A review of someone else's review of an essay on human nature. A bit abstract and philosophical, but it points out some fundamental flaws in the hard Left's basic world view.
. . . as they strike me, many of these points are remarkable for what they reveal about the capacity to deny the most obvious realities where these are thought to be inconvenient.
His [Pinker's] life's goal... is "the old-fashioned one - illuminating human nature". But the belief that there is such a thing as human nature, and that it is innate, has proved incendiary.
Not even just debatable. Incendiary. Something that is so manifestly, so glaringly, true that it cannot be contradicted without falling into one kind of nonsense or another is incendiary. Are we to suppose, then, that human beings have no materiality, or that as material beings they have no biological or physiological make-up? To ascribe a nature to them is to say no more than that, in virtue of the species they belong to, they have certain characteristics - both capacities and needs - and that these characteristics enable them in certain ways and also constrain them in certain ways. If we had no nature we should be able to reinvent ourselves at will. Though we do sometimes speak of people reinventing themselves, the reinvention takes place on the basis of the abilities and within the constraints I've referred to. No human being suddenly turns him or herself into a mauve elephant and disappears through a concrete wall . . . .
. . . the idea that nurture is more important than nature isn't the same thing as belief in a blank slate. It might make sense in some context, or on some issue, to say that nurture is the more important influence - for example, on what language a person grows up speaking - but that doesn't mean there was nothing there (naturally) in the first place, such as the capacity for language. Second, the stuff about the possibility of change is badly formulated. If we have a (human) nature, then we are able to change in certain ways and we aren't able to change in certain others - that's all. So we can invent modes of transport that get us around much faster, become more, and also less, tolerant, come to think of ourselves or cease to think of ourselves as divinely created; but we can't turn into mauve elephants that disappear through walls, or turn into beings free of all emotion, of fear, hope, love, anger, ambition etc. Third, if our (human) nature blocks off a certain kind of change, then that's what it does. What matters is whether it's true that it blocks that kind of change, not whether you think it's a bad or non-progressive thing for it to block it. If you say that it can't block it because it would be bad for it to do so, you're saying that the truth is defined by your political priorities and not by the way the world actually is - a morally dangerous path to set out upon. It's true that you can't get a human being to live for long on an intake of one calorie per day. This denies us the possibility of stretching a given quantity of food resources much further than they presently stretch. So we have to work within that constraint. There's no percentage in saying that it's reactionary to claim people need more than one calorie per day. They just do need it. And, as it happens, it isn't reactionary to insist that there are these basic needs that human beings have for nourishment. The next step is to say the needs ought to be met (so long as they aren't cruel or vicious ones) - the very opposite of a reactionary demand. Which brings us to the next point:The Blank Slate [Pinker's book] argued that believing in human nature doesn't make you a rightwing anti-egalitarian. That doesn't mean, however, such a nature actually exists.
No, it doesn't make you a rightwing anti-egalitarian. It's one obvious basis for a philosophy of universal human rights - the idea that we share a common human nature, and by virtue of it common needs, common capacities and fundamental interests. These interests ought to be protected. Granted, the fact that a common human nature provides the intellectual basis for a justification of universal rights does not by itself show that there is such a common human nature. But there is one - as any open-eyed consultation of historical, anthropological and cultural evidence will vouchsafe. We can argue about what traits it includes and what traits it doesn't - a really important area of argument - but the denial of there being any human nature at all is wasted breath. . . .