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Chapter Two: Human Nature

Chapter two of the book discusses human nature. It opens through coming up with the issue, “who and what am I.” According to this chapter, how individuals typically view themselves has been intensely subjective by the traditional theories of human nature which includes; the Western religious view as well as the rationalist view. There exist several approaches that tend to explain more about the concept of human nature like the existentialism and Darwinian theories. However, some of these views like the traditional ones have met a lot of challenges. For example, the notions of uniqueness and purpose have been met with some difficulties, for instance, the Darwinian evolution. On the other hand, the concept of human nature has also been challenged by existentialism. Feminists have also raised some questions regarding the role of gender in the formation of human identity. The traditional theory assumes that humans tend to be enduring themselves and they are obligated to be self-sufficient. Among all these theories, it is hard to determine the correct and wrong ones, but it is vivid that humans regularly tend to interpret the aspects of their lives from the views arising from these theories.

According to this chapter human nature denotes to what precisely a human nature is, and what makes human to be different from anything else. Therefore some crucial matters have been raised by the individual’s views of human nature and some of them include questions of whether humans have some spiritual characteristic or they are only material. Also, the questions of whether they are self-absorbed, cooperative plus being aggressive are raised. These questions result typically in some arguments that can only be solved through deductive or inductive, whereby deductive reasoning is valid if the evidence is true; thus, the conclusion is correct. The traditional Western theory adopts that human nature is the same among all humans. An excellent example version of a traditional western view is the ancient Greek outlook that regards humans as exceptionally rational creatures with some special purpose. This view purports that human desire should be controlled by reason over their aggressiveness and desire. There is also the Judeo-Christian religious opinion that humans resemble the image of God, who has gifted them with the aptitude to love as well as lucid self-consciousness.

However, some scientists challenge the traditional opinion of human nature. Darwin, a renowned philosopher, argues that human underwent what is called evolution. According to Darwin, humans evolved from the earlier species through undergoing random variations and also some natural selection that fitted only the strong to survive. His main point is that human nature lacks some purpose and therefore it is not exceptional. The existentialist tends to deny the fact that human possesses similar fixed nature, but each usually creates his or her specific nature. They suggest that humans have the power of choosing and creating the kind of life that they want.

The Feminists outlook is that human’s notion of reason, body, minds, and emotions are centered in favor of the male against the female gender. However, this theory has been proven by scientists to be wrong and sexist. There is also the Descartes dualist that also explains the notion of human nature. It argues that humans are material bodies who possess immaterial minds. Descartes contends that the enduring soul in humans is a soul while Locke explains that it is the memory that typically creates the enduring self. Contrary, Hume, and Buddhism claim that there exists no enduring self. Moreover, there exist several other theories with different opinions regarding human nature such as identity theory, behaviorism, and functionalism.

As seen above all these views hold different opinions although there exists some that overlap. Although nobody can decide for any individual to which theory to incline to, it is vivid that the rejection or acceptance of any of these theories will have a significant influence on individuals’ lives and how they tend to live it.

Works Cited

Velasquez, Manuel. Philosophy: A text with readings. Cengage Learning, 2016.