Human Nature

Hume 

• The science of man will not admit of the same accuracy which several parts of natural philosophy are found susceptible of

Pope

• Don't presume the study of mankind is in God, it is in man

Rousseau 

• The least advanced of all human knowledge seems to be man 

FIelding 

• Human beings were no longer to take their understanding of themselves from either religious dogma, they were to begin anew in the attempt to determine their essential nature and what they could make of themselves and the evidence to be used was to her purely 'experimental', therefore taken from an observation 
• Thus, no clear divide between philosophy and psychology, sociology, anthropology; art and literature were part of the same project 

Locke

• Made a clear distinction between his ‘natural history’ of the mind and anatomy

La Mettrie 

• Insisted that you could only understand the human mind, and human nature, by taking into account the workings of the body 

Hume

• DIversity was a matter of appearance only: fundamentally all human beings are the same, motivated by the same emotions and passions

Rousseau

• History is a process whereby human beings have progressively lost touch with their real nature
• However, change or progress, is what is essential to human nature: this is what differentiates us from animals

Diderot 

• ‘Primitive’ societies are a way of gaining access to original, natural man
• ‘The Tahitian is close to the origin of the world, while the European is closer to old age’
• Our passions and emotions – the things we share with Tahitians -- that tell us who we really are

Smith 

• Different situations of different ages and countries are apt ... to give different characters to the generality of those who live in them 

Linnaeus' division of the human species 

• Wild man. Four-footed, mute, hairy.
• American. Copper-colored, choleric, erect. Hair: black, straight, thick. Nostrils: wide. Face: harsh. Beard: scanty. Obstinate, content, free. Paints himself with fine red lines. Regulated by customs.
• European. Fair, sanguine, brawny. Hair: yellow-brown, flowing. Eyes: blue. Gentle, acute, inventive. Covered with close vestments. Governed by laws.
• Asiatic. Sooty, melancholy, rigid. Hair: black. Eyes: dark. Severe, haughty, covetous. Covered with loose garments. Governed by opinions.
• African. Black, phlegmatic, relaxed. Hair: black, frizzled. Skin: silky. Nose: flat. Lips: tumid. Crafty, indolent, negligent. Anoints himself with grease. Governed by caprice.

Voltaire 

• Defended the multiple origin theory which suggested there was no single and universal human nature: there were several different kinds of human beings, each of which had been separately created

Buffon 

• All human beings can be assumed to be of the same species because all can reproduce with each other
• But, as soon as mankind began to move around and change climate, the changes changes became so significant and so apparent that it would have been understandable to believe that the *****, the Laplander, and the white constituted different species’

Montesquieu 

• Provided reasons for believing that the different characters of different nations had ‘physical’ causes: climate, but also terrain, and ‘air’
• The effects of different climates on human nature created a need for different legal and political and economic systems, different ways of regulating everything from sexual behaviour to alcohol consumption

Hume 

• Moral causes, not physical causes determine national character 
• Climate could not be responsible for the changes because all explanations in terms of physical causes ‘are found to be uncertain and fallacious’
• *****es are naturally inferior to whites because they have no arts of science. Even the most barbarous of whites have a form of government, therefore nature would have made a more uniform reason in man if they were all equal 
• There has never been a civilised black nation, so they must naturally be inferior 
• Challenges anyone to cite a single example in which a ***** has shown talents 

Kant 

• There is a hierarchy of races, with whites at the top, and native Americans ‘far below even the *****’
• Critises a proposal to free black slaves, on the grounds that ‘the *****’ will not work unless forced to do so
• Does not see how the inferiority of non-white races could be remedied

Condorcet 

• Abolition of inequality between nations and the true perfection of mankind,  entailing the end of slavery 

Equiano 

• I feared I should be put to death, the white people looked and acted, as I thought, in so savage a manner; for I had never seen among any people such instances of brutal cruelty

Long

• Uses Hume as an authority in an argument in defence of slavery
• Native Africans are inferior to the rest of the species, and utterly incapable of all the higher achievements of the human mind
• Even when they are ‘imported’ as young children, ‘We find them marked with the same bestial manners, stupidity, and vices, which debase their brethren on the continent ...’

Montesquieu

• Mocks the standard justification 
• Argues that if we were all good Christians, we would see slaves as equal and view them as men, and thus there could be no justification for slavery  

Voltaire 

• There is nothing in the Bible to justify slavery or the inequality of half of the human race 

Hume

• Condemns ancient domestic slavery, as a prime reason why the population of the ancient world was smaller than the population of the modern world
• Domestic slavery is more cruel and oppressive than any civil subjection 
• But he has nothing to say about the commercial plantation slavery 

Kant 

• Perpetual peace will only be found through equality of the nations and their citizens 
• Argues that it is impossible, morally speaking, for one person to own another

Woolman 

• There is no biblical justification to do violence to innocent men or to bring them away from their own life to another one
• The colour of a man does not change his rights or equity 

Paine 

• Argued that slavery had no biblical basis, and that it was incompatible with American complaints about being enslaved by the English
• Slavery has no possible basis in natural law: slaves are not prisoners of war; it is no excuse to say that they were already enslaved when bought in Africa; they have in no sense forfeited freedom, and so ‘have still a natural, perfect right to it’
• Many of these Africans were industrious farmers and were averse to war, before the Europeans debauched them with liquors 

Jefferson 

• On Indians 
  • Criticizes the climate theory of Buffon: differences between e.g. Native Americans and Europeans have nothing to do with which side of the Atlantic they live on: Native Americans live in a similar climate to northern Europeans and are simply behind them in their development

Jefferson 

• On 'Negroes'
  • Accepts that there are ‘varieties in the race of men’ and this makes him worry about the consequences of abolition, and especially about the mixing of the white and black races
  • Argues that blacks are less intelligent and uglier than whites, even when allowance is made for the difference of condition 
  • This made emancipation much more of a risk than it had been in ancient Rome, where slaves and masters were of the same race
  • There was the political’ problem of the inevitable factionalisation of the citzenry: whites with their deep-rooted prejudices, blacks with their ‘ten thousand recollections ... of the injuries they have sustained’

Diderot 

• Tahiti provides a vision of a more ‘natural’ way of life than the European way of life, esp. in terms of sex, the family, and the organisation of society
• It is in Europe that human nature is corrupted and deformed 
• Colonialism was a means by which Europe was corrupting the rest of the world 

Diderot 

• Puts his most trenchant critique of European manners and morals into the mouth of a Tahitian elder bidding farewell to Bougainville and his men 
• This is a European critique of Europeans: in no sense does it present the experiences and perspective of non-Europeans: ‘Tahiti’, and its ‘natural’ way of life, is merely the negation of Europe

Condorcet 

• Claimed that blacks have ‘the same mind, the same reason, and the same virtues’ as Europeans
• Reassertion of a single human nature with a single set of fundamental desires -- to be served by a single liberal economic and political order