PHILOSOPHY HAND OUT#3: HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY

HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY

AIMS AND CONTEXT

The philosophies developed in the Hellenistic period that is to say after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, which provided the intellectual context for the late Republic and early Empire.

A view on how life should be lived is the explicit concern of both schools. It is an aim that deserves to be taken seriously for two reasons.

· Indirect source of practical guidance

· The search for values by which to live

The Hellenistic era extends from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE to the conquest of Egypt by the Romans in 30 BC.

Though defined in terms of political events, it is also host to distinctive developments in Greek intellectual life. Chief among these are the foundation and consolidation of organized schools as the focus of philosophical life, especially in Athens

The intellectual life of Hellenistic Greece changed again as Roman political authority gradually came to dominate in the region.

The Hellenistic period was the heyday of Greek geometry. Euclid, Archimedes, Apollonius of Perge, and a host of lesser mathematicians published work of enduring value on difficult problems, typically involving the properties of curves and the areas and volumes bounded by geometrical figures.

THE PERSONALITIES

ANTISTHENES-Cynicism

The story of Cynicism traditionally begins with Antisthenes (c. 445–365 BCE), who was an older contemporary of Plato and a pupil of Socrates. At about 25 years his junior, Antisthenes was one of the most important of Socrates' disciples. Although later classical authors had little doubt about labeling him as the founder of Cynicism, his philosophical views seem to be more complex than the later simplicities of pure Cynicism. In the list of works ascribed to Antisthenes by Diogenes Laërtius, writings on Language, Dialogue and Literature far outnumber those on Ethics or Politics, although they may reflect how his philosophical interests changed with time and preached a life of poverty.

Their philosophy was that the purpose of life was to live a life of Virtue in agreement with Nature. This meant rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, health, and fame, and by living a simple life free from all possessions. As reasoning creatures, people could gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which was natural for humans. They believed that the world belonged equally to everyone, and that suffering was caused by false judgments of what was valuable and by the worthless customs and conventions which surrounded society. Many of these thoughts were later absorbed into Stoicism.

The first philosopher to outline these themes was Antisthenes, who had been a pupil of Socrates in the late 5th century BCE. He was followed by Diogenes of Sinope, who lived in a tub on the streets of Athens. He took Cynicism to its logical extremes, and came to be seen as the archetypal Cynic philosopher. He was followed by Crates of Thebes who gave away a large fortune so he could live a life of Cynic poverty in Athens.

Origin of the Cynic name

The name Cynic derives from the Greek word κυνικός, kynikos, "dog-like" and that from κύων, kyôn, "dog" (genitive: kynos). One explanation offered in ancient times for why the Cynics were called dogs was because the first Cynic, Antisthenes, taught in the Cynosarges gymnasium at Athens. The word Cynosarges means the place of the white dog. It seems certain, however, that the word dog was also thrown at the first Cynics as an insult for their shameless rejection of conventional manners, and their decision to live on the streets. Diogenes, in particular, was referred to as the Dog, a distinction he seems to have revelled in, stating that "other dogs bite their enemies; I bite my friends to save them." Later Cynics also sought to turn the word to their advantage, as a later commentator explained: There are four reasons why the Cynics are so named. First because of the indifference of their way of life, for they make a cult of indifference and, like dogs, eat and make love in public, go barefoot, and sleep in tubs and at crossroads. The second reason is that the dog is a shameless animal, and they make a cult of shamelessness, not as being beneath modesty, but as superior to it. The third reason is that the dog is a good guard, and they guard the tenets of their philosophy. The fourth reason is that the dog is a discriminating animal which can distinguish between its friends and enemies. So do they recognize as friends those who are suited to philosophy, and receive them kindly, while those unfitted they drive away, like dogs, by barking at them.

It is one of the most striking of all the Hellenistic philosophies. It offered people the possibility of happiness and freedom from suffering in an age of uncertainty. The fundamental principles of Cynicism can be summarized as follows:

1. The goal of life is happiness which is to live in agreement with Nature.

2. Happiness depends on being self-sufficient, and a master of mental attitude.

3. Self-sufficiency is achieved by living a life of Virtue.

4. The road to virtue is to free oneself from any influence such as wealth, fame, or power, which have no value in Nature.

5. Suffering is caused by false judgments of value, which cause negative emotions and a vicious character.

A Cynic has no property and rejects all conventional values of money, fame, power or reputation. A life lived according to nature requires only the bare necessities required for existence, and one can become free by unshackling oneself from any needs which are the result of convention. The Cynics adopted Hercules as their hero, as epitomizing the ideal Cynic. Hercules "was he who brought Cerberus, the hound of Hades, from the underworld, a point of special appeal to the dog-man, Diogenes." According to Lucian, "Cerberus and Cynic are surely related through the dog."

The Cynic way of life required continuous training, not just in exercising one's judgments and mental impressions, but a physical training as well:

[Diogenes] used to say, that there were two kinds of exercise: that, namely, of the mind and that of the body; and that the latter of these created in the mind such quick and agile impressions at the time of its performance, as very much facilitated the practice of virtue; but that one was imperfect without the other, since the health and vigor necessary for the practice of what is good, depend equally on both mind and body.

None of this meant that the Cynic would retreat from society, far from it, Cynics would live in the full glare of the public's gaze and would be quite indifferent in the face of any insults which might result from their unconventional behavior. The Cynics are said to have invented the idea of cosmopolitanism: when he was asked where he came from, Diogenes replied that he was "a citizen of the world, (kosmopolitês)."

The ideal Cynic would evangelize; as the watchdog of humanity, it was their job to hound people about the error of their ways. The example of the Cynic's life (and the use of the Cynic's biting satire) would dig-up and expose the pretensions which lay at the root of everyday conventions.

Although Cynicism concentrated solely on ethics, Cynic philosophy had a big impact on the Hellenistic world, ultimately becoming an important influence for Stoicism. The Stoic Apollodorus writing in the 2nd century BCE stated that "Cynicism is the short path to virtue."

The ancient Cynics rejected conventional social values, and would criticize the types of behaviors, such as greed, which they viewed as causing suffering. Emphasis on this aspect of their teachings led, in the late 18th and early 19th century, to the modern understanding of cynicism as "an attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others." This modern definition of cynicism is in marked contrast to the ancient philosophy, which emphasized "virtue and moral freedom in liberation from desire."

EPICURUS - Epicureanism

Born in 341 BC in Samos to a family of Athenian colonists, he set up his school, the Garden, in Athens in 307/6 BC.

His philosophy is a development -though with very significant modifications, as we shall see—of the doctrines of the fifth-century atomists Leucippus and Democritus, and he was taught by an atomist philosopher, Nausiphanes.

Epicureanism revived the atomistic physics pioneered by Leucippus and Democritus and linked it tightly with a hedonistic ethics and quietistic political philosophy.

Epicurus, the founder of Epicureanism, was an Athenian, but his followers spread around the Aegean basin in a network of smaller institutions that remained connected to the original school.

Epicurus died in 270 BC.

Central Ideas

For Epicurus the goal of life is pleasure, and the happy life is that with most pleasure and least pain. But this does not mean, as might be thought, the life of perpetual physical self-indulgence—though Epicurus already in his own lifetime protested against those who understood him so.

The limit of magnitude of pleasures is the removal of all pain. Wherever pleasure is present, for as long as it is present, there is neither pain, nor distress, nor the combination of the two.

Lavish banquets may give variety to life, but they do not bring a greater degree of pleasure than does simple food, provided that such food is enough to dispel hunger.

The Epicurean will enjoy banquets and the good things of life if possible, provided of course he or she does so in moderation and in a way that will not bring more pain in the long run.

The best way to achieve security and happiness is rather to withdraw from public life and dwell with a circle of like-minded friends, as Epicurus did in the Garden that gave its name to his school, enjoying the good things of life when one can but being aware how little one really needs.

The Fear of Death and Punishment

His arguments against the fear of death is the claim that persons are material entities of the sort that no longer continue to exist upon death and are therefore no longer subject to harm. This being the case, we have no reason to fear a future state that can cause us no harm.

Such a view of persons similarly undergirds his theological claim that we have no reason to fear punishment from the gods in an afterlife. Since we do not survive our deaths, the gods can hardly mete out any post mortem punishment, even if they so wished.

“When we are there, death is not, and when death is there, we are not”.

He thinks that reason can lead us to eliminate easily any fears based on mistaken beliefs and he lauds its sober power to focus each of our choices on our final good. Like Socrates, he denies that we can know the good and yet fail to pursue it either because of unmanageable desires or incorrigible weaknesses in our character.

All of the virtues including justice, he insists, are a species of rational prudence, instrumentally useful in securing and maintaining a life of pleasure.

ZENO - Stoicism

The Stoic school, which took its name from its beginnings in the Stoa poikilê or Painted Porch, in the main square of Athens, was founded by Zeno (335–263 BC) from Citium in Cyprus

Zeno had previously been a pupil of Polemo, the fourth head of Plato’s Academy, and of the Cynic Crates.

Zeno came from the town of Citium on the island of Cyprus to establish his school in the Painted Stoa in the Athenian agora, and throughout its history it continued to attract philosophers from all over the Hellenistic Greek world, especially Asia Minor.

Stoicism depended on the mainstream Socratic tradition; its cosmology and physics drew primarily on Plato and Aristotle and its ethical and political theory were heavily influenced by Socratic ideas colored by the Cynic tradition stemming from Diogenes of Sinope and Crates of Thebes.

Central Ideas

The concept of nature played a central role in Stoicism.

The key to human fulfillment or happiness (eudaimonia) is living according to nature, and Stoic philosophy was based on this conception of the goal of life.

The study of the natural world, physics, was a major occupation of virtually all Stoics

Nature was formally defined as “a craftsman like fire, proceeding methodically to creation (genesis)” (Diogenes 7.156). God, a fully rational and providential force causally responsible for the world and its orderliness, was equated with nature.

Philosophy is like an animal—logic is the bones and sinews; ethics the flesh; physics the soul. Or it is like an egg—logic is the shell; ethics the white; physics the yolk. Or like agricultural land—logic is the wall around the field; ethics the fruit; physics the land or trees that bear the fruit.

For the Stoics did hold that virtue or wisdom (the two being equated) is sufficient in itself for happiness

Differences and Similarities (Epicureanism and Stoicism)

Stoicism and Epicureanism were in some ways polar opposites. The former championed god’s providence while Epicurus denied it.

Stoic physics asserts the continuity of all matter (which is itself permeated by a divine cause giving it form), while for Epicurus all things, even the gods, are composed of atoms and void.

Like Plato and Aristotle, Stoics believed that society and its institutions rest on deeply rooted features of human nature, but Epicureans held that societies are formed by agreements among people about mutual preservation and advantage.

Stoicism (inspired in part by the dialectical school and Megarian philosophers) led the way in the development of logic and dialectic, while Epicurus rejected logic along with many other specialized intellectual endeavors as useless. For Epicurus even physics mattered only in so far as it was essential to achieving tranquility.

Despite these contrasts, the two schools shared a great deal. Both rested their philosophy on broadly empiricist epistemologies, according to which normal sensory experience was the ultimate source and criterion for knowledge, and both rejected the idea of causally efficacious incorporeal entities and emphasized the material foundations of all reality.

Neither school could accept the central role of form, either in the Platonic version in which forms were separate from material particulars, or in the immanentist version of Aristotle, for whom form and matter were the two components of all concrete objects; nor could they embrace the concepts of an incorporeal deity or an immortal and incorporeal soul animating the body.

PYRRHO OF ELIS - Scepticism

As these new schools emerged, the Academy changed its intellectual course; under the leadership of Arcesilaus it adopted a skeptical practice, devoting its energies not to the development and refinement of positive theories but to the dialectical criticism of those philosophers who claimed certainty for their own views.

Stoicism was its chief target, and it can be argued that the main inspiration for this skeptical turn was the desire to refute those who claimed that the physical world could yield certain knowledge.

Scepticism as a distinctive philosophical tradition, leading to tranquility and happiness through suspension of judgment, was however connected by later writers above all with Pyrrho of Elis (c.365/360–275/ 270 BC).

Pyrrho himself, like Socrates, wrote nothing; his teachings were recorded by his follower Timon of Phlius and these works themselves survive only in secondary quotations.

Pyrrho of Elis (c.360-c.270), Greek philosopher, founder of the Skeptical school

All philosophers are confident that rational thinking is the road to truth except for Pyrrho of Elis, who entertained some doubts about the quest for knowledge.

He argued that we cannot fully comprehend nature, do not know for certain whether a statement is true or false, and are unable to build an ethical system on so weak a fundament.

People would be happier, he argued, if they gave up these useless intellectual exercises and postponed their judgment. The result was a conservative political philosophy, because Pyrrho recommended that, even though we had no moral absolutes, we should live by time-honored traditions.

Two Types of Skeptics

Academic: believes that nothing can be known.

Phyrrhonists: argues that we need to suspend our judgment to avoid error.

PLOTINIUS - Neoplatonism

It is the modern term for a school of religious and mystical philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century AD, founded by Plotinus and based on the teachings of Plato and earlier Platonists. Neoplatonism took definitive shape with the philosopher Plotinus, who claimed to have received his teachings from Ammonius Saccas, a philosopher in Alexandria. Plotinus was also influenced by Alexander of Aphrodisias and Numenius of Apamea. Plotinus's student Porphyry assembled his teachings into the six sets of nine tractates, or Enneads.

Although the founder of Neoplatonism is supposed to have been Ammonius Saccas, the Enneads of his pupil Plotinus are the primary and classical document of Neoplatonism. As a form of mysticism, it contains theoretical and practical parts, the first dealing with the high origin of the human soul showing how it has departed from its first estate, and the second showing the way by which the soul may again return to the Eternal and Supreme. The system can be divided between the invisible world and the phenomenal world, the former containing the transcendent One from which emanates an eternal, perfect, essence (nous), which, in turn, produces the world-soul.

Celestial hierarchy

The religious philosophy of Plotinus for himself personally sufficed, without the aid of the popular religion or worship. Nevertheless he sought for points of support in these. God is certainly in the truest sense nothing but the primeval Being who is revealed in a variety of emanations and manifestations. Plotinus taught the existence of an ineffable and transcendent One, the All, from which emanated the rest of the universe as a sequence of lesser beings.

· The One: God, The Good. Transcendent and ineffable.

· The Hypercosmic Gods: Those that make Essence, Life, and Soul

· The Demiurge: The creator

· The Cosmic Gods: Those who make Being, Nature, and Matter—including the gods known to us from classical religion

Neoplatonists believed human perfection and happiness were attainable in this world, without awaiting an afterlife. Perfection and happiness— seen as synonymous— could be achieved through philosophical contemplation.

The Neoplatonists believed in the pre-existence, and immortality of the soul. The human soul consists of a lower irrational soul and a higher rational soul (mind), both of which can be regarded as different powers of the one soul. It was widely held that the soul possesses a "vehicle", accounting for the human soul's immortality and allowing for its return to the One after death. After bodily death, the soul takes up a level in the afterlife corresponding with the level at which it lived during its earthly life. The Neoplatonists believed in the principle of reincarnation. Although the most pure and holy souls would dwell in the highest regions, the impure soul would undergo a purification, before descending again, to be reincarnated into a new body, perhaps into animal form. A soul that has returned to the One, achieves union with the cosmic universal soul, and does not descend again, at least, not in this world period.

PHILOSOPHY HAND OUT#2: HUMAN NATURE: DIFFERENT PARADIGM

HUMAN NATURE: DIFFERENT PARADIGM

Human nature refers to the distinguishing characteristics, including ways of thinking, feeling and acting, that humans tend to have naturally.

The questions of what these characteristics are, what causes them and how this causation works, and how fixed human nature is, are amongst the oldest and most important questions in western philosophy. These questions have particularly important implications in ethics, politics and theology. This is partly because human nature can be regarded as both a source of norms of conduct or ways of life, as well as presenting obstacles or constraints on living a good life.

The complex implications of such questions are also dealt with in art and literature, while the multiple branches of the Humanities together form an important domain of inquiry into human nature, and the question of what it means to be human.

The branches of contemporary science associated with the study of human nature include anthropology, sociology, sociobiology and psychology. The so-called "nature versus nurture" debate is a broadly inclusive and well-known instance of a discussion about human nature in the natural sciences.

Brief history of the concept

The concept of nature as a standard by which to make judgments was a basic presupposition in Greek philosophy. Specifically, "almost all" classical philosophers accepted that a good human life is a life in accordance with nature.

On this subject, the approach of Socrates, sometimes considered to be a teleological approach, came to be dominant by late classical and medieval times. This approach understands human nature in terms of final and formal causes. Such understandings of human nature see this nature as an "idea," or "form" of a human. By this account, human nature really causes humans to become what they become, and so it exists somehow independently of individual humans. This in turn has sometimes been understood as also showing a special connection between human nature and divinity.

The existence of this invariable human nature is however a subject of much historical debate, continuing into modern times. Against this idea of a fixed human nature, the relative malleability of man has been argued especially strongly in recent centuries—firstly by early modernists such as Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and since the mid-19th century, by thinkers such as Hegel,Marx, Nietzsche, Sartre, structuralists and postmodernists.

Socratic philosophy

Philosophy in classical Greece is the ultimate origin of the western conception of the nature of a thing. The philosophical study of human nature itself originated, according to Aristotle at least, with Socrates, who turned philosophy from study of the heavens to study of the human things. Socrates is said to have studied the question of how a person should best live, but he left no written works. It is clear from the works of his students Plato and Xenophon, and also what was said by Aristotle (Plato's student) about him, that Socrates was a rationalist and believed that the best life and the life most suited to human nature involved reasoning. The Socratic school was the dominant surviving influence in philosophical discussion in the Middle Ages, amongst Islamic, Christian and Jewish philosophers.

The human soul in the works of Plato and Aristotle has a divided nature, divided in a specifically human way. One part is specifically human and rational, and divided into a part which is rational on its own, and a spirited part which can understand reason. Other parts of the soul are home to desires or passions similar to those found in animals. In both Aristotle and Plato spiritedness, thumos, is distinguished from the other passions or epithumiai.^[4] The proper function of the "rational" was to rule the other parts of the soul, helped by spiritedness. By this account, using one's reason is the best way to live, and philosophers are the highest types of humans.

Aristotle, Plato's most famous student, made some of the most famous and influential statements about human nature. In his works, apart from using a similar scheme of a divided human soul, some clear statements about human nature are made:

Man is a conjugal animal, meaning an animal which is born to couple when an adult, thus building a household (oikos) and in more successful cases, a clan or small village still run upon patriarchal lines.

Man is a political animal, meaning an animal with an innate propensity to develop more complex communities the size of a city or town, with a division of labor and law-making. This type of community is different in kind from a large family, and requires the special use of human reason.

Man is a mimetic animal. Man loves to use his imagination (and not only to make laws and run town councils). He says "we enjoy looking at accurate likenesses of things which are themselves painful to see, obscene beasts, for instance, and corpses." And the "reason why we enjoy seeing likenesses is that, as we look, we learn and infer what each is, for instance, 'that is so and so.'"

For Aristotle, reason is not only what is most special about humanity compared to other animals, but it is also what we were meant to achieve at his or her best. Much of Aristotle's description of human nature is still influential today, but the particular teleological idea that humans are "meant" or intended to be something, has become much less popular in modern times.

For the Socratics, human nature, and all natures, are metaphysical concepts. Aristotle developed the standard presentation of this approach with his theory of four causes. Human nature is an example of a formal cause according to Aristotle. Their teleological concept of nature is associated with humans having a divine component in their psyches, which is most properly exercised in the lifestyle of the philosopher, which is thereby also the happiest and least painful life.

Modernism

One of the defining changes occurring at the end of the Middle Ages, is the end of the dominance of Aristotelian philosophy, and its replacement by a new approach to the study of nature, including human nature. In this approach, all attempts at conjecture about formal and final causes was rejected as useless speculation. Also, the term "law of nature" now applies any regular and predictable pattern in nature, not literally a law made by a divine law-maker, and in the same way "human nature" becomes not a special metaphysical cause, but simply whatever can be said to be typical tendencies of humans.

Although this new realism applied to the study of human life from the beginning, for example in Machiavelli's works, the definitive argument for the final rejection of Aristotle was associated especially with Francis Bacon, and then René Descartes, whose new approach returned philosophy or science to its pre-Socratic focus upon non-human things. Thomas Hobbes, then Giambattista Vico, andDavid Hume all claimed to be the first to properly use a modern Baconian scientific approach to human things.

Hobbes famously followed Descartes in describing humanity as matter in motion, just like machines. He also very influentially described man's natural state (without science and artifice) as one where life would be nasty, short and brutish. Following him, John Locke's philosophy of empiricism also saw human nature as a tabula rasa. In this view, the mind is at birth a "blank slate" without rules, so data is added, and rules for processing them are formed solely by our sensory experiences.

Jean Jacques Rousseau pushed the approach of Hobbes to an extreme and criticized it at the same time. He argued that human nature was not only not fixed, but not even approximately fixed compared to what had been assumed before him. Humans are political, and rational, and have language now, but originally they had none of these things. This in turn implied that living under the management of human reason might not be a happy way to live at all, and perhaps there is no ideal way to live. Rousseau is also unusual in the extent to which he took the approach of Hobbes, asserting that primitive humans were not even naturally social. A civilized human is therefore not only imbalanced and unhappy because of the mismatch between civilized life and human nature, but unlike Hobbes, Rousseau also became well-known for the suggestion that primitive humans had been happier, "noble savages."

What human nature did entail, according to Rousseau and the other modernists of the 17th and 18th centuries, were animal-like passions that led humanity to develop language and reasoning, and more complex communities (or communities of any kind according to Rousseau).

In contrast to Rousseau, David Hume was a notable critic of the over-simplifying and systematic approach of Hobbes and Rousseau and some others whereby, for example, all human nature is assumed to be driven by variations of selfishness. Influenced by Hutcheson and Shaftesbury, he argued against over-simplification. On the one hand he accepted that for many political and economic subjects people could be assumed to be driven by such simple selfishness, and he also wrote of some of the more social aspects of "human nature" as something which could be destroyed, for example if people did not associate in just societies. On the other hand he rejected what he called the "paradox of the sceptics" saying that no politician could have invented words like "'honourable' and 'shameful,' 'lovely' and 'odious,' 'noble' and 'despicable,'" unless there was not some natural "original constitution of the mind."

Hume, like Rousseau, was controversial in his own time for his modernist approach, following the example of Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes, of avoiding consideration of metaphysical explanations for any type of cause and effect. He was accused of being an atheist. Concerning human nature also, he wrote for example:

We needn't push our researches so far as to ask 'Why do we have humanity, i.e. a fellow-feeling with others?' It's enough that we experience this as a force in human nature. Our examination of causes must stop somewhere.

After Rousseau and Hume, the nature of philosophy and science changes, branching into different disciplines and approaches, and the study of human nature changes accordingly. Rousseau's proposal that human nature is malleable became a major influence upon international revolutionary movements of various kinds, while Hume's approach has been more typical in Anglo-Saxon countries including the United States.

Natural science

As the sciences concerned with humanity split up into more specialized branches, many of the key figures of this evolution expressed influential understandings about human nature.

Darwin gave a widely accepted scientific argument for what Rousseau had already argued from a different direction, that humans and other animal species have no truly fixed nature, at least in the very long term. However he also gave modern biology a new way of understanding how human nature does exist in a normal human time-frame, and how it is caused.

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, famously referred to the hidden pathological character of typical human behavior. He believed that the Marxists were right to focus on what he called "the decisive influence which the economic circumstances of men have upon their intellectual, ethical and artistic attitudes." But he thought that the Marxist view of the class struggle was too shallow, assigning to recent centuries conflicts that were, rather, primordial. Behind the class struggle, according to Freud, there stands the struggle between father and son, between established clan leader and rebellious challenger. Freud also popularized his notions of the id and the desires associated with each supposed aspect of personality.

E.O. Wilson's sociobiology and closely related theory of evolutionary psychology give scientific arguments against the "tabula rasa" hypotheses of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. In his book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998), Edward O. Wilson claimed that it was time for a cooperation of all the sciences to explore human nature. He defined human nature as a collection of epigenetic rules: the genetic patterns of mental development. Cultural phenomena, rituals, etc. are products, not part of human nature. Artworks, for example are not part of human nature, but our appreciation of art is. And this art appreciation, or our fear for snakes, or incest taboo (Westermarck effect) can be studied by the methods of reductionism. Until now these phenomena were only part of psychological, sociological and anthropological studies. Wilson proposes it can be part of interdisciplinary research.

An example of this fear is discussed in the book An Instinct for Dragons, where anthropologist David E. Jones suggests a hypothesis that humans, just like other primates, have inherited instinctive reactions to snakes, large cats and birds of prey. Folklore dragons have features that are combinations of these three, which would explain why dragons with similar features occur in stories from independent cultures on all continents. Other authors have suggested that especially under the influence of drugs or in children's dreams, this instinct may give raise to fantasies and nightmares about dragons, snakes, spiders, etc., which makes these symbols popular in drug culture and in fairy tales for children. The traditional mainstream explanation to the folklore dragons does however not rely on human instinct, but on the assumption that fossils of, for example, dinosaurs gave rise to similar fantasies all over the world.

METAPHYSICS AND ETHICS

Differing understandings of human nature lead to different conclusions about ethics, or in other words the philosophical question of how people should best live. Some of the most important differences between different understandings of human nature and ethics involve different metaphysical understandings about how human nature relates to nature as a whole, sometimes considered as "creation" or the "cosmos".

Philosophical naturalism (which includes materialism and rationalism) encompasses a set of views that humans are purely natural phenomena; sophisticated beings that evolved to our present state through natural mechanisms such as evolution. Humanist philosophers determine good and evil by appeal to universal human qualities, but other naturalists regard these terms as mere labels placed on how well individual behavior conforms to societal expectations, and is the result of our psychology and socialization.

Abrahamic religions (most notably Judaism, Christianity and Islam) hold that a human is a spiritual being which was deliberately created ex nihilo ("out of nothing"), by a single God in his image (according to the former two), and exists in continued relationship with God. Good and evil are defined in terms of how well humans conform to God's character or God's law.

Polytheistic or animistic notions vary, but generally regard humans as citizens in a world populated by other intelligent spiritual or mythological beings, such as gods, demons, ghosts, etc. In these cases, human evil is often regarded as the result of supernatural influences or mischief (although it may have many other causes as well).

Holistic, pantheistic, and panentheistic spiritual traditions regard humanity as existing within God or as a part of the divine cosmos. In this case, human "evil" is usually regarded as the result of ignorance of this universal Divine nature. Traditions of this kind include the Indian religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism and other forms of Eastern philosophy, and also schools of western philosophy such as Stoicism, Neoplatonism, or Spinoza's pantheistic cosmology. Certain kinds of polytheism, animism, and monism have similar interpretations.

Astrologers believe that a person's personality and many of the challenges they will face in life are determined by the placements of the planets, each represents different aspects of their mental and physical nature. At the time of birth they may use many different techniques to "guesstimate" the issues that will unfold throughout their lives and the actions that can be taken to gain the best results.

Free will and determinism

The issue of free will and determinism underlies much of the debate about human nature. Free will, or agency, refers to the ability of humans to make genuinely free choices (in some sense). As it relates to humans, the thesis of determinism implies that human choices are fully caused by internal and external forces.

Incompatibilism holds that determinism and free will are contradictory (i.e. both cannot be true). Incompatibilist views can either deny or accept free will.

Incompatibilist views holding to free will include:

Libertarianism holds that the human perception of free choice in action is genuine, rather than seemingly genuine, so that some of our actions are performed without there being any compulsion by internal or external forces to do so (i.e., indeterminism).

Thomism holds that humans have a genuine experience of free will, and this experience of free will is evidence of a soul that transcends the mere physical components of the human being.

Incompatibilist views that deny free will include:

Determinism refers to the logic that humans, like all physical phenomena, are subject to cause and effect. Determinism also holds that our actions stem from environmental, biological, ortheological factors. A common misconception is that all determinists are fatalists, who believe that deliberation is pointless as the future is already caused, when in fact most determinists hold the idea that we should deliberate on our actions and that deliberating on our actions is part of the complex interplay between cause and effect.

Predestination is the position that God orchestrates all the events in the universe, human and otherwise, according to his will; however he does it in a way that includes the free choices of humans.

Biological determinism and social determinism are the views that human actions are determined by their biology and social interaction, respectively. The debate between these two positions is known as nature versus nurture.

Compatibilism is the view that free will and determinism can conceptually coexist. Compatibilist views include:

Human compatibilitism is the view that they are compatible because free will is merely the hypothetical ability to choose differently if one is differently disposed according to the physical factors of determinism.

Molinism is the view that God is able to predestine all events on Earth because he knows in advance what people will freely choose.

Contemporary compatibilists seek definitions of free will that permit determinism.

Spiritual versus natural

Another often-discussed aspect of human nature is the existence and relationship of the physical body with a spirit or soul that transcends the human's physical attributes, as well as the existence of any transcendent purpose. In this area, there are three dominant views:

The philosophical naturalist position is that humans are entirely natural, with no spiritual component or transcendent purpose. Subsets of the naturalist view include the materialist and physicalist positions, which hold that humans are entirely physical. However, some naturalists are also dualists about mind and body. Naturalism, combined with the natural and social sciences, views humans as the unplanned product of evolution, which operated in part by natural selection on random mutations. Philosophical naturalists do not believe in a supernatural afterlife. While philosophical naturalism is often assailed as an unacceptable view of human nature, it is promoted by many prominent philosophers and thinkers. The philosophical naturalist often will view religious belief as similar to superstition and as the product of unsound or magical thinking.

In contrast to materialism, there is the Platonic or idealist position. It can be expressed in many ways, but in essence it is the view that there is a distinction between appearance and reality, and that the world we see around us is simply a reflection of some higher, divine existence, of which the human (and perhaps also the animal) soul/mind or spirit may be part. In his Republic, Book VII, Plato represents humankind as prisoners chained from birth inside an underground cave, unable to move their heads, and therefore able to see only the shadows on the walls created by a fire outside the cave, shadows that, in their ignorance, the cave dwellers mistake for reality. For Plato, therefore, the soul is a spirit that uses the body. It is in a non-natural state of union, and longs to be freed from its bodily prison (cf. Republic, X, 611).

Between materialism and idealism lies the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose system of thought is known as Thomism. His thought is, in essence, a synthesis of Christian theology and the philosophy of Aristotle. Aristotle describes man as a "rational animal," i.e., a single, undivided being that is at once animal (material) and rational (intellectual soul). Drawing from Aristotelian hylomorphism, the soul is seen as the substantial form of the body (matter). The soul, as the substantial form, is what is universal, or common, to all humanity, and therefore, is indicative of human nature; that which differentiates one person from another is matter, which Aquinas refers to as the principle of individuation. The human soul is characterized as spiritual, immortal, substantial, and subsistent: it is the spiritual and vital principle of the human being, but is also dependent on the body in a variety of ways in order to possess these characteristics. Thus, no division is made between the "physical" and the "spiritual," though they are in fact distinct. This position differentiates Thomism from both materialism and idealism. Unlike idealism, it holds that the visible universe is not a mere shadow of a transcendent reality, but instead is fully real in and of itself. However, unlike materialism, Thomism holds that empiricism and philosophy, when properly exercised, lead inevitably to reasonable belief in God, the human soul, and moral objectivism. Thus, to a Thomist, it is obvious from the evidence that there is a God and an eternal soul.

In addition to these traditional philosophical distinctions between the soul and body, recent adaptations in humanistic psychology attempt to explain the natural transcendent purpose of human life. Richard Shweder of the University of Chicago separated human morality into three components: the ethic of autonomy, the ethic of community, and the ethic of divinity. The idea of religious fundamentalist countries is to uphold the ethic of divinity, which consists of protecting the divinity that exists in each person, even if that means imposing religious and moral laws on people of other faiths. Abraham Maslow, one of the founders of humanistic psychology attempted to demonstrate that spiritual life can be rationally explained as a naturalistic meaning. He claims that "peak experiences," moments of extreme self-transcendence, are the same amongst religious and secular people alike. Peak experiences make people see beyond the two-dimensional world of self-advancement and try live a nobler life. Religions can thus be explained in a naturalistic sense as the coordination of transcendent ideas in order to maximize "peak experiences."

PSYCHOLOGY AND BIOLOGY

A long standing question in philosophy and science is whether there exists an invariant human nature. For those who believe there is a human nature, further questions include:

What determines/constrains human nature?

To what extent is human nature malleable?

How does it vary between people and populations?

Since human behavior is so diverse, it can be difficult to find absolutely invariant human behaviors that are of interest to philosophers. A lesser (but still scientifically valid) standard for evidence pertaining to "human nature" is used by scientists who study behavior. Biologists look for evidence of genetic predisposition to behavioral patterns. Human behavior can be influenced by the environment, so penetrance of genetically predisposed behavioral traits is not expected to reach 100%. A type of human behavior for which there is a strong genetic predisposition can be considered to be part of human nature. In other words, human nature is not seen as something that forces individuals to behave in a certain way, but as something that makes individuals more inclined to act in a certain way than in another.

An enduring evolutionary psychology controversy often revolves around "human nature." Common evolutionary psychology explanations posit that the mind is made up of a massive number of interacting adaptations or "mental modules," the genes for which are a common human inheritance and result in a common human phenotype in the typical environments in which humans find themselves, and which constitute "human nature." This view has been critiqued as essentialist, as neglecting "natural" genetic, environmental and individual variation (and that the closest you can come is norms of reaction), and as equivocating between the levels of genes, developmental programs, and actual human psychology/culture, and between individuals and population averages.

Arguments for invariance

All individuals and all societies have a similar facial grammar. Everyone smiles the same, and the way we use our eyes to convey cognition or flirtatiousness is the same. Human females find male faces that are rated more masculine and aggressive, less feminine and sensitive, more attractive during ovulation, the stage of their menstrual cycle when women are most fertile.

No success has ever been scientifically demonstrated in re-assigning an individual's handedness. Although individuals may change their external behavior (picking up scissors with their right hand instead of the left, for instance), their internal inclination never changes. Even people who lose a limb, who physically do not possess the ability to pick up scissors with their left hand, will try to do so if they are "left-handed." The percentage of left-handers in all cultures at all times remains constant (because left-handedness is a recessive trait.

Newborn babies, far too young to have been acculturated to do so, have measurable behaviors such as being more attracted to human faces than other shapes and having a preference for their mother's voice over any other voice.

In his book Human Universals, Donald E. Brown presents his case and identifies approximately 400 specific behaviors that are essentially invariant among all humans.

Arguments for social malleability

The Duke of Wellington is said to have become indignant upon hearing someone refer to habit as "second nature." He replied, "It is ten times nature!"

William James likewise referred to habit as the fly-wheel of society. Habits, though, are by definition acquired, and different habits will be both the effect and the cause of very different societies.

Different human societies have held very different moral codes. Thus, regardless of whether objective morality exists or not, humans are clearly capable of imposing a wide variety of different moral codes on themselves.

Some have argued that the role for nurture comes not from the absence of impulses in human nature but from the plethora of such impulses—so many, and so contradictory, that nurture must sort them out and put them into a hierarchy.

Some believe there is no single universal law of behavior that holds true for all human beings. There are many such laws that apply to the majority of individuals (for example, the majority of individuals try to avoid dying), but there are always exceptions (some individuals commit suicide). Most animals, including humans, have an innate self-preservation instinct (fear of injury and death). The fact that humans may override this basic instinct is seen as evidence that human nature is subordinate to the human mind, and/or various outside factors. However, this may not be entirely unique to the human mind, as certain animals are observed to willfully commit suicide.