When we talk about human nature it is equivalent to how we look at ourselves in the mirror to check how we look and if what we see in the reflection matches how we feel on the inside. Our reactions to our images in the mirror are different and so is the reflection towards human nature. By definition human nature is the core characteristics-psychology, feelings, behavior-shared by all people. A person could say humans are good or bad based on their experience with humans or how the culture one is born in tells them. Philosophers and scholars, on the other hand, will talk about human nature based on the school of thoughts from human history. Religion scholars will make their definitions based on religious or spiritual traits. This is what brought about the big debate between Noam Chomsky, who believed in human reason and the value of the pursuit of justice, and Michel Foucault, who believed that truth and justice are ultimately manifestations of power. So this begs the question, what really is human nature? What grounds do we use to define human nature?
Language and Power
When we hear the word ‘power’ we almost always think of man overpowering man or free will being suppressed due to obedience and commands. In this view, power can appear as the root cause of all evil in the society, but this is not always the case. If we look at the ‘power of language’ we get to realize that we do not fully understand the power and that’s because its truth is somehow complex. You see language possesses a special kind of power. The power of language means language in the service of power and also language can undermine power. So it’s safe to say that the relationship between language and power is ambivalent. This means that all power must use language to be conveyed and manifested that is to speak then others are to hear and obey it. The power of language is a tool for the purpose of exercising power. The grasp of the language, therefore, becomes a means of power. So how does human nature come into play?
Chomsky describes human nature on the basis of language. In the debate, Chomsky (1971) says. “I would claim then that this instinctive knowledge if you like, this schematism that makes it possible to derive complex and intricate knowledge on the basis of very partial data, is one fundamental constituent of human nature. In this case I think a fundamental constituent because of the role that language plays, not merely in communication, but also in the expression of thought and interaction between persons; and I assume that in other domains of human intelligence, in other domains of human cognition and behavior, something of the same sort must be true. Well, this collection, this mass of schematisms, innate organizing principles, which guides our social and intellectual and individual behavior, that’s what I mean to refer to by the concept of human nature.” He points out later on that no individual speaks a well-defined language. So does this mean there is no perfect human nature? If so what then? In years passing after much had been discussed about language and politics to human nature, Chomsky says in an interview with Mitsou Ronat, “… I do not see in what way the study of ghetto dialects differs from the study of the dialects of university-trained speakers, from a purely linguistic point of view.” to which Gilles Deleuze had an issue with at the time, he suggested that black English, unlike that of academics, involves another “minor” politics in language-use.so how does this differ from Foucault argument during the debate?
At the debate, Chomsky was excited by the potential of a child being able to learn from sentences in the natural language that a child was exposed to from the beginning. He continued and dismissed what Skinner had presumed that the process of acquiring this level of creativity could be stimulated from verbal clues a child encounters. In contrast Foucault (1971) during the debate says, “It is true that I mistrust the notion of human nature a little, and for the following reason: I believe that of the concepts or notions which a science can use, not all have the same degree of elaboration, and that in general they have neither the same function nor the same type of possible use in scientific discourse. Let’s take the example of biology.”
“Foucault was impressed by the fact that, of the many utterances “normal creativity” allows for, only a very few are actually uttered (spoken or written), and those that fall into discernable patterns of a time and place. Foucault was interested in fewer chooses dites. He imagined there were rules or “regularities” in what is said at a given time and place, and that these rules govern not just the kinds of things that are talked about, but also the roles and positions of those talking about them. He argued that such historical regularities in the utterance cannot be explained by innate structures in the minds or brains of language-learners or indeed by any innate predetermination. Neither innate nor learned, they instead condition and constrain the actual use or exercise of our minds across a series of practices, at once material and institutional. In particular, they can be shown to govern the ways in which we talk about language itself, and the ways it is so delimited as to become a “rational” object of study in different periods—as, for example, with the turn from a focus on historical language groups to language “structures.” The question of “ideas” in classical philosophy thus needs to be posted in another way, and Foucault offers Chomsky the observation that while the mind in Descartes is not, in fact, creative but is rather “illuminated by evidence,” in Leibniz one finds a picture of the mind “folded back” so as to FOREWORD xi develop potentials or “virtualities” by unfolding itself in the world, with which the theme of “creativity” might better be associated.” Rajchman (2006)
Politics and Language
Politics usually contain some sort of control on human behavior through voluntary habits and threats of probable enforcement. For most people obeying the law, respecting and cooperating with these laws is a voluntary habit. These habits become our nature and they govern how we act automatically. And without these habits, there could be no government, no law as we know them. With each regime and each passing moment, there is usually a new kind of power in place and that is why the political tide keeps on changing with time. This is to keep up with the change happening all over the world. Chomsky and Foucault used politics as a ground to define human nature.
Chomsky(1971) says “So one might say that I’m looking at history not as an antiquarian, who is interested in finding out and giving a precisely accurate account of what the thinking of the seventeenth century was-I don’t mean to demean that activity, it’s just not mine-but rather from the point of view of, let’s say, an art lover, who wants to look at the seventeenth century to find in it things that are of particular value, and that obtain part of their value in part because of the perspective with which he approaches them. And I think that, without objecting to the other approach, my approach is legitimate; that is, I think it is perfectly possible to go back to earlier stages of scientific thinking on the basis of our present understanding and to perceive how great thinkers were, within the limitations of their time, groping towards concepts and ideas and insights that they themselves could not be clearly aware of.” And we see that Foucault agree with him. This is to mean that each individual is of a different political era and the happenings of specific eras are the ones to shape an individual’s human nature. That a person’s history can be used to define human nature. But what about the few who would history as an excuse to be bad and mean?
Personal View
Collins dictionary defines human nature as the common qualities of all human beings. I would like to agree with this since from the beginning of time there has only been the same type of humans’ characteristic wise. A person faced with a challenge in Los Angeles California will react the same way as the person in Nigeria put in the same situation. This is because over centuries challenges and problems that human beings face are the same. They keep repeating over and over again through ages. That is why you will hear the old folk say that they have seen it all and most of the things that teenagers would do not seem to be such a big issue to them. Problems that developing countries face are not so new and that is why you will find their leaders traveling to developed countries to look for solutions. It is not for anything else but the mere fact that they have already gone through it when they were developing.
Yes, history does influence human nature but not affect it. People who have experienced eras of political unrest and even become political prisoners have different ideologies that govern their nature compared to the rest of the masses. To have to fight for freedom for yourself and generations to come is no small thing. To be denied freedom is one thing that can make a man snap. During politics leaders use the power of language to influence the mindset of people. At this point in life, we usually use references from their speeches to calm some of the unrests happening in the current political situations.
Conclusion
From this debate, one can gather that human nature has so many ways of approaching it when it comes to defining it. It requires one to have an open mind because it has endless possibilities.
References
1. Gilles Deleuze et al., Dialogues (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).
2. Michel Foucault, “La Fonction politique de l’intellectuel,” PolitiqueHebdo, November 29–December 5, 1976; reproduced in Dits et écrits (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1994), III, pp. 109–114
3. Noam Chomsky, On Language (New York: The New Press, 1998), pp. 53–54.
4. Noam Chomsky, Dialogues avec Mitsou Ronat (Paris: Flammarion, 1977).
5. "Human Nature: Justice Versus Power". 2018. Chomsky.Info. https://chomsky.info/1971xxxx/.
6. The Power of Language - Multilingualism - Goethe-Institut". 2018. Goethe.De. http://www.goethe.de/lhr/prj/mac/msp/en1253450.htm.
