Human Nature

I examine the “science of human nature” of David Hume, Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and other British moralists and writers, and show how this “science” is expression of the 18-century new way of looking at aesthetic and moral sentiment, passion and perception. The “science of human nature”, which may be (and commonly is) considered an ancestor of our philosophy and psychology, is in fact a radically historical form of knowledge, whose truth comes from history and whose notion of experience is that of a collection of human types and cases. Its producers and intended readers were from the “conversable” and polite society -- that is, groups of non-philosophers, non-psychologists discussing people and life in moralistic and mechanistic terms.

The base premise behind Adam Smith's idea of Capitalism was man's self-interest. That behind modern political philosophy of was also, similarly, the notion of Thomas Hobbes that, by nature, life (hence, human nature) was 'brutish,nasty and short'. Hobbes thought, to set the society in order,a power-state was the only remedy. This paper attempts to seek evidences to show that, human nature is NOT rooted on 'self-interest',but it is basically 'self-rooted'.

Forthcoming in History of Philosophy Quarterly

Human nature” is an ambiguous term to begin with, but when applied to politics it justifiably raises eyebrows, the historically-learned immediately recalling wildly divergent, and often heinous, uses of the idea. By itself, it is about as clarifying as “freedom.” So here I will join the term with a technical outlook specific to wildism, along with a few distinctions that should help readers grasp our theoretical literature and purge from their mind any mixed associations with less rigorous or, worse, more repugnant meanings.

The AnaChronisT

This paper discusses the theory of passions of Alexander Pope (1688–1744) and David Hume (1711–1776). It focusses on two phrases: “ruling passion” by Pope and “predominant inclination” by Hume. This study attempts to demonstrate that Hume used his term with a similar meaning to that of Pope. The importance of the passions in the conduct of human life, according to these authors, involves a sceptical attitude towards the capabilities of reason. This paper attempts to show the manifestations of this attitude in Pope’s satires on human characters and in the characterisation of a false philosopher and philosophy by Hume.

Review of Richard Allen's important study of the philosopher David Hartley, who was influential in eighteenth-century England.

This essay is a précis (for which I take full responsibility) of Chapters One and Two of Leslie Dewart’s seminal book consisting of Nine Chapters. The perspective he presented here, to my mind, sets a fresh intellectual trajectory for philosophical contemplation. Written towards the end of the 20th century the book is not an easy read, but since it introduces an alternative and refreshing philosophical interpretation, I offer this précis in the hope that it may inspire readers to read the entire book in the context of the 21st Century experience. His “single mosaic” is not the unified intellectual fruit of classical Western philosophy, but rather is an insightful statement of the alternatives (described in the epilogue of the book) consciously available to the human species of the future.

This was part of my PhD Dissertation "The Social Construction of An Architecture in Design Education". It takes up the work of Berger and Luckmann, "The Social Construction of Reality" and uses it as a lever to demystify the often used and reactionary phrase, "It's only human nature" - as if there was an actual invariable entity to which one could attribute human actions. Instead it proposes that men (and women) make their own nature from the multiplicity of choices that they face. "Human Nature" is invariably used as a catch-all phrase for everything that is unpleasant or unacceptable about human behaviour - greed, avarice, brutality etc. Seldom if ever is it used in conjunction with traits like compassion, empathy, love....

Theology and Science, 2015

Human nature is a contested concept and notions of it vary across disciplines. Despite this diversity, three basic notions of human nature emerge. One identifies human nature with properties that are innate, hardwired or products of some kind of necessary essence. Another understands it as consisting of properties that make human unique or distinct from non-human animals. Finally, some seek human nature by attempting to identify universal or near-universal properties of humans. While the sciences might not give us a robust form of innate or hardwired human nature, "human nature" as a concept might still serve other, non-scientific, goals.