Post-Essentialist and Elimination of Human Nature

Human shares lot of traits with other species, but yet, human is not animal or plant. What makes us human?  Well, the more frequent question that we often heard in our daily conversation is not that but this, what make us more human? But this question already assuming a certain idea of human. In other words, what constitutes human is already given so the next thing is to develop the areas that still need to be improved, and moving toward that ideal. We are not dealing with this kind of question but much deeper and fundamental. The question we are exploring is with the assumption that we do not know why we are called as human and what makes us human, and therefore we inevitably need to dive into the discussion of human nature, one of the central issue in philosophy. To pause and think for awhile, Its quite funny that we as people who live in 21 th century, after thousand years of fall and rise of civilizations, and as the technological world emerge today, we still discussing this basic question, and perhaps, will always be also in the future.

In his book, What's Left of Human Nature? A Post-Essentialist, Pluralist, and Interactive Account of a Contested Concept, Maria Kronfeldner argue for the post-essentialist view of human nature. In the history of the debate, the traditional view of human nature is essentialist, to believe that there is an essence, the ontological status that makes us human. Kronfeldner argue that the essential explanation of human nature is already "dead" and by this she proposed the pluralist account of human nature. She bring three dimensions of human to the table, there are classificatory nature, explanatory nature, descriptive nature and those three serving as nonessentialist explanatory role, and according to Kronfeldner, these three classification of nature can stand apart and independent from the rubric of essentialism to which she claim as "outdated" are not needed.  The basis of his claim is because the essentialism according to Fronfeldner even cannot stand to the attack from the Darwinian challenge, the evolutionary thinking of human nature. 

According to Darwinian framework, the natural kinds of characteristics that shared by all members of Homo-Sapiens that explain who they are as human is actually none because the chemical kind of human might not be the same even within the same species despite they are in one genealogical relationship because of the process of evolution. Genealogy and variability are the two main reasons why Kronfeldner does not dubbed to essentialism. The reason why Kronfeldner disagree with the idea of essentialism is because there is always a human who does not fulfill all traits, listed by essentialism in biological sense, hence for her, essentialism is not a sufficient condition whereas genealogy tree of human can be a good indicator of to which one belong to the shared humanness way better. 

Biological variability always can make this variable happening whereby some owned the qualitative essence and the others do not. The reason of thinking in non-essentialism way is to hinder the dehumanization, and this is the main concern of Kronfieldner which reasonably sound. Take the case of disabled person who cannot not walk like normal person, can we say that they are human being since essentially, the common essential trait of being a human of having a leg that is strong enough to move is not there? we can also expand to the other traits such as think and talk, and so on. As she wrote in her book, "After all, there can always be a humanoid that is not a human in the biological sense." Since the nature of evolution is not stable but random and very fluid hence, we cannot expect a regularity form the process and therefore, the Darwinian Challenge of essentialism can conclude that there is neve be a sufficient explanatory of essence of Human/Homo Sapiens. When we do not hold to essentialism as Kronfeldner hope, the act of  dehumanization of mankind is weaken and even will be eradicated. 

At the end of the book, Kronfieldner try to build the case of elimination of human nature in normative essentialist and propose her own view, a view we can say as eliminativist. Moving even further from Darwinian post-Essentialist view to the elimination of the language of human nature, she argue that the elimination of essentialism cannot solve the problem of dehumanization unless one remove the language of human nature all together. She prefer the way of elimination of the concept because simply the revision or neutralizing way is not possible because it will still left the act of dehumanization. Although essentialism is removed and the definition of human nature or whatever it might language that one might use in substitution, the potential thread of dehumanization is still lingering as she argue, "Even if scientist use only a descriptive concept of humanness, dehumanization cannot be quarantined. A minimal descriptive concept merely describes how human at certain historical time are on average or by majority worldwide...Although human nature at a certain time, without assuming an essence (Without any classificatory, explanatory, or normative force attached to generalized properties), it will still have dehumanizing potential since individuals who do not conform to the generalization can still be dehumanized." Without using the language of human nature, we can just look upon the idea of genealogical nexus which naturally include rather than exclude. The elimivativist would like to prevented as much as possible the language of "human nature" and only through this road, we are in a right direction on discussing human and preventing an act of dehumanization. 

Personally, there are two things that I would like to comment. First, although Kronfeldner greatly present a very compelling arguments and exposes on how essentialism was often be seen as the main source of dehumanization, she did not consider the transcendental idea of essentialism in her writing. It is clear that she discuss the subject only from the naturalism perspectives. However, if the reason why she reject essentialism because of the changeable factor of evolution and the varieties that it brings, the transcendental ideas of what constitutes human qualitatively speaking is unchangeable and it could even hold as the basic foundation of three qualities of explanatory, descriptive and classificatory of human nature. Moreover, as in Christian tradition if we draw an example, the essentialism factor is the main thing that could hinder from dehumanization, regardless their biological deprived condition or missing a generally shared functionality. 

Second, variety does not always lead the the elimination of essentialism. Although I agree that there is always a missing essence in humanoid, there must be also an universal element that is substantial because empirically, we never see an extreme loop of tiger born out of  Homo Sapiens, so to speak. Even with with variations, we can still distinguished through a tight observed check-lists (may not always be 100%). Beside there are myriad variations in biological essence, by this we can still argue for potentialism and make a conclusion of several important and essential traits and distinct (Of course it must include the greater traits more than what Aristotle proposed such as mind-rationality or what Thomas Willis proposed, lips-laughter. Both can be mimicked and owned by Chimpanzees). Related to point number one, what makes us human that I proposed is the notion or essential soul of human that enable human to exercise faith and having the sense of religiosity. And this soul is immaterial and crated not by biological process but immediately by God. The next question one need to address is this, is it reasonable to believe the existence of soul? This question will bring us to another debate, so do not want to answer here but at least, what the notion of soul can accomplished in this whole issue of human nature is perhaps even greater than trying to eliminate the concept and language of "human nature." We can also find a benefits because through it, we could describe what make us human in a simple but clear and also, it can deal with the issue of dehumanization arguably more effective.