SOME SOBERING REFLECTIONS ON THE HUMAN SITUATION

Resumen

1. The philosopher is like a giraffe in that he is always sticking his neck out.


2. Nature is what nature does and undoes.


3. Man is not a unique being existing apart from nature, he is an integral part of nature itself.


4. The whole object in naturalizing man is not to deprive him of what rightfully belongs to him but simply to accord the proper place to him in the very universe of which he is its only articulate creature, the rest of nature being dumb, by comparison.


5. The continuity of man and nature is embodied in human culture.


6. Human culture is human nature in the concrete.


7. Man is by nature a conative animal: the eternal striver from the womb until the tomb.


8. Man strives throughout life to satisfy his individual and social needs in sundry ways, but such striving on his part begets strife sooner or later because man's basic aggressive drive to pursue his own interests tends to clash with his equally basic gregarious drive to meet the demands of others.


9. The original state of tension between the universal but contrary drives (aggressiveness and gregarioumes) within man himself is the prime cause of all conflicts of interests in life and the primary natural source of all pheno mena of morals in human culture.