The Contradictions of Human Nature Explored Through Nietzsche and Hobbes

Abstract

The human condition is complex, and many attempts have been made, unsuccessfully, to solve it and produce better societies. The reason these attempts fail is because human nature has fundamentally contradicting desires, making it impossible to satisfy through any social arrangement. Hobbes explores the desire to preserve through his work Leviathan, in which he argues that because of human’s desire to preserve themselves and what they consider to be theirs, they should organize themselves into a society dominated by a single political leader. Hobbes justifies this by arguing that this leader is the only way to satisfy people’s desire for preservation, and that this structure is necessary for the betterment of humanity. Nietzsche, in his work The Genealogy of Morals, explores a very different facet of human nature, the desire to create. Nietzsche argues that people experience a desire to create something for themselves, separate from society. Nietzsche takes this further when he argues that the creation of anything new, from abstract concepts like moral principles to consumer goods, requires the destruction of something that already exists. Nietzsche argues that in order to maximize creation, society should be stripped of restraints, including laws and morality. Both of these arguments are correct, humans possess both the desire to create their own work, and the desire to preserve it. These drives are also incompatible, demonstrating the inherent contradictions within the human condition