of Explanation : in 4 t. / Ch. ed. B. M. Volin , D. N. Ushakov (vol. 2-4); status G. O. Vinokur , B. A. Larin , S. I. Ozhegov , B. V. Tomashevsky , D. N. Ushakov ; by ed. D.N. Ushakov . - M .: State Institute "Soviet Encyclopedia" (Vol. 1): OGIZ (Vol. 1): State Publishing House of Foreign and National Dictionaries (Vol. 2-4), 1935-1940.
- ↑ Account Suspended
- ↑ I. Kant - Collected Works, Vol. 6, M., 1966, p. 351
- ↑ Marx K. and Engels F., Soch., 2nd ed., Vol. 3, p. 3
- ↑ Security: theory, paradigm, concept, culture. Dictionary-Reference / Author-comp. Professor V.F. Pilipenko. Ed. 2nd, add. and pererabat. - M .: PER SE-Press, 2005.
- ↑ Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences CCCP - Dialectical Materialism ** Gospolitizizdat ** 1954, Chapter 8 - The Materiality of the World and the Objectivity of the Laws of the Development of Matter
“Marxist philosophical materialism sweeps aside pseudoscientific constructions of idealism, showing that the diverse phenomena in the world are different types and manifestations of moving matter.” - ↑ Man // Archimandrite Nikifor biblical encyclopedia . - M. , 1891-1892.
- ↑ {title} (inaccessible link) . The appeal date is April 23, 2009. Archived April 30, 2009.
- Esotericism: Encyclopedia .- Mn .: Interpressservice; Book House. 2002. (World of Encyclopedias)
- ↑ Russian translation by V. V. Latysheva
- ↑ Schimonmon Hilarion. On the Caucasus Mountains
- ↑ Karl Sagan - Dragons of Eden. Reasoning on the evolution of the human mind. (inaccessible link) . The date of circulation is January 19, 2009. Archived on February 2, 2009.
- А. Zaporozhets A.V. - Selected psychological works / Edited by V. V. Davydov, V. P. Zinchenko - M., Pedagogy, 1986. P. 223–257 Archival copy of July 3, 2007 on the Wayback Machine
- ↑ In Italy, there is a humanism based on Kabbalah and on the Talmud.
- ↑ V.V. Karev. History of the Middle Ages
- ↑ Archpriest Alexander Men. Man in the universe. Creation, evolution, man
- ↑ A. A. Radugin - Cultural Studies (textbook) p.218
- ↑ Man // Symbols, signs, emblems
- ↑ What is Pelagy? - V. Solovyov. Philosophical Dictionary
- ↑ Man // Encyclopedia of Sociology
- ↑ the Bible. Old Testament. The Pentateuch of Moses v.26
- ↑ Cicero M. T. About duties // Cicero M. T. About old age. About friendship. About duties. M., 1993. S. 61.
- ↑ Sri Aurobindo. The human cycle (inaccessible link from 05/26/2013 [2252 days] - history , copy )
- ↑ V.D. Kosarev - Taboo Phenomenon and “Original Sin”.
- ↑ Yu. V. Novikov - Cat and Mouse, Wolf and Hare (Good and Evil in Nature)
- Ш Chimps have a sense of justice similar to human - on membrana.ru
- ↑ N. Yu. Feoktistova - About toothed builders and birds from Eden Archived February 17, 2011.
- ↑ Garadzha V. Religious Studies Chapter IV. Psychology of religion
- ↑ Ethologists point to the relationship between the armament of the species, and so on. "Natural morality." For the first time this connection was revealed by Konrad Lorenz. See also, for example:
- Konrad Lorenz. Morals and weapons in the world of animals. Also Aggression. Behavioral analogs of morality
- Victor Rafaelevich Dolnik . Homo militaris . Running away from the monkey
- Dmitry Antonovich Sakharov. Cricket aggression
- ↑ The concept of God is associated with the concept of super dominant .
- Richard Dawkins . Is there anything more incredible than God? . What is the use of religion ?
- V.R. Dolnik. Who created the creator
- ↑ V.R. Dolnik. The naughty child of the biosphere
- ↑ V.F. Turchin. The phenomenon of science. Chapter 4. Man
- ↑ Andrei Galaktionov - Diogenes of Sinop (Inaccessible link) . The date of circulation is January 22, 2009. Archived May 20, 2007.
Literature
- Stephen Pinker. Clear sheet. Human nature. Who and why refuses to recognize her today = Steven Pinker. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. - M .: Alpina Non-fiction, 2018. - 608 p. - ISBN 978-5-91671-783-9 .
See also
- Anthropomorphism
- Humanism
- Long-liver
- Cannibalism
- List of alternative names for reasonable species
- Philosophical Anthropology
- Person
- Humanity