Relation to the world· Nature and the living

Anthropological pessimism

Axis: Vision of humanity — Are human beings fundamentally good or inclined toward evil?

Human beings are shot through with selfishness, self-regard, and aggressive drives that nothing fully erases. Institutions, laws, and morality are necessary dams against an ever-possible violence.

Who holds this position

Philosophers 7

Schopenhauerexplicit

Boundless egoism is the natural spring of man, up to disinterested malice, that cruelty which delights in another's suffering for its own sake; civilization muzzles this ground without transforming it. The state is not an educator but a muzzle.

Parerga and Paralipomena, vol. II, 'On Ethics'

Machiavelliexplicit

Whoever founds a republic must presuppose all men wicked, ready to follow their malice as soon as they have free occasion: this is a legislator's postulate, not a metaphysics of the fall. Men are ungrateful, fickle, dissemblers, evaders of danger, greedy for gain. But this evil is not fixed: good laws and the goad of necessity can make them good, which keeps it short of an absolute pessimism.

The Prince, ch. XVII · Discourses on Livy, I.3

Show inferred positions (5)

Michel de Montaigneinferable

Montaigne deflates man's pretension to think himself the masterpiece of creation, "the most calamitous and frail of all creatures", vain, inconstant, more often led by and fancy than by the reason he claims. But this indictment of pride is no black pessimism: man remains capable of goodness, measure and joy, provided he accepts his condition and stops trying to be an angel. It is less a verdict on his wickedness than an acknowledgment of his plasticity and weakness.

Essays, II, 12, "Apology for Raymond Sebond"

Nietzscheinferable

Man is a rope stretched between beast and , something that shall be overcome: Nietzsche casts a severe gaze on the gregarious, mediocre humanity of his age, marked by . But this critical diagnosis comes with confidence in the possibility of an elevation, which tempers the pessimism.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, §3 and §4 · On the Genealogy of Morality, I, §11

Kantinferable

Kant maintains a : there is in human nature a propensity to subordinate the moral law to self-love, and "unsocial sociability" mixes in each a tendency to oppose others. This diagnosis, tempered by the predisposition to good and by perfectibility, leans toward a moderate anthropological pessimism.

Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Part One · Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose, Fourth Proposition

Platoinferable

The ordinary person is a prisoner in the cave, chained to shadow and opinion, and most souls are ruled by the appetites: the ascent toward the true is rare, hard and reserved for a few. Without being a dark pessimism, this view stresses the soul's spontaneous blindness, which only a long education can set right.

Republic, VII, 514a-517a · Phaedrus, 248a-249d

Camusinferable

Camus believes neither in man's natural goodness nor in his radical corruption: his thought of measure sets a human limit against the excess that, in the name of an absolute, ends by justifying murder. This sense of the human leaning toward excess keeps him from anthropological optimism, without tipping into pessimism.

The Rebel (1951), "Thought at the Meridian"

Characters 2

Show inferred positions (2)

Calliclesinferable

Everyone, if they dared, would pursue their own advantage and want to possess more than others: displayed moderation is only an admission of weakness or a ruse. This bedrock of egoism and rivalry, which law contains without abolishing, places him on the side of an anthropological pessimism.

Plato, Gorgias, 483b-c; 491e-492a

Odysseusinferable

Odysseus trusts no one on their word: he tests loyalty before revealing himself, sounds out his servants, tries even and his aged father. This methodical wariness betrays a cautious, unillusioned view of men, quick to treachery once the chance offers; but it does not amount to a settled pessimism, since the poem also grants him, in a few, an unfailing fidelity.

Odyssey, XIII-XXIV (the disguise and the testing of loyalties) · Odyssey, XXIII (the test of the bed, which Penelope turns back against him)

Arguments and objections

ArgumentThe crooked timber of humanity — What resurfaces at every collapse of order, pillage and cruelty, is no accident; even our best conduct is undermined by amour-propre. Institutions do not cure this nature, they contain it: a livable common life must reckon with this depth.

Look at what men do the moment constraint and the gaze of others fall away: pillage, cruelty, war reappear at every collapse of order. What resurfaces so constantly is no accident of history.
Even our best conduct is undermined from within: beneath generosity, the need to be loved or admired; beneath displayed virtue, an seeking itself. The dark part is not outside, it inhabits us.
So the dams that hold us, laws, mores, institutions, do not cure this nature: they contain it. Let them loosen, and what they held back returns.

Therefore So man is not an angel whom society brought low, but a 'crooked timber' that nothing quite straightens: a livable common life demands reckoning with this depth, not betting on a primal goodness.

ObjectionAttacks the reasoningThe statue of Glaucus — The pessimist reads nature into social man, all rivalry and calculation. But this man is no longer the original man: on the statue of Glaucus, the sea had so eaten away the features that it seemed a beast. To call this disfigured figure 'nature' is to take the effect of history for the origin.

The pessimist reads human nature in man as he is before our eyes: rivalry, calculation, greed. From this he concludes that such is our depth.
But social man is no longer the original man: on the statue of Glaucus, that sea-god, time and storms had so eaten away the features that it looked less like a god than a wild beast. So too the human soul, altered by social life and the passions it breeds, has changed to the point of being almost unrecognizable.
To describe this disfigured figure and call it 'nature' is to take the effect for the origin: the traits the pessimist ascribes to man in himself are the imprint of his history.

Therefore So the pessimist reasons over a damaged image: one must, beneath the layers deposited by society, recover the man of nature before judging his depth, failing which one takes the disease for health.

ObjectionAttacks the positionIt is circumstances, not nature — Pessimism reads an evil nature into our crimes. But our conduct varies enormously with circumstances, and mass evil often owes more to ordinary functionaries than to monsters; history knows real retreats of cruelty. What changes so is not a fixed depth but a plasticity.

Pessimism reads in our crimes an evil nature, a depth that always resurfaces.
But this conduct varies enormously with circumstances: the same individuals, according to whether they are afraid or feel safe, whether they obey or answer for themselves, show themselves cowardly or brave, cruel or helpful. The most massive evil often owes less to monsters than to ordinary, unreflecting functionaries.
What changes so with the situation is not a fixed nature: and indeed, history knows real retreats of cruelty, slavery abolished, torture outlawed, a sign that mores can be remade.

Therefore So what pessimism takes for an immovable depth is not one: its own evidence, the cruelties of ordinary functionaries, the historical retreats of violence, testifies to situations that produce evil, not to a nature that would secrete it.

Foundations and implications

This is a root foundation — nothing grounds it further.

↓ What it implies

↑ What grounds it

This is a root foundation — nothing grounds it further.

↓ What it implies

Relation to authority

If man is by nature inclined to violence and self-interest, the absence of a common power leaves him to the war of all against all. Anthropological pessimism thus justifies a strong authority, the only thing able to guarantee civil peace.

Tradition and transformation

If human beings are shot through with selfish, aggressive drives that nothing erases, individual reason is too weak to refound the social order from scratch. Anthropological pessimism supports conservatism: Burke sees in inherited institutions an accumulated wisdom better reformed with prudence than destroyed.

Ideal and reality

If human nature is lastingly imperfect, hoping for a perfect city invites blindness and the tyranny of good intentions. Anthropological pessimism therefore recommends political realism, attentive to actual balances of power rather than to ideals.

Problems

Descriptive Scientific experiment
Ordinary people, an order to carry out
That ordinary people inflict the worst on a mere order: is it a latent cruelty waking up, or proof that circumstances, not nature, decide our acts?
the ordinary person under authority
Descriptive
Where does evil in humans come from?
If humans do evil, is that bent in them from the start, a drive or a fallen nature, or does it arise from without, from social comparison and inequality? Depending on the answer, wickedness is our depth or our product.
the source of our bad acts
Descriptive
How far can human beings be changed?
The wager of education assumes we can remake people, soften them, better them. But are there immovable flaws, a "crooked timber" that no education ever straightens?
the human capacity to change
Descriptive
Half angel, half beast
Is the human a divided being, capable at once of the highest and the lowest, great through the very thing that makes it wretched, or is this dramatic image merely a way of ennobling a mere animal by calling it fallen?
the divided human being