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24. Political Theory / A. Basis of a State / 1. A People / a. Human distinctiveness

[what distinguishes humanity from other animals]

23 ideas
God made man in his own image [Anon (Tor)]
     Full Idea: And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
     From: Anon (Tor) (01: Book of Genesis [c.750 BCE], 1.26)
     A reaction: Since we are obviously not identical in every way with God, we can presumably choose in which respects we think of ourselves as being like Him. Reason, understanding, beauty, goodness, consciousness? A troublesome verse, challenged by Darwin.
Society collapses if people cannot rely on exchanging good for good and evil for evil [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: People expect either to return evil for evil, or good for good, and if this is impossible no exchange can take place, and it is exchange that holds people together.
     From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1132b34)
     A reaction: This is not far from a Thomas Hobbes contract view of society, with someone being needed to enforce the justice of contracts. Many societies, though, seem to have survived despite being riddled with injustices.
Even more than a social being, man is a pairing and family being [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Man is by his nature a pairing rather than a social creature, inasmuch as the family is an older and more necessary thing than the state.
     From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1162a20)
     A reaction: Cf. Idea 5133. It seems that the family fulfils the most basic human function, but that political life arises from the next level of function, which is a combination of friendship and the wider needs of a family.
Man is by nature a political animal [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Man is by nature a political animal.
     From: Aristotle (Politics [c.332 BCE], 1253a01)
     A reaction: It might be clearer if we said 'social animal'. We are certainly gregarious. Anyone who fails to be social is dismissed by Aristotle as not truly human.
People want to live together, even when they don't want mutual help [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Men have a desire for live together, even when they have no need to seek each other's help.
     From: Aristotle (Politics [c.332 BCE], 1278b20)
     A reaction: He says that someone who doesn't want to live in community because they are wholly self-sufficient doesn't count as a normal human.
Only humans have reason [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: The human being alone has reason.
     From: Aristotle (Politics [c.332 BCE], 1332b04)
     A reaction: Only in the last fifty years have we begun to grasp how clever larger animals are, and I would say that they consistently make rational choices, even if they can't articulate them.
Man is intrinsically a civilized animal [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: It is an essential [kath' auto] property of man to be 'by nature a civilized animal'.
     From: Aristotle (Topics [c.331 BCE], 128b17)
     A reaction: I take this, along with man being intrinsically rational, to be the foundation of Aristotelian ethics. Given that we are civilized, self-evident criteria emerge for how to be good at it. A good person is, above all, a good citizen.
Man is distinguished by knowing conditional truths, because impressions are connected [Stoic school, by Long]
     Full Idea: Stoics say man differs from irrational animals because of internal speech ...and in virtue of impressions created by inference and combination. Because of this man grasps 'signal', of the form 'If this, then that', which follows from the nature of man.
     From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 4.3.1
     A reaction: [In Sextus, Adv.Math 8.275-] This is unusual. The distinctive feature of humans is their ability to assert conditionals (because they see connections - or associations - among their impressions). Nice thought.
Humans are naturally made for co-operation [Aurelius]
     Full Idea: We are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. To act against one another, then, is contrary to nature.
     From: Marcus Aurelius (The Meditations (To Himself) [c.170], 2.1)
If people are obedient to reason, they will live in harmony [Spinoza]
     Full Idea: Men insofar as they live in obedience to reason, necessarily live always in harmony with one another.
     From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 35)
     A reaction: A beautiful slogan for a belief which has gripped me since I was a child. It embodies the frustration of philosophers from Plato onwards, and it may well be childishly idealistic. Politics is the art of the possible, said R.A.B. Butler.
Humans are less distinguished from other animals by understanding, than by being free agents [Rousseau]
     Full Idea: It is not so much understanding which causes the specific distinction of man from all other animals as it is his being a free agent.
     From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I)
     A reaction: I'm not sure how deep Rousseau takes 'free' to go. Having little enthusiasm for free will, I would say that we are distinguished by the complexity of our decision making. But I attribute that to meta-thought, the mark of humanity.
Humans are distinguished from animals by their capacity to set themselves any sort of end [Kant]
     Full Idea: The capacity to set oneself an end - any end whatsoever - is what characterises humanity (as distinguished from animality).
     From: Immanuel Kant (Metaphysics of Morals II:Doctrine of Virtue [1797], 392 Intro VIII)
     A reaction: This appears to exclude animals which hunt, or build nests - but we have now hugely closed the gap between humans and other animals. I like this, because it chimes in with Sandel's Idea 21045.
Man is both social, and unsociable [Kant]
     Full Idea: Man is a being meant for society (though he is also an unsociable one).
     From: Immanuel Kant (Metaphysics of Morals II:Doctrine of Virtue [1797], 471 I.II)
     A reaction: A striking contrast with Aristotle in Idea 5133. It is the difference between the communitarian and the liberal views of society. The latter values privacy and good fences.
Man is not a particular being, like animals, but a universal being [Feuerbach]
     Full Idea: Man is not a particular being, like the animals, but a universal being.
     From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §53)
     A reaction: This sounds a bit extravagent. The capacity of man to use universals in thought seems crucial to Feuerbach (though he doesn't directly address the problem). 'We are particulars with access to universals' sounds better.
The essence of man is in community, but with distinct individuals [Feuerbach]
     Full Idea: The essence of man is contained only in the community and unity of man and man; it is a unity, however, which rests only on the reality of the distinction between I and thou.
     From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §59)
     A reaction: In English provincial suburbs (where I live) it is astonishing how little interest in and need for their neighbours people seem to have. People seem to survive without community. Most of us, though, think full human happiness needs community.
Men distinguish themselves from animals when they begin to produce their means of subsistence [Marx/Engels]
     Full Idea: Men begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence.
     From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.A)
     A reaction: This seems a rather external criterion. Presumably we can ask what biological or mental feature made it possible for men to produce their own means of subsistence, and why it evolved. Darwin puts a different perspective on this idea.
Individuals are mutually hostile unless they group together in competition with other groups [Marx/Engels]
     Full Idea: Separate individuals form a class only insofar as they have to carry on a battle against another class; otherwise they are on hostile terms with each other as competitors.
     From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.D)
     A reaction: Beneath the Marxist view that consciousness is a social creation lies a Hobbesian pessimism about basic human nature. This idea bodes ill for ultimate communism, because class struggle will have been abolished. What, then, can unite people?
Producing their own subsistence distinguishes men from animals [Marx/Engels]
     Full Idea: Men begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence.
     From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], p.160), quoted by Sydney Shoemaker - Some varieties of functionalism 6
     A reaction: At the very least, we must say that there had to be some intrinsic distinctiveness in place before men could do this. I like meta-thought.
Man is above all a judging animal [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Man is above all a judging animal.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 04[8])
     A reaction: This seems awfully close to Aristotle's supposed claim that we are the 'rational animal' (though see Idea 6559). To me it implies that if judging is our proper function, then judging well is our highest virtue. The highest good for man is understanding.
Maybe humans are distinguished from other animals by feelings, rather than reason [Unamuno]
     Full Idea: Man is said to be a reasoning animal. I do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. Perhaps that which differentiates him from other animals is feeling rather than reason.
     From: Miguel de Unamuno (The Tragic Sense of Life [1912], p.3), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 2 'Problem'
     A reaction: Perfectly plausible, given that we presume that our feelings are startlingly different from other animals - even if we feel far more community with other mammals than we did in Unamuno's day.
Since Hegel we have tended to see a human as merely animal if it is outside a society [Rorty]
     Full Idea: Only since Hegel have philosophers begun toying with the idea that the individual apart from his society is just one more animal.
     From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 4.3)
We are distinct from other animals in behaving rationally - pursuing something as good, for reasons [Hursthouse]
     Full Idea: Our characteristic way of going on, which distinguishes us from all the other species of animals, is a rational way, which is any way we can rightly see as good, as something we have reason to do.
     From: Rosalind Hursthouse (On Virtue Ethics [1999], Ch10)
     A reaction: Some people more than others, and none of us all the time. Romantics see rationality as a restraint on the authentic emotional and animal life. 'Be a good animal'. However, I agree.
Humans dominate because, unlike other animals, they have a synthesis of conflicting drives [Richardson]
     Full Idea: In contrast to the other animals, man has cultivated an abundance of contrary drives and impulses within himself: thanks to this synthesis, he is master of the earth.
     From: John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], §966)
     A reaction: If this is true, it presents the fundamental challenge of politicial philosophy - to visual a successful social system for a creature which does not have a clear and focused nature. For Nietzsche, this 'synthesis' continually evolves.