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I re-read this like once a year to remind myself that not every philosophical tradition treats humankind as repressed, selfish, and violent, and that perhaps we don't need coercive structures to manage these allegedly inherent traits.
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Informative and engaging, even though the direct subject was the construction and evolution of the Western conception of human nature, I think it would have benefitted from a more in-depth account of other worldviews, and one based more in the experience/perspectives of members of those groups and somewhat less in anthropological texts.
On a ‘contempt for the human’ in Western ideas, that infiltrates every area of thought because it is in our Greek underpinnings.
The Judeo-Christian tradition is often blamed for our negativity towards the species, and I’ve often wondered sadly (yet with hope) what we’d be without the concept of Original Sin, in our heads’ history. But I’ve also been sick of ancient Greeks and their vaunted influence. I’m sorry – Sahlins is here asked to write in pamphlet-style, so I’ll write a pamphlet-style review. Sahlins traces the condemnation of a thing called ‘human nature’ from the dog-eat-dog politics of Thucydides (hang on. Dogs don’t actually eat dogs; nor do wolves behave in the manner ascribed to them in our age-old metaphors; and peoples who keep company with wolves don't see them as we do, either. This is part of his argument.) – through Original Sin, uninterrupted in our wicked-by-nature theories in sociobiology and the selfish gene; along the way he follows our politics as the perceived need to keep a lid on people, self-interest being our only motivation.
But the nature/culture split upon which these thousands of years are predicated is a thing of the West, not of the Rest. The majority of humankind do not see a war of tooth and nail between nature and culture, whether culture is the one corrupt and primitive nature innocent (Rousseau) or whether culture tames the ferocious beast that is man (Hobbes).
In most other societies, beasts aren’t ferocious and neither is humankind, and the very notion of an unsocialised person, a pre-social state, is non-existent – because culture always was. Before homo sapiens. Even in animals.
This is an anthropologist’s take on the negative view of the human, and its resultant cynicism, that runs through the Western intellectual tradition.
Like I say, it’s a pamphlet series, where intellectuals are let loose to rant on the state of their disciplines. He takes them up on that and this can be quite humorous, at least if you’re in sympathy with his views.
I am, and only reserve a star because I found the Greek part a slog, and I have no background in the American founding fathers (there’s a large section on John Adams); and probably because I didn’t need to be convinced of much in here. I see the consequences everywhere I turn, though, and to read this was a health-giving draught for my existential condition.
More in my line is his work on historiography, [b:Apologies to Thucydides: Understanding History as Culture and Vice Versa|1456|Apologies to Thucydides Understanding History as Culture and Vice Versa|Marshall Sahlins|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328872674s/1456.jpg|5601], where Thucydides’ school is seen as a product of his culture, here described, although he thought he was depicting a universal ‘human nature’ in the politics of his day; he’s contrasted with history elsewhere – Fijian, for a case study. I’m going there next.
The Judeo-Christian tradition is often blamed for our negativity towards the species, and I’ve often wondered sadly (yet with hope) what we’d be without the concept of Original Sin, in our heads’ history. But I’ve also been sick of ancient Greeks and their vaunted influence. I’m sorry – Sahlins is here asked to write in pamphlet-style, so I’ll write a pamphlet-style review. Sahlins traces the condemnation of a thing called ‘human nature’ from the dog-eat-dog politics of Thucydides (hang on. Dogs don’t actually eat dogs; nor do wolves behave in the manner ascribed to them in our age-old metaphors; and peoples who keep company with wolves don't see them as we do, either. This is part of his argument.) – through Original Sin, uninterrupted in our wicked-by-nature theories in sociobiology and the selfish gene; along the way he follows our politics as the perceived need to keep a lid on people, self-interest being our only motivation.
But the nature/culture split upon which these thousands of years are predicated is a thing of the West, not of the Rest. The majority of humankind do not see a war of tooth and nail between nature and culture, whether culture is the one corrupt and primitive nature innocent (Rousseau) or whether culture tames the ferocious beast that is man (Hobbes).
In most other societies, beasts aren’t ferocious and neither is humankind, and the very notion of an unsocialised person, a pre-social state, is non-existent – because culture always was. Before homo sapiens. Even in animals.
This is an anthropologist’s take on the negative view of the human, and its resultant cynicism, that runs through the Western intellectual tradition.
Like I say, it’s a pamphlet series, where intellectuals are let loose to rant on the state of their disciplines. He takes them up on that and this can be quite humorous, at least if you’re in sympathy with his views.
I am, and only reserve a star because I found the Greek part a slog, and I have no background in the American founding fathers (there’s a large section on John Adams); and probably because I didn’t need to be convinced of much in here. I see the consequences everywhere I turn, though, and to read this was a health-giving draught for my existential condition.
More in my line is his work on historiography, [b:Apologies to Thucydides: Understanding History as Culture and Vice Versa|1456|Apologies to Thucydides Understanding History as Culture and Vice Versa|Marshall Sahlins|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328872674s/1456.jpg|5601], where Thucydides’ school is seen as a product of his culture, here described, although he thought he was depicting a universal ‘human nature’ in the politics of his day; he’s contrasted with history elsewhere – Fijian, for a case study. I’m going there next.