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Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan
That's an interesting idea--but it does depend on the notion that polity is an emergent property of human nature, which is an idea that I consider by definition baseless (note that this doesn't make it untrue--it just lacks any compelling evidence). It may well be consistent with Aristotle, but that doesn't change the fact that it's predicated on a basic post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy--in essence, the reasoning goes like this:
1. There is such a thing as 'human nature' which can successfully predict what an individual person needs from a social grouping.
2. Most of these groupings are, generally, X (let's say authoritarian, because it's more consistent with the historical record)
3. Therefore, X is a product of human nature/subconscious desires/a particular organizing principle.
Put that way, I hope the flaw is immediately evident: how do we know that the polities that arise don't do so in spite of what people want from their social groupings? How do we know that there isn't some other cause that we can't account for with 1.?
As for me, I'd say that not only is the formula above illogical, but I'm skeptical of its premises. Specifically, I'm skeptical that there is such a thing as "human nature" in the way that we're talking about it. I really do think that the presumption in 1. was Marx's fundamental empirical error--the notion that the "material needs" of the individual could function as the basic organizing principle behind social action. In fact, in the above formula, you could modify the terms to plug in both the ideas of Marx and those of Fukuyama, demonstrating that both are predicated on some pretty specious logic.
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Isn't the tendency to create polities merely a function of applying ethics to a society? I don't think that society is anything but an emerging property of human nature. We are beings who lose all meaning if removed from our social surroundings, but that doesn't mean we are open to relative interpretations of human nature.
I'm not being reductionist by making a claim for human nature, merely stating that although complex, there are universal standards we can talk about. That said, I understand culture provides a meaningful dialogic to my open claims supported by an evolutionary biological, or somewhat objectivist foundation.
In my opinion, you commit an even greater fault by claiming:
1) Human nature cannot be determined, essentially arguing that we are
tabula rasa and mere cultural creations. That is, as a critical theorist would say, societies create the bodies that we need. Marx actually makes a very good point here, but like much of Marx, his acute observations only take one so far. Material prerequesites must determine some aspect of a polity. 2) I wasn't justifying authortarians based on the fact that x>y, merely stating there was most likely an environmental need that had a human response, given the times, technological restraints, religious beliefs etc... I do think culture is important too, and if I am going to look at the Greeks, I have to acknowledge the notion of
The Regime which goes much deeper than mere materialism.
3) Surely there aspects of human nature in everything, otherwise how do we create socio-political edifices?
That said, environment is important, but even that implicitly acknowledges a human component in social outcomes. Our nature was determined through natural selection, which is a relationship between an organism's genes and its environment.
I think Marx and Fukuyama both make the fatal mistake of literalizing Hegalian notions of history. If you accept that human polity-building is an ongoing process, with no historicist notion of progress, than I would say no, Marx and Fukuyama do not fit in this formula at all. All Aristotle was saying is that while the conversant process of the polis is varied, it is ultimately a human function.