Human nature is very complex subject because for each theory we have to answer many questions defining a part of the theory. Each theory has to define what makes us and how that defines us to the environment in which we live. So we first must ask ourselves what makes us who we are? Then we must define we define what we are physical, mentally, and emotionally/ spiritually. Then we must define ourselves how we are relative to are existence in our environment or in essence how we live are lives. Then we must define how our relationship to our environment effects who we are.
Marx believes that what makes us ourselves is the environment in which we live. He believes it is social pressures that economic stability drives who we are. He says that
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He believes that our souls give function and structure of all living creatures and that all living beings have souls and that they are souls of many different types.
Marx’s believes that we are creatures of production and that for us to be considered to be human beings is how and what we can produce as a society. That we are not a multiple of individuals but one total conglomerate that acts and reacts and that individual does not really have much say when it comes to a subject of what they are. Marx believes are need to create is essential why man is we differ from other creatures. Marx believes we are trying to express are free will by creating and even though animals build nests and honeycombs and spider webs their production is out of the need where we create for the expression of are free will. Marx believes that animals produce out of the need for production but also to see beauty in are creation. The animal is always on the move and it’s the process of moving that it is life in essence. Whereas with man it is the process of moving and his will and conscious that differ people from animals. It is only because he is a species-being that he differs from animals.
“Man is a species-being, not only because he practically and theoretically makes the species – both his own and those of other things – his object, but also – and this is simply another way of saying the same thing – because he looks upon himself as the present, living species, because he looks upon himself
Marx believed that societies were evolving in a certain direction, which was leading to communist societies (Habibis & Walter, 2009. p. 15). This would lead to the fulfilment of people’s potential as opposed to the distribution of wealth and power (p. 15). He also believed that all forms of inequality were created by capitalistic values where wealth provided further wealth (p. 5). Also that there was economical deterministic value of class (p. 5). The stratification of society into classes was in itself a social inequality system (p. 5).
Marx has the idea that human nature is based on communism. Through history we see the oppressors and the oppressed in some type of battle. There are examples in history such as, “Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman…” (Marx, 14) who Marx brings up. The usual way the conflict is resolved is by revolution or in the classes’ common ruin. Looking back at the examples that Marx has given, all of the conflicts were ended in revolution or in the classes’ common ruin. Marx’s believes that humans have the capability of making and shaping their nature. Marx sees human nature being more pushed towards social relations rather than as a species. Throughout history, society has been arranged into different class structures. In the Middle Ages, the classes were set up
First, even a quick glimpse at Marx’s writings is revelatory as to his conception of a fully realized human. At the core of Marx’s ideology, as the initial quote correctly discerns, is the idea that class struggle is at the core of all harm done to “the community” and the “welfare of all.” Indeed, he writes quite plainly in his and Frederick Engels’ most famous work, 1848’s The Communist Manifesto, that “every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes” (76) and that this oppressing class, the bourgeoisie, is “no longer compatible with society” (76). This idea lends itself to believing that the most important form of liberty is freedom from class; that once the existing class system is to fall, that all will have a more fully realized and more “human” life. To Marx, life without the weight of pressing class struggle is the highest life to which an individual can aspire.
The notion of man as a ‘species-being’ for Marx meant the recognition of man’s human essence as a member of a species. A species which takes part in a process of conscious production whereby we produce as human beings for one another; Marx perceived this to be the process of mans ‘active species life’ (Bottomore; 1963 ). Marx specifically used the term ‘species being’ as a method to distinguish human life from animal life; where production is more a consequence of ‘blind instinct’ rather than conscious productive labour. The recognition of man as a ‘species’ becomes eminent to the theory of Alienation, which is central to Marx’s work and vital in reiterating the human essence of man.
52) Marx means that political emancipation alone does not lead to human emancipation. Political rights do not make people fully human, rather everyone is part of a particular, partial group based on individual their needs and desires. Political emancipation gives everyone the right to be individuals, but never fully human. It gives them the right to participate in the state as citizens but never fully human. 3 How does Marx show that the ‘Rights of Man’ work against the ideal of sociality embodied in the
The philosophy of Karl Marx begins with the belief that humans are inherently cooperative with common characteristics and shared ends. To human beings, life is considered an object and therefore, humans make their “life-activity itself the object of his will and of his consciousness” (Tucker 76). In other words, humans are able to think, imagine, and “produce even when he is free from physical need and only truly produces in freedom therefrom” (p. 76). It exemplifies that idea that humans not only have the capability to create things for survival but express themselves in what they produce, within the standards of the human race or universally. When capitalist wage-labor enters the picture, it forces these shared ends and the freedom of expression in human production to cease, causing a rise of competitiveness among
During the semester, in the course Humanity 2.0, the class looked to many perspectives to try to understand what means to be human. The sources we used were the most ancient epic myth known by human society, the views from a behavioral primatologist, a Jewish philosopher, a theologian, and two novels. These resources helped us in class to think critically about the authors works, about our own concepts, beliefs, and about the humans relationships, actions, and what might drives us towards to our behaviors.
So while Marx did believe that humans had some form of agency (being able to make their own history) he recognized that it should appear through the confines of a strict structure, and that the particular structure of a society is determined by the resources and modes of production utilized.
In the book he states, “Society as a whole is more and more splitting into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat" (80). There is always a cycle between the wealthy and the poor, nobles and peasants, and now Bourgeois and Proletarians. Bourgeois have access to all factors of production, making the economy static with only the factory owners making profit and the Proletarians working for a miniscule payment. Basically Marx is saying the poor are going to get poorer and the rich is going to get richer. This societal injustice is caused by factories and manufacturers dominating the economy. He does not believe in Smith’s idea of “Self-interest” because the poor will never be able to pursue their own interest due to unequal competition. “...the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property” (96). Marx want to make everything publicly owned, railroads, factories, and even the land itself are owned by the people and shared equally amongst them. Marx’s plan of economic equality failed, workers are not fond of working for other instead for their own interest. Countries that follow Marx’s method of pure communism also collapses, like the Soviet Union, who reformed, China, who adapt to a more capitalistic economy, and Cuba, who isolated
Human nature refers to the peculiar traits—including ways we think and feel about our actions-which naturally humans have, independent of the influence of culture. The most important questions of philosophy are based on traits, how fixed they are and their causes.
The text of Marx was hard to read, but it was also really interesting. In its text Marx implied many ideas that he developed later in his other texts, such as the concept of false consciousness or the superstructure and the infrastructure and the relation between the two. The two are so different in their way of working, but at the same time really alike because they both have the same goal. Which come back to the general idea of contradiction and to the dialectic. According with Marx’s ideas even if there are differences between two people or two social classes there is also a similarity they all work to transform things and to survive. Their understanding of surviving may be different and vary according their ownership of the means of production,
Thus, the economic system controls all aspects of human life, and these lives are left to revolve around the means of production. Marx believed the system contained the seeds of it’s own destruction in that capitalists are constantly competing to produce goods more efficiently and cheaper. When wages are cut so low that the laboring class is unable to purchase the goods produced there will be an economic crisis. Then when conditions are bad enough the oppressed will rise up against the owners and capitalism will have destroyed itself.
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin”-William Shakespeare. The relationship between humans and nature is that we are a part of nature. As per the study of human evolution, scientists discovered a wealth of evidence that shows how closely we are related to the other primates. We humans are an animal species: primate order: mammalian class: vertebrate sub-phylum. The study of Human genetics gave a proof that we are connected to each other and also to other organisms which are part of nature. The Earth is a natural thing, with all earthly inhabitants originated on earth naturally, that means we as humans are natural.
What is human nature? It is very simple. Human nature refers to the patterns of behavior that are typical of our species or our kind. Human undergoes change as all humans grow up they nature seems to change; the environment someone grow up in effects that persons nature. To fully understand human nature Dr. Marvin Harris takes us on trip to time, which makes sense because if we better understand our past and our origin we will better understand our very existence and our nature. We will know more about who we are where we are from and such other questions that puzzle the human mind.