How does the article characterize human nature?

As a nature that tends to extract more than deposit to be able to exist. Later the text says that human nature involves subtracting to add.

What does the article say about accumulation?

After describing a space that ended up occupied by someone who could not make full use of it alone, the author writes that this conclusion says much about the human nature of accumulation but little about the human method of expanding their own nature.

How does character relate to human nature in the article?

Character is called an aspect of human nature. The article places the source of true evolution and development of one's character outside the comfort zone.

Concept

Human Nature

What does the Agency editorial say about human nature?

Human nature is the set of traits and tendencies considered common to all human beings. In the Agency editorial, the author's philosophical draft gives it a precise and uncomfortable feature: humans possess a nature that tends to extract more than deposit to be able to exist.

In short

Philosophers have long asked whether there is a nature shared by all humans and what it consists of. In Writing.2, the question appears in The Condition of Nature, the author's numbered draft. Character, he writes, is an aspect of human nature. That nature tends to extract more than deposit, involves subtracting to add, and shows itself in accumulation: the text says its conclusion about occupied land says much about the human nature of accumulation.

Key facts

How does the article characterize human nature?: As a nature that tends to extract more than deposit to be able to exist. Later the text says that human nature involves subtracting to add.
What does the article say about accumulation?: After describing a space that ended up occupied by someone who could not make full use of it alone, the author writes that this conclusion says much about the human nature of accumulation but little about the human method of expanding their own nature.
How does character relate to human nature in the article?: Character is called an aspect of human nature. The article places the source of true evolution and development of one's character outside the comfort zone.

What is human nature?

Human nature is the idea that human beings share fundamental dispositions, ways of feeling, thinking and acting that do not depend on a particular culture. The theme runs through the whole history of philosophy, from the Greeks to David Hume, who gave the title A Treatise of Human Nature to his first book. Thinkers disagree about its content: for some it is rational, for others selfish, social or shaped by circumstance.

How does human nature appear in the Agency editorial?

Writing.2 reaches human nature through an investigation of the word nature itself, which the author ties to the verb to be born. From there, the draft asks what it means for a human being to occupy a space and whether doing so disturbs the order of nature.

The answer is given in terms of balance. Because human nature involves subtracting to add, spaces will be occupied, and not always in a way that is consistent with the true order of nature. The author does not condemn this tendency; he asks that whoever occupies a space sustain the weight of the responsibility it implies.

Source editions

Where this entry comes from in the Agency editorial.

Writing.2 - AphorismsSeptember 21, 2023Read the edition

Also from these editions: concepts

Also from these editions: terms

Related terms

naturanoun: The Latin word for nature. It first meant birth, and then the innate character of a thing and the order of the world, and it is the origin of the word nature.
Paradoxnoun: A statement, situation, or person that appears contradictory or absurd yet may reveal a deeper underlying truth.