To say that man acts in ways contrary to his nature is prima facie absurd. The events of world history cannot be divorced from the men who made them. But the importance of human nature as a factor in causal analysis of social events is reduced by the fact that the same nature, however defined, has to explain an infinite variety of social events. Anyone can “prove” that man is bad simply by pointing to evidence of his viciousness and stupidity. To say, then, that certain things happen because men are stupid or bad is a hypothesis that is accepted or rejected according to the mood of the writer. It is a statement that evidence cannot prove or disprove, for what we make of the evidence depends on the theory we hold. Human nature may in some sense have been the cause of war in 1914, but by the same token it was the cause of peace in 1910. In the intervening years many things changed, but human nature did not. Human nature is a cause then only in the sense that if men were somehow entirely different, they would not need political control at all. Waltz, Kenneth N. (2010-06-01). Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis (p. 27). Columbia University Press.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 19:46:26 +0000
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