What is Human Nature?- Are we unique or just animals?

Philosophers have always debated what is at the essence of human nature. Some thinkers in the twentieth century even began to doubt whether there was such a thing as a human nature. The discovery of modern genetics proves that there are at least certain parameters that define what human beings are physically. What is at the core of how human beings behave however is more in doubt. There is a paradox in human nature that comes from the fact that human beings are unbounded. The possibilities that are open to normal human beings are far wider than for any other creature that we know of. Human beings come in so many different forms, and with so much potential to be something other than what they are, that perhaps the best definition of human nature is a paradox. Nevertheless, there are certain classical traits that have been identified as being a part of human nature. These traits don't necessarily define all of human nature, but by following them to their natural conclusions you'll at least be on the path of learning more about yourself and what makes you what you are.

Language

All human beings use a language. Other animals communicate with one another, sometimes in complicated and sophisticated ways, but what they do cannot be compared to what human beings do as a matter of course during the day. Human language is infinite. Human beings have it in their power to create an infinite number of new sentences by combining words and phrases together in a lawful way. No other animal can do anything similar. In any normal conversation, in this article, human beings make sentences that have never been made before in the history of the Earth. How human beings gained this ability in the course of their evolution is still a debated topic.

Many linguists have come to believe that language is in some way innate in every person from birth. This would explain how it is that every person seems to gain a mastery of language from the time that they are very young. Even if you don't believe language to be innate there is still the incontestable fact that virtually every person, regardless of intelligence or background, has a perfect ability to create and understand new sentences.

This ability defines at least in part what human beings are. It is hard to imagine how there could be anything like a society if there was not language to communicate with. Try to imagine how a government would work without language. Could you even have the concept of a government without language? How could we have something like money without the language to declare what money is?

Human beings use language in the same way that ants make anthills and that bees make beehives, as part of their most basic way of coping with the world.

Creativity

Human beings are creative. They make new things that are unlike anything that came before them. People don't just use their creativity for practical reasons but because they enjoy using it. Doing things differently from each other is how we create our own identities. Creativity isn't just used for works of art but in the most mundane tasks of life. No one brushes their teeth in exactly the same way.

Language is of course one basic area of creativity. Most people would have to try very hard to repeat themselves using language. Certain phrases and sayings may get used again but even when you're just thinking to yourself you're likely to use wholly new combinations of words to describe your ideas and feelings.

Other creatures don't display this sort of a difference from one another. Your pets may have different personalities but they likely follow the same sorts patterns in their behavior as the other creatures of their kind. All cats wash themselves in the same way. All dogs turn in the same kind of circle before they settle down to sleep. All birds make their nests in exactly the same way.

Paleontologists who investigate the origins of the human race often remark on the difference between the tools used by early homo sapiens and other apes. The tools used by creatures like the neanderthals were often very sophisticated and often took quite a bit of technical skill to create. The difference, however, between these tools and the ones used by early humans was that they were always the same.

Human beings never created the same tool twice. There was almost always some slight difference between one item and another. This allowed for innovation and for the early human beings to improve their methods of coping with the world, giving them advantages that other creatures didn't have.

How it is that human beings have this unlimited creative ability is still in doubt. Not just how they could have gained it through evolution, but how it works in the brain. Human beings appear to be undetermined in a way that can't necessarily be explained through simple physical interactions.

Self-Direction

Underlying both the ability of human beings to use language and also human creativity is the ability of human beings to direct their own destiny. Human beings have what philosophers call intentionality. Somewhat confusingly, intentionality has little to do with our intentions. Intentionality comes from the Latin word tendere, which means to point. The thoughts that human beings have and the actions that they take point beyond themselves to the world outside.

The unpredictability and the self-determination of human nature has led many philosophers such as Rene Descartes to postulate a separation between the human mind and human body. However you think intentionality might be possible it clearly makes a large difference in what its possible for human beings to be and how they behave.

Many disagree on whether human beings truly have free will or if its an illusion, but regardless of which is true there seems to be something self-determined about human behavior. Human beings do not just react to outside stimuli but make their own impact on the world based on who they are and what they think.

This self-direction appears to be unique among human beings. Humans reason and form concepts about the world using their self-direction. Its impossible to always predict human behavior, not just because its complex but because there appears to be something indeterminate about it. For any explanation that you can come up with for someones behavior there always seems to be a gap where you could imagine them acting otherwise.

Human beings are able to cope with the world by directing their behavior to certain ends and by changing their environment as much as it changes them. This makes them unique among animals.

Conclusion

Human nature appears in many ways to involve a freedom from nature and an ability of human beings to act as they wish. This paradox often leads people to believe that there are no truly human traits. The closer that you look at human freedom, however, the more that this freedom appears to be based on concrete and specific abilities that are unique to human beings and that define us as we are.