Over at the NPR blog (ht Sullivan), Cosmos and Culture, Barbara J. King, biological anthropologist, tells us:
...I would assert that there is no set-in-stone human nature.
Anthropological studies show that humans respond with incredible plasticity to the social and environmental forces around us. As biological anthropologist and blogger Patrick Clarkin aptly puts it, our abilities for cooperation and conflict, love and hate are "triggered under given circumstances, facilitated or hampered by social conditions and structures."
For me, this immediately brought to mind a passage from chapter 5 of Zhuangzi:
"Can a person really have no nature, asked Hui Tzu of Chuang Tzu.
"Yes," replied Chuang Tzu.
"But if you have no nature, how can you be called human?"
"Tao gives you shape and heaven gives you form, so why can't you be called human?"
"But if you're called human, how can you have no nature?"
"'Yes this' and 'no that' - that's what I call human nature," replied Chuang Tzu. "Not mangling yourself with 'good' and 'bad' - that's what I call no nature. Instead of struggling to improve on life, you simply abide in occurrence appearing of itself."
....
As usual, the above in the Hinton translation and there are some word choices that could be challenged, but I don't think those choices disrupt the general idea here.
Hinton uses the words "nature" and "human nature" for the character 情, qing, as in Hui Tzu's opening question: 人故無情乎. More common translations are: "feeling;" "emotion;" "passion." Thus, Legge goes with: "Can a man indeed be without desires and passions?" And Graham settles on: "Can a man really be without the essentials of man?" Although "human nature" is usually reserved for translations of xing - 性; or ren xing - 人 性; I think Hinton's use of it here for qing is not off the mark.
My sense of what Zhuangzi is talking about here is that he is rejecting the idea of an essentialist, continual, settled quality to human behavior, a human nature of sorts. Our lives need not be determined by some a priori quality of goodness or badness, or passions or desires. Rather we can and should simply respond to circumstances as they arise: "appearance occurring of itself" - ziran - 自然.
Or, as King says: "...humans respond with incredible plasticity to the social and environmental forces around us."
Of course, Mencius and Xunxi would have something different to say on the topic....
Greetings Sam,
After reading your words I find myself asking, if not from our human nature, where does desire come from?
in peace,
gar
Posted by: gar | February 24, 2012 at 12:02 PM
For Zhuangzi, "human nature," or as he says "mangling yourself with 'good' and 'bad'..." are socially constructed expectations and standards and roles that individuals (unnecessarily) latch on to. Desire, then, is generated from without. He believes that we can, some of us, avoid such desires, empty ourselves, and simply live in the moment of ziran...
Posted by: Sam | February 25, 2012 at 03:11 PM
I think King should read Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate. He debunks the idea that we are born as a blank slate.
re: "For Zhuangzi, "human nature," or as he says "mangling yourself with 'good' and 'bad'..." are socially constructed expectations and standards and roles that individuals (unnecessarily) latch on to. Desire, then, is generated from without. He believes that we can, some of us, avoid such desires, empty ourselves, and simply live in the moment of ziran."
"Zhuangzi" actually says that socially-constructed standards mangle our human nature (Xing), not that these are our so-called human nature (though some in ancient China felt these standards were inherent in our nature).
As for desire, there isn't much in the Zhuangzi about desire (yu) and most of it that is in there is influenced by the Laozi. I feel that the authors of the text basically agreed with Song Xing that our desires are few. Additionally, we best not be attached to any desires we manifest, thus we will enjoy more peace of mind.
Posted by: Scott "Bao Pu" Barnwell | February 26, 2012 at 07:10 AM
Thanks for the comment, Scott. You're right, I should be more precise in how I frame things here... one of the dangers of a blog is lack of precision. I read this passage in Zhuangzi against Mencius and Xunzi. Perhaps I shouldn't, since it isn't about xing. But it seems that the passage rejects the notion of an inherently "good" or "bad" human nature. If it is neither of those then, I think, Zhuangzi suggests that it is closer to a "blank slate," whatever Pinker has to say about it... At the very least, we can return to something like the blank slate. And, yes, I am influenced by the DDJ here: "uncarved block" and all that, as your nom de blog implies... And the DDJ also holds up the infant as an ideal of sorts, not yet corrupted by the anxieties of "good" and "bad" that plague adults. I think the notion of plasticity in the linked-to piece gets at this...
Posted by: Sam | February 26, 2012 at 02:52 PM
Greetings Sam,
It seems to me that the "uncarved block" has substance, "t'ung-ch'u" produced from the same, and the carving is done by our filtered mind.
Posted by: gar | February 27, 2012 at 07:09 AM
Not sure how anyone could believe in a blank slate if they have watched children grow from birth.
Posted by: Mike Shaw | March 19, 2012 at 12:06 AM
I think we can, and should, talk about what "human nature" is, but not, in the end, in the manner that Pinker does. For a fairly sophisticated, and I think largely persuasive philosophical discussion of human nature, please see P.M.S. Hacker's Human Nature: The Categorial Framework (2007). http://www.amazon.com/Human-Nature-The-Categorial-Framework/dp/1444332481/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333413244&sr=1-3
Posted by: Patrick S. O'Donnell | April 02, 2012 at 08:35 PM