jason rice wrote:
> Marx came to view humans as entirely dependant on their historical period,
> not that it just shaped their perspectives, but actually founded them? But
> what about the biological parameters that all humans share, the structure of
> our eyes, the number of fingers we are have on each hand, our physical
> needs. Wouldnt these provide some commonality across historical periods?
I suppose so -- but as soon as we attempt to describe those commonalities things get pretty confused. Imagine the difference in the very meaning of pain before and after the development of more or less effective pain medications. And hips broke in 1890 as in 1990 -- but in the former case that was apt to be a death sentence but when I broke mine in 1990 they replaced it with concentric steel and plastic balls at the top of a steel spike down my thigh. And of course with the development of weapons that did not depend on strength or agility, those physical characteristics changed in their meaning.
Most importantly, however, when people spoke (speak) of human nature or a human essence they are seldom referring to the facts of our biology. (Except for those Panglossian idiots who think they can find an evolutionary (biological) basis for rape or for older men marrying younger women.) And what they are speaking of tends to be something very hard to specify except in almost mystic terms (as in Ken's positing of a "essence" that language alienates us from).
On the other hand -- we do need to steer clear of those tendencies in thought which, moving from the point I made above, that the meaning of biological fact is determined through historically, tend to deny the biological fact altogether. And for that reason it may be important to emphasize not only what we share biologically with humans of other epochs but what we share biologically with homo habilis and homo erectus, etc
Carrol
>
> Not identical, of course, Im not implying that, but a definite grouping of
> shared characteristics that at some level allows one human to relate with
> others, no matter their historical distance.
> Jason Rice
> >
> >
>
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