Video 2: What is Human Nature?

• Plato's tri-partite view of the soul: reason, spirit, appetites

• Aristotle: everything (including humanity) has its purpose (telos) in nature. The activity of reason is specific to humans.

• Christian view of human nature: (from Plato): reason is god-like; (from Genesis): free will and sin.
• Augustine: we are essentially sinful. Aquinas: the goal of humanity is to know God

• Problems:
• Feminists: reason is understood as male; women are less than fully human (rational)
• Plato's view is authoritarian, class-based
• Aristotle: women and slaves are subordinate

• Pre-Darwin: species are eternal

• Darwin: species can improve and evolve through natural selection and survival of fittest

• **After Darwin, mechanical explanation replaces teleological accounts

• There is no determinate human nature

• Blaise Pascal: human beings are products of different cultural customs
• Jean-Paul Sartre: human individuals define themselves within their historical conditions
• Richard Rorty: if there is no human nature, the interesting question is then how different cultures get selected as the fittest

• Aristotle: human nature is defined by natural characteristics augmented by reason