I'm not sure why some people are so dogmatic in believing that there is a "human nature"...

I'm not sure why some people are so dogmatic in believing that there is a "human nature". Humans have been repeatedly proven to be malleable and have contingent beliefs depending on their historical circumstances.

If you've ever tried to have a discussion with the drooling Downies who defend "capitalism" without even knowing what the word means, you know that human nature is fundamental to any state or religious ideology as an axiomatic tool of legitimacy. "Capitalism takes advantage of our inherently corrupt nature," "If people were angels there would be no government," "Humans must seek God's grace because we are originally sinful," and so on. There are also positive reversals of this typical formula, e.g. forms of anarchist theory that blame all ills on "societal fictions" and the like.

Fundamental patterns of behavior and motivation are consistent across all of human history.

But if we share historical circumstance and conditions what does it matter?

Obviously. There is a baser biology and chain of events. Cultures and civilisations inherit from those before. But then you'd refer to those specifics as they are, specifics. Not some unspecified "nature". Whenever "human nature" is brought up, it is to hand-wave-explain-away complexity by simply stating that some extremely complex, often abstract cultural phenomenon, is human nature. Perhaps it has legitimate basis in things that are more static than dynamic (in humans), but you need to demonstrate that. Given the inherit complexity, it's likely to not be absolute or consistent anyway, rather highly conditional.

"muh human nature" isn't enough, you have to actually say what you mean. This is exactly like people throwing around different "-isms", as though they were actually engaging in discourse. You need to actually say something, instead of dismissing any legitimate thought or inquiry, with your haven of a vague abstraction that you use to eliminate further thought/effort, or just LARPing (which is equally common).

Commie get out.

this is a marxist bait thread it has no purpose but to guarantee the conclusions it was already advancing which is that humans have no nature, "malleable" as in engineerable. Idiots

Dogs are just uncultured humans! There's no difference you idiot!

But you see, human nature is conferred through possession of a soul.

Hilarious if you don't think capitalism engineers people and forces them to live a very specific lifestyle.

It's certainly not "natural" for us to work for 8 to 10 hours today answering phone calls in a windowless cubicle, but this is how a billion people live their lives.

>Hilarious if you don't think capitalism engineers people
i think that, I never said I did not
>forces them to live a very specific lifestyle.
significantly different from marxism but yes I agree
>It's certainly not "natural" for us to work for 8 to 10 hours today answering phone calls in a windowless cubicle, but this is how a billion people live their lives.
you'll get no arguments from me there, user

you didn't refute anything I said. This is a bait thread for marxist propagandists it serves no function, has nothing to do with literature or poetry and is essentially just a soap box for you all to lie and mislead people about the nature of mind, man, reality, economics etc. If you resort to calling me a capitalist you're just proving my point, if you call me a fascist then you're already showing your reason for being here. What does this thread have to do with Veeky Forums and how are you not just propagandizing for marxism?

You seem to be arguing that whatever basic human nature there is it is a cop out because it means close to nothing, but it does mean something in marxism. If it is true that humans are naturally selfish then communism as marx envisioned it is impossible. It’s also a cop out to just say that it’s a cop out prove why inherent biological motivations are close to irrelevant first.

>What occurs in nature does not belong to nature.
What did he mean by this?

Stoics btfo, you can't not follow nature

If there were no human nature, wouldn't it be possible for humanity to become such that it flourishes under capitalism?

>Humans have been repeatedly proven to be malleable

Not without developing fucked up neuroses or outright hysterical breakdowns but sure whatever

The Communists' historical disappointment has been to discover that man, for all his malleability, can't learn to live without food.

We're inheriting talking points that have been through a thousand filters, particularly very poor ones, so we have to put things into a bit of context to redeem the ideas we're talking about and make them interact meaningfully again.

Around the Enlightenment you get the idea that man in his 'natural state' has very many desirable qualities compared with the way social processes of the era can and do mould him. Since we can see the way social/legal/financial/etc. pressure can have negative and positive effects on individuals, perhaps we can reevaluate social forms to create better human beings - or, conversely or simultaneously: better human beings to emanate better social forms. Only a rough idea but that's the basic outline. These thoughts are the products (and the fuel) of a time of greater social mobility, education and literacy, technological innovation and political reform. There's a lot of optimism about progress. Progress feels boundless, tangible.

This conception contrasts with both the Christian conception of the Fall - where human beings were indeed not only naturally good but perfect but now have a fallen nature - and the conception of nature familiar to us in Thrasymachus, Hobbes, etc.: where primitive man is essentially egoistic, and society is a sort of mutual compromise to ensure safety and comfort in exchange for freedoms, where civilisation is a taming influence on the individual whose needs necessarily conflict with others.

In response to the idealistic intentions of many revolutionaries, philosophers, reformers and others who try to "better" humanity through political change or education or whatever, there emerges the conservative mindset which is naturally skeptical of intentions and efforts to change or "fix" human nature for the better. Perhaps we cannot depend on these desired changes to be as effective as the social or political means the reformers wish to be rid of in pursuit of liberation. Perhaps the attempt to "develop" people into a better form will disastrously contradict with really ingrated human desires and instincts. These concerns grows in response to the various revolutions and radical political regimes, the wars and social phenomena which come about.

The brutality and horror of the French Revolution, of modernisation and industrialisation, of colonialism, of the Bolshevik revolution, of Nazi Germany, emerge as vindications of this skepticism.

Don't take what I've said so narratologically as to imply that one view of the 'state of nature' or other is wrong and another right. They're a lot more complex and nuanced than how I've described here; their influence and interpretation is more what I'm trying to describe. I think Hobbes has a lot that corrects Rousseau and Rousseau has a lot that corrects Hobbes' view, for instance. Macintyre would say that the idea of the primitive man as essentially egoistic is fantasy, since by necessity, by origin he would be raised and fashioned in a social context.

I suppose the socialist who didn't believe in human nature[1] would argue things like starvation or oppression are strictly incompatible with any possible definition kind of flourishing or that capitalism's inherent contradictions cannot be remedied with any configuration of human nature.

1. It's not entirely settled that Marx disregarded or denied the existence of an universal human nature. See "Marx and Human Nature: Refutation of a Legend," Geras, Norman. So under this view, Marx probably would deny humanity-as-a-whole could flourish with the majority of people under systematic labor exploitation, political disenfranchisement, and ideological manipulation.

>Communists' historical disappointment
I´d say philosophy, humans are animals who just want to reproduce, anything else is pretentious

Then explain Japan

What about those incestfags?

bump

>Rational /pol/lacks venerate a guy who crashed the Chilean Economy into the deepest depression in its history in order to enrich himself and his bosses because he did war crimes to people they don't like
Nice

>criticizes the communist conception of an essentially positive human nature
>is somehow a communist
Let me guess, you're a Hoppean

>evolutionary anthropologists keep discovering inherent psychological features in the animals they study
>this for some reason doesn't apply to human beings
Not believing in an inherent nature is very much an ideology. What that inherent nature is, how it manifests itself, and how malleable it is is obviously unsettled, but its existence is self-evident.

Philosophy is a common thread on Veeky Forums...

the absolute state of american common sense