Hobbes exactly backward on Human Nature : The purely Genus Homo animal instincts are to cooperate with other members of our species. So-called Civilization perverts our special human learned symbolic communal and communication behaviors to World-historic Evil.

https://www.shortform.com/blog/thomas-hobbes-human-nature/

Charles Brown: Hobbes exactly backward on Human Nature : The purely Genus Homo animal instincts are to cooperate with other members of our species. So-called Civilization perverts our special human learned symbolic communal and communication behaviors to World-historic Evil.

"What is Thomas Hobbes known for? How did Hobbes’ views influence modern-day moral philosophy?

Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher who lived during the 17th century and who exerted a significant influence on modern philosophy. According to Thomas Hobbes, human nature is essentially cruel and selfish, and the only way to subdue humanity’s evil impulses is through power.

Here’s how Hobbes’ philosophy influenced modern-day societal order.

Thomas Hobbes: Civilization Curbs Humans’ Evil Instincts

According to Thomas Hobbes, human nature is inherently selfish and driven by a desire for power. Before civilization, Hobbes said, this selfishness led to anarchy: Each person sought power for themselves, creating an all-out war. In his most famous book, Leviathan (1651), Hobbes argued that the only way to combat this anarchy was to give up our freedom to a powerful ruler, which he named the “Leviathan.” In his view, the Leviathan would keep order by ensuring that humans’ base instincts didn’t rise to the surface.

CHARLES BROWN: THIS IS CAPITALIST SOCIETY. WORKING CLASS MASSES ARE IN MANY COMPETITIONS WITH EACH OTHER AS MARX AND ENGELS SAY :” Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers.”

(Shortform note: Hobbes’s view of human nature—and his fear of anarchy and war—stem from his life experiences. He wrote Leviathanduring a period of civil war in England. On one side of the war were the Royalists, who supported the reigning but unpopular King Charles I and his claim to absolute, God-given power. On the other side were the Parliamentarians, who wanted the elected Parliament to control the government. In 1649, two years before Hobbes published Leviathan, the Parliamentarians executed King Charles I. Hobbes worried that the deposition of Charles would lead to all-out anarchy, hence his assertion that only a powerful sovereign can prevent war.)

CHARLES BROWN COMMENT :WE MARXISTS SAY POLITICAL ECONOMIC BASE DETERMINED HOBBES’ PHILOSOPHIC SUPERSTRUCTURE

According to Bregman, Hobbes’s

thinking is foundational to Western society.

( CB : CLASS STRUGGLE IS FOUNDATIONAL TO WESTERN SOCIETY, EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION OF THE LAST 2500 YEARS) As we’ll discuss later in the guide, the notion that humans are fundamentally selfish creatures who require a strong hand still informs theories of criminal justice, management, and government.

Hobbes’s Influence on Western Society: Social Contract Theory As Bregman notes, Hobbes’s philosophy continues to influence our society today. One of the ways it does so is through Hobbes’s introduction of Social Contract Theory, which forms the philosophical basis for many modern governments. Here’s a brief summary of what Social Contract Theory is, how it’s evolved, and why it’s been so important to Western society.

Social Contract Theory states that in a society, citizens must form an agreement, whether real or imagined ( legal fictions -CB ) , that lays out the responsibilities of each individual to the community. As Bregman suggests, Hobbes viewed the social contract as follows: Citizens agree to give up their freedom to an absolute ruler (the Leviathan) in exchange for security and peace. While Hobbes’s version of the social contract was relatively conservative, later philosophers such as John Locke would build on his work. Locke’s revision of Hobbes’s social contract set the foundation for Western democracy. Whereas Hobbes believed that a government’s only responsibility to its citizens was to maintain security and peace, Locke believed that when citizens created a society through a social contract, the government had an obligation not only to keep them safe but also to protect their rights. Among these rights was the power to choose a legislature. CB: THE PARADOXICAL CONTRADICTION IN LOCKE’s FORMULATION IS THAT CITIZENS RIGHTS HAVE TO BE PROTECTED FROM THE GOVERNMENT BY THE _GOVERNMENT_ . RIGHTS ARE SPECIFICALLY IN RELATION TO THE GOVERNMENT. WHAT’S THE DIALECTICAL RESOLUTION ? If this protection of rights didn’t occur, Locke said, then the government broke the social contract and the citizens had the right to rebel. The idea—radical at the time—that the citizens should be in charge of government profoundly influenced the development of early democracies, including that of the United States.

)))))))) Is Human Nature Social or Selfish ?

by Charles D. Brown

2016

I recently had a chance to teach anthropology for the first time, after a school career with two anthropology degrees. One student asked "what does anthropology matter ? what difference does it make ?". Good , mature questions for a high school student.

One way that anthropology might help us in the here and now is to bring scientific and biological paleontological evidence, from the Stone Age 100,000's of years ago, to bear on the question of what is human nature today ? Is it human nature to be greedy and selfish like Wall Street billionaires ? Or is it human nature to share and "love thy neighbor as thyself" ?

_Sapiens_" means "wise" In Latin.

Homo sapiens (Latin: "wise man"(sic) ) is the scientific name for the human species. Homo is the human genus, which also includes Homo sapiens Neanderthal and many other extinct species of hominin ( Anatomically, habitually bioedal primate; Homo habilis , Homo erectus, etc. ) ; H. sapiens sapiens is the only surviving species of the genus Homo. Modern humans are the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens, which differentiates us from what has been argued to be our direct ancestor, Homo sapiens idaltu.

What is humans' unique nature ? What is culture ? For anthropology, culture is the unique species characteristic of _homo sapiens_. In a sense, "culture" is another word for "wisdom", from the notion that humans are the species _homo wise_. It is humans socially learned practices, customs, language, traditions, beliefs, religion, spirituality that make us "wise" in so many ways, certainly clever and winners _as a species_ ( not just as a few "fit" Individuals) in the struggles and snuggles to survive as a species. However, since the advent of civilization, sometimes it's not so clear how wise our culture makes us. Therein lies the central drama of the history of the human species. Nonetheless, clearly in the Stone Age, our having culture was a highly adaptive advantage over species that did not have culture , stone tools made through culture, etc, raising our species fitness. This is evidenced by _homo sapiens_ expanding in population and therefore migrating to an expanded area of living space across the earth , out of what is now Africa to the other continents. Stone Age foraging and kinship organized societies were the mode of life for the vast majority of time of human species 'existence, 85% or more. The first human societies had an extraordinarily high survival need to be able to rely on each other at levels of solidarity that we cannot even imagine. The intensity of the network of social connections of a band of 25 to 75 people (See page 217 of text _Physical Anthropology_) living in the ecological food chain location would almost constitute a new level of organic organization and integrity above individual bodies; ancient kinship/culture systems as super-organic bodies; the human social group as harmonious multi-individual Body, organism. The Individual human bodies, all of the Some Bodies , were very frail and weak relative to the field of predators they were escaping. Up-right posture made them slower runners, too ! The dominance of the food chain that humans ultimately reached even in the Stone Age could be reached only by super-social , super internally-cooperative, super-intra-species harmony, because they had relatively_frail_ individual bodies, and needed each other's support. It is clear to me that natural selection picked hominid groups with policies of "love thy neighbor as thyself " and "charity" over those that might have derived principles of "selfishness and greed", if there were any in the Stone Age before Civilization. Institutionalized war would have been selected against through the whole Stone Age. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq0XJCJ1Srw Nat king Cole, Nature Boy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq0XJCJ1Srw&feature=kp Joe Smith: OK, both. I could make arguments either way. People are social animals, but they also act in their best (often selfish) interests. Charles Brown: No, original humans relied more than other species on each other , on kinship relations. Human individual bodies were relatively frail and weak , and bi-pedalism made them slow runners. So, humans were very interdependent and highly social by nature. Our species name should be _homo socialis_. Selfishness and greed would have been selected against in the Darwinian sense. So, the answer is not both, but social. Greed and selfishness arise with civilization, after hundreds of thousands of years of "love thy neighbor as thyself" as the central principle of human societies , and the key to our adaptive advantage and ticket to the top of the food chain. Love thy neighbor as THYSELF is not self-less. It is wise in that the best way to love yourself is to get along with others well. Now individual mortal beings, animals, do have an instinct of self-preservation, to avoid death. But dangers of death or injury did not come from other individuals of the same species. War is against our individual instinct and our species's original nature, which was peaceful toward other members of the species. " The decisive battle between early culture and human nature must have been waged on the field of primate sexuality…. Among subhuman primates sex had organized society; the customs of hunters and gatherers testify eloquently that now society was to organize sex…. In selective adaptation to the perils of the Stone Age, human society overcame or subordinated such primate propensities as selfishness, indiscriminate sexuality, dominance and brute competition. It substituted kinship and co-operation for conflict, placed solidarity over sex, morality over might. In its earliest days it accomplished the greatest reform in history, the overthrow of human primate nature, and thereby secured the evolutionary future of the species." — Sahlins, M. D. 1960 The origin of society. Scientific American 203(3): 76–87.