From Orthodox Conservatives
9. That there is no universal human nature. (For human beings are inconsistent and bound by varied loyalties.)
Some people have commented on the formation of this group and the publication of these ten principles, particularly in the supposed contradiction between this principle, and principle seven (that human beings are imperfect and irrational). We would like to clarify at the start: what we mean by human nature is not the same as human biology. There is a clear biological universalism that all human beings belong to, with the same basic facts of biology (bifurcated into the two sexes), and this biology is in itself the origin of that imperfectability and irrationality: the emotive driving forces within ourselves are products of biology, which limit our capacity for rationality (despite our natural inclination towards it); and the imperfectability of humanity comes from the truth that there is no such thing as a ‘perfect’ human (even a definition of the perfect human runs into trouble at the outset).
So, what is the ‘nature’ in human nature? We do not pretend it exists, merely that there is no universal one; Anthony Quinton discusses this more clearly than we can, by noting “the conception of human beings and society as being organically or internally related” meaning that “individual human beings are not fully formed… except in their basic biological aspect, independently of the social institutions and practices within which they grow up. There is, therefore, no universal human nature” while the “desirability of institutions for a conservative is relative to the circumstances of a particular time and place”; this leads to scepticism over the abstraction of human behaviour into generalisable theories.
Therefore, ‘human nature’ is not something universal because it is intricately linked to the circumstances in which we grow up, and which form our identities. Indeed, these institutions become such a part of our identity – whether we like it or not – that it becomes impossible to imagine ourselves unencumbered from the legacies of these institutions. So while the Englishman shares a basic biological identity with the African, their institutions are not shared and their nature cannot be the same.
Because there can be no universal human nature, it makes no sense to pretend that there can be universal ‘best’ methods of government; instead, it is better to recognise that the institutions of government that exist in the different places on earth have arisen in response to particular histories and experiences, and are not different or aberrant versions of a single ‘good’ model of government. Conservatism is, as Keiron O’Hara says, a positional ideology, drawing its principles from the social order (and therefore its vision of ‘human nature’) from the place in which it finds itself.
9. That there is no universal human nature. (For human beings are inconsistent and bound by varied loyalties.)
9. That there is no universal human nature
Some people have commented on the formation of this group and the publication of these ten principles, particularly in the supposed contradiction between this principle, and principle seven (that human beings are imperfect and irrational). We would like to clarify at the start: what we mean by human nature is not the same as human biology. There is a clear biological universalism that all human beings belong to, with the same basic facts of biology (bifurcated into the two sexes), and this biology is in itself the origin of that imperfectability and irrationality: the emotive driving forces within ourselves are products of biology, which limit our capacity for rationality (despite our natural inclination towards it); and the imperfectability of humanity comes from the truth that there is no such thing as a ‘perfect’ human (even a definition of the perfect human runs into trouble at the outset).
So, what is the ‘nature’ in human nature? We do not pretend it exists, merely that there is no universal one; Anthony Quinton discusses this more clearly than we can, by noting “the conception of human beings and society as being organically or internally related” meaning that “individual human beings are not fully formed… except in their basic biological aspect, independently of the social institutions and practices within which they grow up. There is, therefore, no universal human nature” while the “desirability of institutions for a conservative is relative to the circumstances of a particular time and place”; this leads to scepticism over the abstraction of human behaviour into generalisable theories.
Therefore, ‘human nature’ is not something universal because it is intricately linked to the circumstances in which we grow up, and which form our identities. Indeed, these institutions become such a part of our identity – whether we like it or not – that it becomes impossible to imagine ourselves unencumbered from the legacies of these institutions. So while the Englishman shares a basic biological identity with the African, their institutions are not shared and their nature cannot be the same.
Because there can be no universal human nature, it makes no sense to pretend that there can be universal ‘best’ methods of government; instead, it is better to recognise that the institutions of government that exist in the different places on earth have arisen in response to particular histories and experiences, and are not different or aberrant versions of a single ‘good’ model of government. Conservatism is, as Keiron O’Hara says, a positional ideology, drawing its principles from the social order (and therefore its vision of ‘human nature’) from the place in which it finds itself.
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