Другие журналы на сайте ИНТЕЛРОС

Журнальный клуб Интелрос » Коллаж » Выпуск 5

Roger Smith
The History of Human Nature: More of the Same or Facing the Other?

There is a significant cognitive and moral dilemma. Should we know and act on the assumption that other people are basically similar to ourselves, or assume that other people are, in a deep sense, different? It is a very common humanistic sentiment to feel that all people are «in essence» similar, or have a single human nature, and on this basis humanists justify the ideal of equal rights and dignity for all people. If there were no shared human nature, on what grounds would we treat people as members of the same category and hence equally objects of our moral concern? Thus Isaiah Berlin stated: «The fact that men are men and women are women and not dogs or cats or tables or chairs is an objective fact; and part of this objective fact is that there are certain values, and only those values, which men, while remaining men, can pursue»1 . Yet there are powerful voices, such as Nietzsche’s or Foucault’s, which declare the belief in an essential human nature wrong as an epistemological principle, misguided as to fact and opposed to human freedom. According to this point of view, the claim that there is a universal, trans-historical subject, man, is unfounded, and pious assertions about man impose one discourse as if it were uniquely valid when it is not. The trouble the English language has when it uses a gendered term, «man», also as a collective term for all people illustrates the point. There are different views about how far the term denotes a universal or a particular. In short, we face the dilemma whether we do cognitive and moral justice to people by starting from the proposition that they are like ourselves or from the proposition that they are other.



Другие статьи автора: Smith Roger

Архив журнала
Выпуск 5Выпуск 4Выпуск 3Выпуск 2Выпуск 1
Поддержите нас
Журналы клуба