Relation to the world· Nature and the living
Naturalism
Axis: Nature and culture — Are human behaviors explained primarily by nature or by culture?
Human beings are first of all natural beings: their behaviors, desires, and even institutions are rooted in a biological history and in drives shared by the species. Culture merely modulates a natural foundation that precedes it.
Movements 1
Cynicismexplicit
Cynicism rests entirely on one cut: on one side physis (nature), which sets man simple needs and one common lot; on the other the nomos (convention) of cities, which heaps on wealth, rank, modesties and honours with no grounding in things. And man makes himself wretched precisely where he takes convention for nature, toiling for factitious goods and blushing at acts no animal deems shameful. To live according to nature is thus to undo this varnish: not an idealised return to a primal goodness, but a stripping away, bringing conduct back to what real need requires and counting the rest as smoke. Nature here is not a teleological norm but a negative criterion, what remains once artifice is removed.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives, VI, 70-71
Philosophers 10
Diogenes of Sinopeexplicit
Diogenes' whole gesture rests on a cut between (nature), which sets man simple needs and one common lot, and the (convention) of cities, which heaps on wealth, rank and modesties with no grounding in things. Man makes himself wretched precisely where he takes convention for nature, toiling for factitious goods and blushing at acts no animal deems shameful. To live according to nature is thus to undo this varnish: not an idealised return to a primal goodness, but a stripping away that brings conduct back to real need alone. Nature here is not a teleological norm but a negative criterion, what remains once artifice is removed.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives, VI, 70-71
Schopenhauerexplicit
Character is innate, constant, and beyond the reach of education: velle non discitur, willing cannot be taught. One can instruct the intellect and refine the means, never change the ground of what someone wills; nature commands, and circumstance only furnishes its occasions.
On the Freedom of the Will, ch. III
Machiavelliexplicit
If history instructs present action, it is because human nature does not vary: in every city and people one finds the same desires and the same humors, and it was ever so. The two humors, that of the people and that of the great, run through all societies. Against the idea of a human being wholly shaped by culture, Machiavelli wagers on anthropological constants that make the past worth imitating.
Discourses on Livy, I.39 · Discourses on Livy, I.4 and Book I Preface
Lucretiusexplicit
Book V offers a natural history of humankind with no golden age and no fall: the first men, more robust, lived scattered like beasts, without fire, language or laws, harder and rougher than we are. It was need, use and the imitation of nature that, little by little, gave rise to fire, huts, articulate speech, the arts and cities. Man therefore has no fixed nature stamped in advance: he carries a common natural ground, but his customs and skills are the slow work of experience. The weight remains on the natural continuity of the human animal, hence a naturalist leaning tempered by this cultural genesis.
On the Nature of Things, V, 925-1027 (the first men, savage and scattered) · On the Nature of Things, V, 1028-1457 (the birth of language, fire, the arts and cities)
Show inferred positions (6)
Humeinferable
Hume aims to ground a science of human nature on the experimental method: the same springs (passions, habit, sympathy) govern human beings in all times and places, and history is a store of observations on constant features. This uniformity of human nature, indispensable to moral science, reflects a marked naturalism, even as he acknowledges the weight of mores and custom.
A Treatise of Human Nature, introduction (the project of a science of man) · Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, sect. VIII, part I (the uniformity of human actions)
Senecainferable
Man is by nature a being of reason, made to live according to the and for the society of his fellows: virtue fulfils that nature, it does not thwart it. Vices and passions stem from a reason gone astray rather than from a cultural second nature, a naturalist position.
Letters to Lucilius, LXXVI (man's proper good is reason) · On Anger, II, 31 (man is born for mutual aid)
Benthaminferable
Human nature reduces, for Bentham, to a constant and universal datum: sensitivity to pleasure and pain, the mainspring of all conduct in every place and time. It is on this natural footing, not on variable cultural determinations, that he founds his science of legislation, placing him clearly on the side of anthropological naturalism.
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. I (the two sovereign masters, constant for all)
Marcus Aureliusinferable
Man is by nature a being of made for society; virtue fulfils that nature, and vice is but a straying from it, not an acquired second nature. A naturalist position, in which living according to nature and living according to reason coincide.
Meditations, VIII, 12 · Meditations, V, 1 · Meditations, IV, 29
Rousseauinferable
Nature, for Rousseau, is a norm: natural man, his simple needs and spontaneous feelings serve as the measure for judging social man and his artifices. If education and institutions shape man, they do so by drawing him from a primal goodness that must be recovered, not surpassed. Hence a naturalism in which culture is suspected of denaturing rather than fulfilling.
Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality · Rousseau, Emile
Wittgensteininferable
The bedrock where justification ends is the : agreement in language is not an agreement in opinions but an "agreement in form of life", rooted in shared human reactions, "the common behaviour of mankind". His thought thus leans toward a naturalism of shared reactions, without denying the cultural variety of language-games.
Philosophical Investigations, §19, §23, §206, §241
Characters 1
Calliclesexplicit
His whole case erects into a norm: what beasts do among themselves, cities among themselves, the strong over the weak, that is justice "according to nature", which human convention only masks. He cites the conquests, the expedition of Xerxes, and Pindar's line making law the "king" that justifies the violence of the stronger.
Plato, Gorgias, 483d-484b (nature, animals, cities, Pindar)