Images of Man: excerpts from Drews and Lipson

INTRODUCTION

As human beings, we are what we value. It is by our values, our philosophy of life, that we recognize and discover ourselves. Through these we become enlightened.

A human being is a creature of the present, with a memory of the past, and a vision of the future. We strive for goals which have value for us. Anything we do or fail to do involves affirmation or rejection, a preference for this over that.

If nothing is thought of as better than anything else, how can a person know which way to grow? What is crucial is whether we are aware of the choices we make, and consciously confront the responsibility of choosing, or whether we lack this awareness.

A hierarchy of values is needed because it endows human life with a standard for decision making, a rationale and a goal.

To be more fully human, we must be exposed to the best that has been thought and said. As this happens, our imagination becomes “educated,” our very thoughts – and with them our life style – will change.

That which differentiates humanity from the other animals is certainly not our sense organs or bodily powers – for in each of these the human begin is inferior to some other creature. Where we excel them is in our capacities for thought and imagination.

Three characteristics are fundamental to humanity: the need to choose, our subjective awareness that we are choosing, and our need to choose well.

THE FIVE IMAGES OF MAN

I.  Homo homini lupus – man is a wolf to his fellowmen.

According to the most pessimistic view, man is an antisocial, aggressive and immoral creature whose behavior is stimulated by everdangerous instincts.

The strong are entitled to do whatever they think will benefit them.

Machiavelli: “For it may be said of men in general that they are

ungrateful,voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger and covetous of gain.”

Calvin: “Infants themselves as they bring their condemnation into the world

with them, are rendered liable to punishment by their own sinfulness.”

Man is completely egotistic. He is concerned primarily with his own interests and security. Towards others he is aggressive and predatory, seeking to subordinate them to his will and thereby eliminate any threat to himself.

If men are to coexist even minimally, they must be conditioned, restrained, and overawed. Institutions must be so organized as to curb the evil inherent in human nature, and minimize the savagery of which we are capable. Is it possible for such creatures to coexist sociably? Schopenhauer’s answer was a parable:

“A company of porcupines crowded themselves very close together one cold winter's day so as to profit by one another's warmth and so to save themselves from being frozen to death. But soon they felt one another's quills, which induced them to separate again. And now, when the need for warmth brought them nearer together again, the second evil arose once more, So that they were driven backwards and forwards from one trouble to the other until they had discovered a mean distance at which they could most tolerable exist.”

II. Tabula rasa man is a blank sheet.

A second image portrays humanity as amoral and our nature, at bottom, as ethically neutral. Human beings at birth are regarded as blank sheets. Whatever is printed on us is solely the result of subsequent external stimuli which are relayed to the mind by sense perceptions.

The mind is a white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished?

From EXPERIENCE.

A piece of paper, like a computer, is neither good nor bad. Good or bad is what is written on it or fed into it. Since man is the creature of his environment, if that is good his character will be molded for the good. If it is bad, so will he be.

The BIG question, then, is – Who or what is going to be doing the “writing”?

III. Man is a mixture of good and evil

Human nature is a union of opposites, held together in dynamic tension. These opposites are good and evil.

This view encompasses the traditional notion in Christianity that God and Satan are two forces ever competing for the capture of the human soul.

We are each a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

The BIG question, then, is – can this conflict be resolved? Some hold that it cannot: the forces of light and darkness remain in eternal combat, now one being uppermost and now the other; and the individual is held in thrall, doomed to be pulled this way and that. But the other possibility is that we human beings determine our own fate by the choices we make. We are therefore free either to save or to destroy ourselves. In the religious view, people can reject evil and choose the good, thereby redeeming their souls.

IV. Man is naturally good and can improve himself

Another view is more optimistic. It envisages mankindall human beings everywhereas basically good and continuously improvable. All of us have goals and purposes which we formulate as good and strive to realize. If some of us are seen to be corrupted, this is because the goodness intrinsic to our nature has been perverted by our social institutions. Once the latter are improved, we shall more readily exhibit the love, charity, and cooperation which are fundamental to us.

Dedicated idealists and practical reformers often have this view. Jefferson said, “State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.”

The aim here is to design better institutions in which human goodness will find an outlet. Why should not man put an end to his old antagonisms and base his society on love for his fellowman?

V. Man will transcend himself

Every individual is a fountainhead of unlimited possibilities – free to grow toward a nature surpassing any that was realized before. For a person's true existence lies in the realm of spirit, idea, and imagination.

Blake: “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite, For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.”

CONCLUSION

So different are these five images that one is bound to ask: Which, if any, is correct? The answer is of supreme importance because on it will hinge our attitude toward our fellowmen and much of our ensuing conduct. One of these images may in fact prove to be the correct one. But it is also conceivable that each of the five has its quota of representatives in the human race – in which case we could find examples of bad animals, of blank sheets, of good and evil mixed, of good in the ascendancy, or even transcendent. Or again, is it not possible that some traits from each image may be present within every individual, but that the combination may vary in each of us, and the resulting character types be differently balanced? It could possibly be altered by circumstances – by a change in events or environment. Some of Hitler's erstwhile henchmen could become gentle nurses; the choirboy may graduate into the gangster.

What an individual says about mankind at large cannot fail to reflect something of what the speaker is.

In addition, judgments will be further influenced by the population sample one selects (or is a part of) and studies.