Human nature
I must immediately emphasise that any conception of a common human nature that is sustainable here could not be ahistorical. But equally it seems rather implausible to suppose that human beings do not possess various shared characteristics and in particular capacities (c.g., language capabilities - as presupposed even by the postmodernist concern with discourse), which both derive from a scientifically recognised common genetic structure and serve to differentiate us from other species. When viewed under one set of aspects, or at a high level of abstraction, then, human nature can be accepted as a common attribute, one grounded in our genetic constitution and manifest in certain species-wide needs and capacities or powers (such as language use).
Of course, even a common human nature can only ever be expressed in inherently socialised, more or less historically, geographically, and culturally specific, and very highly differentiated, forms. In other words, when human nature is viewed under a different set of aspects than the above, and specifically at a lower level of abstraction, it can be understood as an historically rclativcly-spccific nature. Its development, at this level, has its origin at the time, place, and conditions of an individual’s birth, and is subsequently influenced by the class, gender, occupational positions, and so forth, in which the individual stands, along with her or his experiences more widely. For example, we cannot just ‘speak’ in the abstract, we have to speak a specific gcohistorically located language. To the extent that numerous people throughout their lives arc subject to identical or similar forms of determination an historically quite definite nature may thus be held in common.
Now to accept any of this is not to deny that, in the limit, any individual will always be subject to a unique combination of experiences and modes of determination producing a particular personality. Thus from a third and rather more specific perspective, or a yet lower level of abstraction, the nature of any given human being must be seen as a more or less unique individuality. There is no reason to doubt that a person’s individuality is primarily constituted by her or his social peculiarity. Each individual is the product of her or his actions and experiences within the social relations and other modes of determination into which he or she is bom and thereafter lives. An individual’s actions, or things that happen to her or him, are comprehensible in terms of the individual’s socially conditioned capacities, powers, liabilities, and dispositions. The agency of each individual is thus conditioned by the relationships in which he or she stands or has stood, just as these relations, as with social structure in general, arc in turn dependent upon the sum total of human doings.
Ultimately, then, an individual’s manifest nature and experiences may be unique. But this is quite consistent with commonality or generality lying at a different level, an insight we can recognise only when we pass beyond an ontology of the actual and specifically of experience.
Needs
In accepting that the human subject is so structured we can also recognise a basis for common or shared real needs. And indeed it is essential to any emancipatory project that we can. The possibility of human freedom presupposes the existence of shared human objectives, i.e., real interests and motives, ultimately rooted in common needs and capabilities. If everyone’s needs arc merely subjective, with the possibility of being irreconcilably opposed, then projecting the goal of social emancipation is indeed likely to be question-begging from the outset. The condition of shared real interests is a presupposition of all emancipatory proposals - whether supporting (relative) change or (relative) continuity - whatever perspective is accepted. And, of course, at the very least we share in common the need to realise some or all of our capacities: to realise our potentials as human beings.
It is not difficult to sec, then, that the possibility of moral theorising can, at least in part, be based on a recognised common human nature, a recognition grounded in our biological unity as a species. However, because this common nature is always historically and socially mediated, human needs will be manifest in potentially many ways. It follows, accepting the perspective on society elaborated above, that the pursuit of social goals always takes place in a context of conflicting position-related interests. It is likely, for example, that most of us most of the time need our ‘own’ language(s) to be spoken. Certainly, conflicts centring on the interests of class positions, age, gender, nation-states, regions, culture, and so forth, arc as real and determining as anything else. Even so, different groups may cooperate allowing different, and even opposed, interests sometimes to be met. The point remains, though, that opposed, position-related interests or developed needs exist. And it may be upon our unity as a species and the more generalised features of our social and historical experience and make-up that the greater possibility of unambiguous and enduring progress rests.
Of course, there will often be practical problems of identifying human needs whatever their level of generality. Things arc complicated, of course, by the irreducibility both of real needs to manifest wants and of wants to the means of their satisfaction.21 But if real needs arc thereby rendered unobservable this per se renders their identification no more problematic than that of other unobservables in science (such as gravitational and magnetic fields and social relationships). Indeed, this is a situation in which contrastive explanation can once more prove fruitful (although justifying this assertion will have to wait a further occasion).
