This thing called human nature

All of my classes this semester seem to link together in a very smooth fashion. The topics have been coinciding and building off of each other. This week, the topic of human nature snuck into every discussion. In philosophy, we discussed if people are born good or bad. In speech, we touched upon post-structuralism theory, and that people are constantly changing and shifting. I wouldn’t be surprised if we were to come across the subject in French class. Maybe when my vocabulary improves.

The idea of human nature has really been lingering in my mind. This is literary theory, but I can’t help thinking about this elsewhere. Liberal Humanism holds the idea on a high level. Tenet #4 states that human nature is unchanging. Take philosophy class for explain. Does that mean I would have to pick either “humans are bad” or “humans are good”? Immediately, I don’t feel comfortable sticking to one side or another. I would have to take off my American lenses and try to determine exactly what behavior is acceptable here and everywhere else in the world.

This directly relates to tenet #6. The purpose of literature is to transmit human values. A piece of literature must (silently) identify some great truth about humans, and then present this value to us. That piece must also speak to any culture of any time. Again, my French vocabulary isn’t great, but I can already sense that this would be difficult. One of the French authors I’ve most recently enjoyed is Guy de Maupassant. I can’t see an American reader getting the same values out of a text set during the Franco-Prussian War. I know next to nothing about his time period, but I can read his literature and I can find something to take away from it. I think certain texts have meaning outside of their respective culture, but I don’t think it’s as transcendent as Liberal Humanism describes. I don't think his literature, or any, could really escape that environment with little influence.

Marxist theory takes a more realistic perspective on literature. The ever-so-important of class struggle will always come through in literature. Not only is the time of the text important, but also when it is consumed. If the time and culture of texts has this much importance, there wouldn’t be one big human nature truth. When I read Guy de Maupassant, I could relate the piece to his 1880s time period. Some voice is coming through in his literature, whether on purpose or not, as an insight to his situation whenever he was writing. Wanting to know his struggle is much more appealing and realistic to me than trying to find one major truth that we all live by.

I feel more comfortable with the idea that there is no such thing as human nature. Truths are temporary and culturally specific. I'm not obligated to raise my hand in philosophy class and say that all humans are bad. While I read my French books, I'm not forced to find one unified meaning. Instead I can study the products of a culture and time.