Human Nature is Plastic

This statement, brought up by Dr. Strangelove in class on a few occasions, was made by a famous American anthropologist named Ruth Benedict. Benedict’s statement suggests that our nature is shaped not by some notion of humanity that every human being has felt since our beginning, but by cultural forces present during our lifetimes.

Ruth Benedict

According to Benedict, whether it’s Marxism, Nazism, or consumerism, these forces mould us into who we are. They write out the societal scripts and we act them out. We are not active participants, but passive. We are born into bondage, with customs, tradition, language, and any other cultural force as our masters.

There is an interesting link to be made here with existentialism. (The writers of this blog will be the first and second to admit that they are not experts in existentialism, nor are they proponents of the philosophy.) In simple terms, existentialism is the belief that existence precedes essence. In simpler, though lengthier terms:

Man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself…At first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be. Thus, there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it. Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after this thrust toward existence.”

Those are the words of Jean-Paul Sartre, the famous 20^th century existentialist philosopher. The link of similarity between Benedict and Sartre is their opinion of human nature. Existentialism takes the side that there is no human nature. Benedict’s statement does not explicitly deny the existence of human nature. However, the fact that her conception of human nature is at the mercy of cultural forces implies that the only thing natural about human nature is its malleability, not some set of values and instincts that all humans possess. In a way, she too denies the human nature that others believe in.

Jean-Paul Sartre

The difference between existentialism and Benedict’s idea is that instead of humans being in control of their own destiny – existentialism – this responsibility is surrendered to cultural forces. It would be interesting to bring Benedict’s analysis of human nature into existentialism. The fusion would be something like the following: in between existence and essence lies a third stage – the shaping of our essence by cultural forces, rather than by our own actions and decisions.

For an existentialist, existence precedes essence, and we dictate our own essence. But if one believes that human nature is plastic, then our essence is determined for us, rather than by us.