— Overview
This page follows a set of short answers on how thinkers have pictured the human being. Plato defines a fully human person as one in whom spirit, desire, and reason are joined in inner harmony, not carried away by feeling. Reason, in this telling, guides spirit and desire, and that harmony opens the way to virtue. Aristotle holds that human beings should learn to exercise reason well because of an innate nature under nature; as an animal with intellect, a person is to live in the direction nature pursues and to realize justice.
Kant’s claim that the human being is “the legislator of nature” is read here as the capacity to decide moral action and to carry it out: through a good will, and through reason that makes laws and follows them. Hobbes starts from self-interest and the instinct to survive. In the state of nature, everyone is at war with everyone; a social contract is made, the account says, to escape that danger by placing control in an authority.
Confucian thought, in the answers given here, ties human nature to the good principle of nature and calls it good. A person is a social being who cultivates virtue in relationships. The same current, the account adds, accepted a feudal ideology for social stability, and has been criticized for strengthening the ruling group while putting morality forward. Other names appear only as unfilled headings and are not invented.
— Contents and key concepts
Spirit, desire, reason, and a legislator of nature
The first picture is Plato’s. A fully human person, in this account, is one in whom spirit, desire, and reason are joined in inner harmony, and who is not carried away by feeling. The three are to work with one another. Reason guides spirit and desire, and desire, properly held, can sit with that inner order. From that harmony, Plato is read as saying, a person can move toward true virtue.
Aristotle is asked why human beings should learn to exercise reason well. The answer given is innate nature, under nature. A human being is an animal with intellect, and is to live in the direction nature pursues, to inquire inwardly, to coexist with nature, and to realize justice. Kant’s phrase, that the human being is “the legislator of nature,” is taken to mean that a person decides moral action and carries it out. Through a good will, and through reason that makes laws and follows them, an independent moral judgment becomes possible. The categorical imperative is named as a moral law a rational being is to follow without a further condition. Those readings are left as the answers leave them, and later doctrines are not filled in.
A war of all, a contract, and a nature called good
Hobbes starts elsewhere. A person, in this telling, chooses rationally for self-preservation, from self-interest and from the instinct to survive. The state of nature is a war of all against all. To escape that danger, a contract is made that places control in an authority. The social contract, here, is a way out of conflict, not a portrait of a nature already good.
Confucian thought, in the answers given here, ties human nature to the good principle of nature and calls it good. A person is a social being who cultivates virtue in relationships. The same current, the account adds, accepted a feudal ideology for the sake of social stability, and has been criticized for strengthening the ruling group while putting morality forward. That criticism is left as it is made. Other names that appear only as unfilled headings are not invented.
Sources
- a set of short answers on views of the human being in Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hobbes, and on a Confucian reading of a nature tied to the good principle of nature, without inventing unfilled later doctrines.
Last updated: 14 November 2026
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