Customer Reviews

The Western Illusion of Human Nature: With Reflections on the Long History of Hierarchy, Equality and the Sublimation of Anarchy in the West, and ... on Other Conceptions of the Human Condition

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Unlike the other reviewer here, my rating doesn't relate to the degree to which I agree or disagree with this or that in this book, but rather the quality of the book itself. It's very thought provoking, short, insightful, and useful to a reader pondering human nature or other culture concepts. It's also very densely written, and wanders in tone from seriousness to coyness. I suppose the former is to be expected in a short work tackling such a complex topic - the author would no doubt wish to cover all his bases as deeply as possible, hence, dense, sometimes convoluted writing. The latter is an academic tic one may or may not want to forgive. For these reasons I'm rating it less than the five it would otherwise deserve.

As to the content, I don't think the other reviewer quite grasped it, although it's hard to really know what she's talking about since he provides no evidence of her own to qualify or back up her simple assertions that what Sahlins is discussing is actually universal. I'm really not sure what she means when she says "it's a well documented aspect of human nature" and "it is not about human nature [but] about human behavior under certain specific conditions."

This makes no sense. Sahlins is arguing that the concept of "human nature" as utilized in Western Civilization excludes culturally and socially mediated behaviors, and thus pits an imagined "culture-less human animal and behavior" against the culturally-informed behavior that is dependent on society and circumstances. This is a very strange, very distorting point of view to have. Evidence suggests that, to the extent that there is a base "human nature," it includes social activity and culture, without which no human is fully human. Our pre-human ancestors had culture, which influenced evolution of current humans. In other words, our biology has evolved along with our aptitude for culture, and to speak of "human behavior" is to speak of culturally-informed behavior.

So, to claim that Sahlins is writing about some sort of ideology that is couched in "human behavior under certain specific conditions" is in actuality to make his exact point for him; and to say that it is somehow both contingent on specific conditions, and also universal, is oxymoronic. The ideology of "human nature" as separate and below our aptitude for culture is in fact a culturally specific belief on its own.

Cheers,
Adam

this is an exciting and thought provoking piece by mr sahlins that contains his personal reflections on historical interpretations of a certain kind of human behaviour

i, personally, disagree with him on two counts. first, what he labels as the 'western illusion of human nature', that, basically, humans are savage by nature, is not a western illusion. it is an interpretation of observation that, although distributes in space and time unevenly, certainly does not peak in 'the west'. second, it is not 'of human nature'. it is about a particular kind of human behaviour that can occur under certain conditions

an intriguing, informative and occasionally challenging read. the three stars reflect not as much the value of the book than, say, the extent of my agreement with it