Human Nature

2018 ◽  
pp. 261-276
Author(s):  
Erika Lorraine Milam
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Great Apes ◽  
Primate Model ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Behavioral Norms ◽  
The Social ◽  
Gendered Roles ◽  
Early Human

This chapter looks at the scientific revelations produced by Jane Goodall's studies on great apes and the effects these studies had on the contentious field of sociobiology. When Jane Goodall and David Hamburg argued for the biological similarities shared by humans and chimpanzees, they also articulated a vision of human nature. They based this vision on biological relatedness rather than on ecological sympathy and implicitly questioned the gendered roles and social hierarchies that characterized baboon behavior as the most appropriate primate model for reconstructing the social and behavioral norms that might have characterized early human life on the savannah. Goodall's early discoveries that chimpanzees manufactured tools, sticks with which to eat termites and masticated leaves with which to sponge up water, fit well with hypotheses that the origins of tool use lay in manufacturing aids for “gathering and processing food” rather than as weapons. But one of Hamburg's graduate students later recalled him warning her not to go overboard with sociobiology.

The Epicureans on Human Nature and its Social and Political Consequences

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Jan Maximilian Robitzsch
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Contract Theory ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Social Contract Theory ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
The Social

Based on certain passages in Colotes, Hermarchus, and Horace, the Epicureans may be thought to defend a social contract theory that is roughly Hobbesian. According to such a view, human life without the social contract is solitary and brutish. This paper argues that such a reading is mistaken. It offers a systematic analysis of Lucretius’s culture story in On the Nature of Things v as well as the Epicurean passages that at first sight seem to contradict the Lucretian account. The conclusion of such an analysis is not only that all extant evidence is internally consistent, but also that Epicurean social contract theory relies on a ‘dynamic’ conception of human nature: On the Epicurean view, agents have very different psychological motivations when coming together to form societies and when coming together to form political and legal states.

Self-Deception, Dissimulation, and the Universality of Evil in Human Nature

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Papish
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Life ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Moral Reform ◽  
Human Species ◽  
The Social

This chapter considers whether self-deception informs Kant’s notoriously controversial claim that there is an evil rooted universally throughout the human species. It is ultimately argued that while self-deception as described in Chapters 3 and 4 cannot be implicated in his argument, a nearby kind of practical-epistemic failing, namely dissemblance or dissimulation (Verstellen), can be. To help secure this conclusion, the chapter also addresses several important interpretive challenges including: whether Kant intends his claims about a universal evil to be a priori or empirically grounded; whether the social (or unsocial) aspects of human life are relevant to Kant’s proof; if Kant can justifiably describe the evil that runs throughout human nature as both a propensity or willingness and a chosen disposition; how the universality of evil can exist alongside the possibility of individual moral reform; and what to make of the claim that evil attaches to the human race’s “species” character.

scholarly journals From a Machine Service to a New Kind of Identity

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Pogorel’skaya ◽  
◽  
Leonid Chernov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Tourism Industry ◽  
The Social ◽  
Consumer Services ◽  
Phenomenological Methodology ◽  
New Type ◽  
Tourism Resources ◽  
Changing Role

In the new economic and epidemiological climate, the tourism industry is becoming a political and economic priority for Russia’s development. Domestic tourism resources shall be used to the maximum extent whereas patterns and models of international tourism shall be comprehended anew and reformatted. Given the increasing introduction of technology into the fabric of human life and the associated political decisions in the fields of professional employment in tourism and socio-cultural services, the article poses the problem of dialogue between man and machine, and predicts a new dimension of human nature. The phenomenological methodology and analytical approach embraced in the article allows us to argue that engineering content, the technical, the machine, ceases to be a useful service tool to serve human desires and needs. The ‘technical’ becomes a means and a way of shaping ‘new images of the world, values and realities’. New types of social connections and relations arise, in which technical items interact with humans ‘as equals’, and thereby often substitute living interlocutors and partners. Hence the social relationship concept expands. The tourism, hospitality and entertainment industry is concentrating on the changing role of the technical in human life. Through tourism and consumer services, a new type of individuality is being formed, for which the technical becomes an ‘additional living organ’ of natural human nature.

Human Nature

1970 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Peter Winch
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Short History ◽  
History Of Ethics ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The concept of human nature usually enters discussions of the nature and implications of the social sciences in connection with one or another form of ‘relativism’. Confronted with the enormous and apparently conflicting variety of phenomena of human life at different places and times, we are inclined to ask whether there is not something which holds these phenomena together and unifies them. Stated thus baldly this question is no doubt so vague as to approach meaninglessness; it will have to be posed in different forms — and probably answered differently – according to the particular phenomena of human life which we happen to have in mind. In this lecture I shall concentrate my attention on some questions about the relevance of sociological investigations to our understanding of ethics and about the treatment of ethics in such investigations. I shall be particularly interested in the way in which the concept of human nature enters into such discussions; and I shall devote a good deal of attention to Professor Alasdair Maclntyre's recent Short History of Ethics. It is a large merit of this book that it explicitly and invigoratingly relates the manner of its historical exposition to a distinctive philosophico-sociological standpoint concerning the nature of morality. I call this a ‘merit’ and want to stand by that characterisation even though I think that there are important confusions enshrined in Maclntyre's approach. A large part of the task which I want to set myself in this lecture is to make clear the nature and importance of these confusions.

Human Nature

1970 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Winch
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Short History ◽  
History Of Ethics ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The concept of human nature usually enters discussions of the nature and implications of the social sciences in connection with one or another form of ‘relativism’. Confronted with the enormous and apparently conflicting variety of phenomena of human life at different places and times, we are inclined to ask whether there is not something which holds these phenomena together and unifies them. Stated thus baldly this question is no doubt so vague as to approach meaninglessness; it will have to be posed in different forms — and probably answered differently – according to the particular phenomena of human life which we happen to have in mind. In this lecture I shall concentrate my attention on some questions about the relevance of sociological investigations to our understanding of ethics and about the treatment of ethics in such investigations. I shall be particularly interested in the way in which the concept of human nature enters into such discussions; and I shall devote a good deal of attention to Professor Alasdair Maclntyre's recent Short History of Ethics. It is a large merit of this book that it explicitly and invigoratingly relates the manner of its historical exposition to a distinctive philosophico-sociological standpoint concerning the nature of morality. I call this a ‘merit’ and want to stand by that characterisation even though I think that there are important confusions enshrined in Maclntyre's approach. A large part of the task which I want to set myself in this lecture is to make clear the nature and importance of these confusions.

SOCIAL CONFLICT: ARCHETYPAL NATURE AND RESOLUTION MECHANISM

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (11) ◽  
pp. 294-305
Author(s):  
Ruslan Rafisovich Hasanov
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Interpersonal Relations ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Optimal Solution ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Constructive Development ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interdisciplinary Knowledge

On the basis of the archetypic analysis of development trends of a conflictological paradigm the author’s model of minimization of conflict potential in modern society is offered. Institutional construction is the basis for model that is harmonized with a factor of societal identity.It is noted that the problems of social conflicts, according to data from monitor- ing studies of the Ukrainian school of archetype, are increasingly shifted into the sphere of interpersonal relations. It is stimulated by the progression in society of so-called self-sufficient personalities, the “subjectification” of the social space, and at the same time narrowing down to the solution of entirely specific situations in which there is a collision of the interests of two or more parties.Instead, in order to find the optimal solution for resolving the conflict, it is necessary to have interdisciplinary knowledge, in particular understanding of the deep nature of such conflicts. Collision of points of view, thoughts, positions — a very frequent phenomenon of modern social life. In order to develop the correct line of behavior in various conflict situations, it is important to adequately under- stand the nature of the emergence of the modern conflict and the mechanisms for resolving them in substance. Knowledge of conflict nature enriches the culture of communication and makes human life and social groups not only more calm, but also creates conditions for constructive development. It is proved that in modern life one can not but agree with the statement that an individual carries first re- sponsibility for his own life and only then for the life of the social groups to which he belongs. And while making decisions within the framework of modern mecha- nisms (consensus), the properties of human psychology such as extroversion, emo- tionality, irrationality, intuition, externality, and executive ability will not at least contribute to such a task.That is why in the author’s research attracted attention to the archetypal na- ture of the conflict — the primitive images, ideas, feelings inherent in man as a bearer of the collective unconscious.

SOCIAL CONFLICT: ARCHETYPAL NATURE AND RESOLUTION MECHANISM

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (12) ◽  
pp. 294-305
Author(s):  
Ruslan Rafisovich Hasanov
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Interpersonal Relations ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Optimal Solution ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Constructive Development ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interdisciplinary Knowledge

On the basis of the archetypic analysis of development trends of a conflictological paradigm the author’s model of minimization of conflict potential in modern society is offered. Institutional construction is the basis for model that is harmonized with a factor of societal identity. It is noted that the problems of social conflicts, according to data from monitoring studies of the Ukrainian school of archetype, are increasingly shifted into the sphere of interpersonal relations. It is stimulated by the progression in society of so-called self-sufficient personalities, the “subjectification” of the social space, and at the same time narrowing down to the solution of entirely specific situations in which there is a collision of the interests of two or more parties. Instead, in order to find the optimal solution for resolving the conflict, it is necessary to have interdisciplinary knowledge, in particular understanding of the deep nature of such conflicts. Collision of points of view, thoughts, positions — a very frequent phenomenon of modern social life. In order to develop the correct line of behavior in various conflict situations, it is important to adequately understand the nature of the emergence of the modern conflict and the mechanisms for resolving them in substance. Knowledge of conflict nature enriches the culture of communication and makes human life and social groups not only more calm, but also creates conditions for constructive development. It is proved that in modern life one can not but agree with the statement that an individual carries first responsibility for his own life and only then for the life of the social groups to which he belongs. And while making decisions within the framework of modern mechanisms (consensus), the properties of human psychology such as extroversion, emotionality, irrationality, intuition, externality, and executive ability will not at least contribute to such a task. That is why in the author’s research attracted attention to the archetypal nature of the conflict — the primitive images, ideas, feelings inherent in man as a bearer of the collective unconscious.

What Theology Should and Should Not Learn from the Social Sciences About the Common Good

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary L. Hirschfeld
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Catholic Social Thought ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common

There are two ways to answer the question, What can Catholic social thought learn from the social sciences about the common good? A more modern form of Catholic social thought, which primarily thinks of the common good in terms of the equitable distribution of goods like health, education, and opportunity, could benefit from the extensive literature in public policy, economics, and political science, which study the role of institutions and policies in generating desirable social outcomes. A second approach, rooted in pre-Machiavellian Catholic thought, would expand on this modern notion to include concerns about the way the culture shapes our understanding of what genuine human flourishing entails. On that account, the social sciences offer a valuable description of human life; but because they underestimate how human behavior is shaped by institutions, policies, and the discourse of social science itself, their insights need to be treated with caution.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Lewens
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Potential Functions ◽  
Human Psychology ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
The Third ◽  
Current State ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Compare And Contrast

Many evolutionary theorists have enthusiastically embraced human nature, but large numbers of evolutionists have also rejected it. It is also important to recognize the nuanced views on human nature that come from the side of the social sciences. This introduction provides an overview of the current state of the human nature debate, from the anti-essentialist consensus to the possibility of a Gray’s Anatomy of human psychology. Three potential functions for the notion of species nature are identified. The first is diagnostic, assigning an organism to the correct species. The second is species-comparative, allowing us to compare and contrast different species. The third function is contrastive, establishing human nature as a foil for human culture. The Introduction concludes with a brief synopsis of each chapter.

scholarly journals The Enduring Greatness: The Mahāpuruşha Paradigm—An Indian Perspective

2021 ◽  
pp. 002216782110008
Author(s):  
Maharaj K. Raina
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Spirit ◽  
Positive Direction ◽  
Indian Tradition ◽  
Indian Perspective ◽  
Relative Concept ◽  
The Way

Greatness, a relative concept, has been historically approached in different ways. Considering greatness of character as different from greatness of talents, some cultures have conceptualized greatness as an expression of human spirit leading to transcending existing patterns and awakening inner selves to new levels of consciousness, rising above times and circumstances, and to change the direction of human tide. Individuals characterized by such greatness working with higher selves, guided by moral and ethical imperatives, and possessing noble impulses of human nature are considered to be manifesting spiritual greatness. Examining such greatness is the goal of this article. Keeping Indian tradition in focus, this article has studied how greatness has been conceptualized in that particular tradition and the way in which life and times have shaped great individuals called Mahāpuruşha who exhibited extraordinary moral responsibility relentlessly in pursuit of their visions of addressing contemporary major issues and changing the direction of human life. Four Mahāpuruşha, who possessed such enduring greatness and excelled in their thoughts and actions to give a new positive direction to human life, have been profiled in this article. Suggestions have also been made for studies on moral and spiritual excellence to help realize our true human path and purpose.

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