Value in Humanity

Value in Humanity

For the longest time, we have been looking for the truly meaning in human nature, and that question has never been fully solved even though many great philosophers of all time had been working on it. Each of them has their own senses of human being and has good reasons for their thinking, then other philosophers analyze those ideals and either partly agree with them then add more supportive thoughts to fulfill the whole thing, or disagree with the thought then draw another path based on their own way of thinking. For instance, we can think of Descartes, one of the most influential philosophers of all time, who comes up with the famous phrase: “I think therefore I am”. In his time, modern science rapidly develops, and they find out all things exist in this whole world are just made of matter and motion, including us, which means we are as meaningless as other things appearing around us. Therefore, to save human being from that dark and cold conclusion, Descartes reminds the world of human soul, and he assures that it is what makes meaning for humankind.

Long after Descartes’s time, Nietzsche, one of the recent philosophers who is passion in Descartes’s work, finds the truth in the Cartesian claim that there is no meaning in this world except for human minds, then he takes up that ideal and encourages people to live for our wills in order to create meaning in our lives. He provides us the whole picture of human nature that is full of meaning and value by telling us to seek for our freedom in life; however, this cannot be the whole truth since it fails to account for the importance of family and community that Nietzsche has left out.

        To fully understand the way of those two philosophers’ thinking, we first need to draw back from Descartes, where he starts his theory of human mind and how he comes up with that ideal. Secondly, he uses his way of thinking to respond to the major problem of human nature as the modern science claims: there is nothing in this world that has value in it, even mankind. Years after that, Nietzsche reviews Descartes’s works and takes his ideal to the next level of how human being should live to become source of meaning by following our wills instead of others; he wants us to live a meaningful life since that would be his definition of human nature. In my opinion, we might create the greatness for this world by following Nietzsche’s path; nevertheless, no matter how great we become, if we, to achieve those goals of being incredible, cut off our relationship with our families and communities without any concerns, we could never be as close as the definition of human being.

For his whole life, Descartes always has the desire for the certainty; he thinks we no longer understand the world full of essences like the way Plato and Aristotle think of. For them, that is the deepest reality, but for Descartes, he does not feel right about everything in this world. Therefore, he spends time looking for the absolute certainty since, according to him, that would be the best foundation to build up other theories in life. He suggests doubting everything that we have known of; however, this is a very difficult thing to do because we are used to believe in our senses, and we don’t seem like to change that habit. Therefore, he comes up with the solution for that problem by thinking of an evil genius that makes us think the way we do, and by using that tool, now we can freely doubt everything without any concerns. The reason why Descartes wants to do this is that after we have doubt things, whatever left standing would be absolutely certain, which is what he is seeking for. This is where Descartes find the most certain thing in this world which is “I”, the one that does all the thinking; “I think therefore I am”. For Descartes, the fact that “I exist” is absolutely endurable. We can be uncertain about things like the cup we are holding in our hand, or the tree we are seeing through our eyes; even parts of our bodies such as our hands, we can for sure see them, but that doesn’t mean surely they exist. Descartes states in his second meditation that, I am the thing that exists as long as I am doing the thinking; in other words, the only thing that I admit that exists is my mind^[1]. This statement that he makes is very crucial; this is the starting point for Descartes: he finally found something that is not doubtable, and something that he can hold on to in order to build up a firm foundation of knowledge.