HUMAN NATURE

HUMAN NATURE
What it is about?

Human nature by definition is the set of logical characteristics,

including ways of thinking and behaving that all human have in
common.
Human nature is made up of man’s biological, psychological, and
rational powers.
HUMAN NATURE
BIOLOGICAL POWERS include nutrition, locomotion, reproduction, and
growth and development.

PSYCHOLOGICAL POWERS include those of the senses such as

perceiving, remembering, those acts of emotions.

RATIONAL POWERS include intellect and will.

HUMAN NATURE
Man as a person =

• A concrete individual endowed with reason.

• Man is a social being.
• Man possesses dignity and rights.
 DIFFERENT VIEWS OF HUMAN NATURE
• RATIONALISM.
In philosophy, rationalism view regards reason the chief source and test
of knowledge.
Rationalist argued that certain truths exist and that the intellect can
directly grasp these truths. They believed that the best way to arrive at
certain knowledge is using the mind’s rational abilities.
PLATO ARISTOTLE SOCRATES
Man is rational, social animals. Aristotle believed that man man is Socrates believed that the best life
Plato tended to identify our nature a rational, social animals. and the life most suited to human
with reason. Accdg. To Plato, For Aristotle, all living and the nature involved reasoning. For him,
reasons alone can know how we natural world have purpose. The only human can distiguish virtue,
ought to live, it should rule the purpose is to control desires and which is knowledge from
appetite(desire) and our aggression thru reason. ignorance.
aggression.
RATIONALISM

SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE

SOURCE OF Justification for

CONCEPTUAL REASON our belief
APPARATUS
 RELIGIOUS VIEW
• Humans were created in the image of God
• Accdg. To Bible people were given a free will with which to choose for
God or original sin.
• Reason is a unique gift bestowed by God to humans.
• With that enable humans to reflect on their own nature and
conscience.
• Old testament holds that species were individually designed by God
and therefore perfect.
RELIGIOUS VIEW
Biblical view –
• Each person is unique individual
• Has the power to act under his own initiative.
• As a whole, mankind is good creation of God.
Accdg. To St. Augustine –
Humans have will and intellect, the ability to choose between good and
evil.
St. Aguainas believed that the purpose of man is to know God thru
reason.
 EXISTENTIALISM
• Slogan: EXISTENCE PRECEDES ESSENCE
Implies that:
• Human exist first and then each individual spend a lifetime changing
their essence or nature.
• Human being has no predetermined nature or essence that controls
what we are, what we can do, or what valuable for us.
• Human have no or pre-existing conditions that guide or determine
man’s behavior or essence.
• Human beings thru their own consciousness create their own values
and determine a meaning to their life.
 EXISTENTIALISM
• Individual have to take responsibility for their own actions and shape
their destinies.
• Individual is the sole judge of his or her own actions.
• Human freedom is understood precisely as the freedom to choose.
• Choice is vital and inevitable to human existence; even the refusal to
choose is a choice.
• Freedom of choice entails risk, responsibility and commitment.
EXISTENTIALISM is a philosophy that emphasize individual existence,
freedom, and choice.
 DUALISM VS. MATERIALISM
DUALISM
• An idea or belief that everything has two opposite
parts of principles.
• A doctrine that the universe is under the dominion
of two opposing principles, one of which is good
and the other, evil.
• Accdg, to Plato, dualism has both material and
spiritual components.
• Material component – the body which is temporary
and essentially evil.
• Spiritual component – is the soul or the mind
which are eternal and good.
• Accdg. To Rene Descartes, mind and body are not
identical. Mind was unextended, immaterial but
thinking substance whereas the body as an
extended, material but unthinking substance.
Believed that the soul existed prior to and separate
MATERIALISM
• Materialism holds that matter is the fundamental
substance in nature, and that all thins, including
mental aspects and consciousness are results of
material interactions.
• To materialists, matter is primary, and mind or
spirit or ideas are secondary, the product of matter
acting upon matter.
• It states that everything in the universe is matter,
without any true or spiritual or intellectual
existence.
• To materialists, our reality consist of entirely of
physical matter, that is the sole cause of every
possible occurrence including human thought,
feeling and action.
• Hobbes believed that all phenomena in the
universe without exception can be explained in
 BEHAVIORISM
BEHAVIORIST VIEW:
• Holds that being in a mental state is the same as being in a physical
state.
• Behaviorism is mainly concerned with the behaviors that are
associated with feelings, thinking, imagining.
• Behaviorism says that all feelings are external behaviors that other
people can be able to observe.
• Believed that the mind is an expression to bodily movement.
• Believed that humans beings are shaped entirely by their external
environment.
 BEHAVIORISM
• Behaviorists believed that all behaviors in human are learned.
• No behavior in human beings is innate.
• Believe that humans are motivated primarily to received rewards and
to avoid punishments.

JOHN B. WATSON – KNOWN AS THE FATHER OR BEHAVIORISM

He believed that humans could be trained and measured.