Who was ultimately right about human nature?

Who was ultimately right about human nature?
Are we secretly terrible without a forceful authority in society or is it society that ultimately makes us bad?
In your mind, where is the balance?

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>Somalia
Vs
>Denmark
Which place would you rather live in?

Oh, the answers over here! no, wait

it's over there. it moved again!

Hey, guess what. Not all political philosophy is based on a state of nature. Which is a good thing, because the idea of a state of nature is trash.

Rosseau pretty much agreed that in a society with property Hobbes was right.

>Who was ultimately right about human nature?
Political science desu. Read:
- Our political nature by Avi Tuschman
- The righteous mind by Jonathan Haidt
- Predisposed by several authors

You clearly haven't actually read much Rousseau, who was deeply impressed with the Calvinism of his youth. Rousseau's discussion of the state of nature is essentially a secularized retelling of the Adam and Eve story

iep.utm.edu/pla-thei/

>human nature

>Hey, guess what. Not all political philosophy is based on a state of nature. Which is a good thing, because the idea of a state of nature is trash.
>is trash

sound argument

Rousseau was the original fascist

you should be using a picture of Foucault
human nature isn't an idea that we imagine confers obligations, hence no spook
unless you're Hume, sort of

YOU'RE HERE

I've always wondered about this, I can see some ways he can be read as a reactionary (in a similar sense to Evola) a vitalist etc. But I'd love to hear you expand on this.

Neither was ultimately right about these issues. I'd wager Rosseau was more wrong than Hobbes, though.

Both are wrong.

The state of nature thought experiment is predicated on erroneous assumptions about human nature therefore any conclusions inferred from these premises will be false. The notion that humans inorganically formed societies out of rational self-interest to maximize their individual utility is predicated on an erroneous notion of individuality championed by the Enlightenment which aimed to define personhood outside of the context of relationships with other humans, tribes, communities, etc.

There was never any period of human evolution in which isolated, atomic individuals just rationally decided to form society to further their own ends. Sociability is an intrinsic part of human nature (inb4 muh spooks, fuck off plebs) our brains are hardwired with faculties that facilitate many forms of social cooperation, as Fukuyama noted.

holy shit Kantbot is here
what a time to be alive

Hobbes was more right, but not entirely. It's not about the forceful authority, it's about the standard of living. People don't have as much reason to act out violence and cruelty when there's food on the table and a bad to sleep in Perhaps a forceful authority (a state) is necessary in order to maintain an economy of scale to achieve such a thing as food security, but then it's not the direct reason.

>human nature isn't an idea that we imagine confers obligations
Oooh, not too sure I agree with you. You could derive natural rights from human nature, and the original 'bargain' of statehood (eg, I forego some of my property in order to protect my overall freedoms). To put it another way, you could deduce that a hive is the best form of political organisation for ants as they have little sense of individuality, whereas this would be inappropriate for humans as we have individualistic and social elements in our nature

>human nature

I think it is funny that you consider private property not a freedom guaranteed by the state.

Both are wrong.

Ebin contrarian

I do agree with Bentham that natural rights are "nonsense upon stilts," but I do see that there's room to make an argument there
are ants then obligated to act in a hivelike way? doesn't seem too plausible -- they will, and it's good for them that they do, but it looks like a further step to say that they must

>Who was ultimately right about human nature?

tabula rasa tbḩ

Neither

human nature is literally hedonism.
why authority and rules make people terrible is that it makes them believe themselves to be robots and to feel bad for seeking pleasure which then results in an eventual breaking point for individuals who turn to whichever vice is available to them or for others instead of doing what is societally determined "bad" they take on the function of the government and get their rocks off crucifying anyone who steps out of line in the name of "good".
it's not so much that people should be allowed to kill, murder, rape or whatever. it's more that if people are happy they are a lot less likely to even want to commit these crimes in the first place.
being a decent human being isn't that complicated of a concept, it only becomes a illusory impossibility when the system dictates that we are all inherently bad people who need to be controlled by some benevolent dictator. unhappy people do bad shit you don't need some fucking academic to tell you that.

on the other hand i'm aware of the realities that most societies face and how different countries having different systems makes things a lot trickier. but to yearn towards a world where people are generally happier and more peaceful as a result isn't as impractical as people like to make it out to be.

Why do people like this faggot, again?

who? Kantbot or Rousseau?

*Triggered*

Somalia isn't so bad desu, just stay away from the south

t. Did NGO work there

Sparta was the basis of Rousseau's ideal society.

Also, he defended Geneva's theater ban because he believed that in an ideal republic, citizens should be too busy focusing on civic and family matters to do anything else.

>The righteous mind by Jonathan Haidt

Far and away one of the best things I've ever read

I read a lot of philosophy and theory, and seeing someone hack into that and tell everyone they're essentially irrational, rabbid dogs is nice

not wrong, but irrationally motivated from the get-go

Mi pana Hobbes.

newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Rousseau-s--virtue--5926
>it freed him to concentrate more intently on his favorite subjects—himself and his subjective feelings of virtue.
>“With himself as sexual partner,” Professor Blum comments, “Rousseau wrote of turning to his own fantasies for sensual pleasure, withdrawing from the real world and plunging into his own mind to maintain the feelings of virtue which he called necessary to his well being.”
>Rousseau and Robespierre have not been the last to be “drunk with virtue.”
>Preserve us from the virtuous.