Human Nature and the Institutions that Retain It

Mankind has not civilized itself by advancing as moral, or even ethical, beings, yet on the contrary, by the sole erecting of institutions to assist in the mitigating and the isolating of man’s nature.

Firstly, many thinkers from the French Enlightenment to modern Marxists, as well as numerous philosophers and social scientists, have emphasized the role of society over human nature.

English Philosopher John Locke thought of human nature as a “tabula rasa” or a “blank slate” with no rules or guidelines, only social experiences to direct the mind of the individual.

According to Australian Historian of Philosophy John Passmore, English Philosopher David Hume had “one thing he never doubted [that] was that there was such a thing as human nature. This was a point that he differed from Locke.”

Passmore added, “[Hume] says he thought [to deny human nature] was a ridiculous view, human beings do have angers, fears, all the rest of it… which are innate, which are inborn in them, and which are constant throughout human history.”

For one to aggressively underrate, or to casually dismiss, the historic observation that man seeks today the glories and treasures for which he sought at any yesteryear in his existence, denies flatly his biological nature and the limitations thereof to which these neurological attributes adjourn.

Secondly, the Framers of the American Constitution and the American System, in general, comprehended the role of human nature in mankind’s progress.

For example, James Madison stated, “What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

With this perspicacious understanding, the Framers constructed fundamental institutions to check and balance, not the institutions themselves, but the human factor involved.

Due to these institutions, any individual spending time researching America’s prosperity, as well as much of the Western World’s, and the poverty of much of Latin America, Asia, and Africa will unearth much of the variance.

These nations lack the institutional structure to palliate the nature of man, himself. They rely on what American Economist Thomas Sowell would call the “Unconstrained” archetype of a leader.

Thirdly, in Sowell’s book, A Conflict of Visions, Sowell discusses two countering “visions”: the “Constrained” and the “Unconstrained”.

To clarify, “visions” are “the implicit assumes with which [one] operate[s].”

The “Constrained” maintains that human nature is flawed, yet fixed. The question then presented is how to design institutions to retain the flaws, while permitting one to live in the best social situation possible. More so, mankind is “Constrained” by his own human nature.

The “Unconstrained” argues that “the things that we suffer” are “the failure of other people to be as wise and as noble” as oneself. From this notion comes the Thomas Paine line, “to begin the world anew,” for institutions and virtueless men are causing this pain and suffering.

For examples of the applications of these “visions”, one need look only to 18th Century France and America.

Sowell explains, “In France, the idea was if you simply put the right people in charge and create the right institutions then all these problems would go away.”

Basically, with stationing a “political messiah” in power that loves the people, all then becomes well and good.

However, “[i]n the United States, it was assumed from the outset that there were very limited things you could do. What you needed to do above all was to minimize the damage done by the flaws of human nature.”

With this acceptance of human nature, constitutions and institutions are constructed for the purpose of diversifying the governing powers, so one may not control the multitude.

Finally, few current Americans--particularly, young ones--gather much in the way of political lessons from the Scottish Enlightenment, the Framers, and just history, in general.

With electing President Obama, America forgot or just dismissed the concerns of the Framers or the Founding Fathers, in general. But, Americans only shortly remembered the “Spirit of ‘76” once nationhood came to be. So, nothing is truly new.

Nonetheless, though, the elected individuals on the whole attempted and still so to implant the “Unconstrained” view in their constituents, for institutions bar their governing powers; hence, for the fortification of our liberty and individualism.

The fundamental institutions assembled by the Framers and at few other periods in our nation’s history have been the protection for us, as a people, not the men and women we have elected or will in the future do the same.

This column was not published this week for conflicting opinion on the use of the Opinion Page in a newspaper. I enjoyed the research for this column.

Marketplace of Ideas and the Student’s Role

In 1967, the Supreme Court in Keyishian v. Board of Regents summarized in its decision, “The classroom is peculiarly the marketplace of ideas.”

This construct often enough is attributed to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. His 1919 dissenting opinion in Abrams v. United States carries as far the implicit, without the explicit: “[W]hen men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas…”

Holmes continued, “The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which [any of man’s] wishes safely can be carried out.”

As in the market for any other commodity, competition delivers the consumer with a better product at a better price.

When ideas are exchanged in this marketplace time is given to the argument, the act of criticisms and rebuttals. Whereby, the idea that remains stands less porous and more strengthened—that is, better intellectually, as a whole or more often amended to the new information gathered in the argument experience.

The other ideas linger on with pockets of individuals still speaking the gospel of his or her determined convictions. For no idea dies, no matter how poor, how corrupt, how wrong it may be. Once an idea is brought into the world, it exists with no regard to mortality.

Likewise, ideas carry no burdensome message of value, such as good or bad, moral or immoral, righteous or evil. Ideas just are, as an apple just is an apple.

Thomas Jefferson in a letter to William Roscoe in 1820 wrote, “This institution [University of Virginia] will be based upon the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”

Jefferson spoke poetically, yet in this he struck upon the utmost ideal of an academic institution.

In the present day, however, the competition in the marketplace for ideas wanes.

Economist Thomas Sowell wrote recently, “Elementary as it may seem that we should hear both sides of an issue before making up our minds, that is seldom what happens on politically correct issues today in our schools and colleges. The biggest argument of the left is that there is no argument--whether the issue is global warming, “open space” laws or whatever.”

Granted that many a time more than only two sides of an issue exist, Sowell succinctly notes “the biggest argument” is to argue that “there is no argument.”

As consumers of education in the marketplace of ideas, we, as students, are told that no competition--no ideas, no debate, no thinking--is needed to uphold the high quality of our education. And we are foolish enough to believe this economic fallacy and to gaily digest the asininity.

Many causes have led to this effect: bad institutional incentives, academic politicization, societal complacency, etc. Maybe, however, the biggest is the student body itself.

The individual students remain not as victims, but as co-conspirators.

We aid and abet the crimes perpetuated against us. We seek not to push ourselves, personally or jointly; more so we accept naively, for to accept and not to question is the path easiest to stumble on Friday and Saturday nights.

Mark Twain may well have been correct, “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”


This week's column came into form after reading a campus editorial and listening to an interview from the Hoover Institution with Justice Antonin Scalia, as well as with further reading of Thomas Sowell, John Dewey, and Oscar Wilde recently.