Structure of Human Nature : Towards a new image of the human

The purpose of this study is to clarify tha structure of human nature so as to make it possible to synthesize various kinds of outlooks of human beings and to prepare to image what humanbeings should be from now on. First of all, the writer gives the definition of the word \u27human nature\u27 as the total system of desires that all human beings have in common in the capacity of Homo Sapiens, biologically speaking, And paying attention to human nervous system, of which the hierarchical structure is formalized by an physiologist, T. Tokizane, the writer divides human behaviors into four levels, namely, reflex and regulative behavior, instinctive behavior, adaptive behavior and value-oriented behavior. Then, some kinds of desires are made to correspond to each level of behavior according to what kind of desire is required to drive that behavior. So, there are four levels of desires, namely, the physiological desires (the most elementary desires), the instinctive desires (the first elementary desires), the learning desires (the second elementary desires) and the existential desires (the third elementary desires). The most elementary desires are needs for sleep, breathing and excretion, the second elementary desires include all those which are necessary for the maintenance of individuals and species. The second elementary desires are those of feeling, cognition, exercise and symbolization which make possible various kind of learning behaviors and the third elementary desires can be divided from the ontological point of view into three aspects, that is. the desires of self-estimation, self-actualization and self-integration, of which the relation is circular. With this preliminary analysis, the writer presents the model of the hierarchical structure of desires divided into four levels. At the same time, this model shows, by definition, the total structure of human nature. In the past, many kind of outlooks of human beings were apt to assert to be able to explain all the human behaviors by one or two special desires, for example in case of S.Freud, or by the special level of desires. The outlook of human beings that may be imaged from the the law that controls the physiological desires is to compare a man to a kind of delicate machine, If the first or second elementary desires were regarded as the most essential urge for a man, then the outlook of human beings would be imaged as if a man were a rat or an ape. The view that the extential desires, especially self-actualization desire, are the most fundamental for a man will lead us to image human beings as active and creative beings. All these these opinions are not always wrong but partial because of neglecting the hierarchical structure of human desires. Finally, the writer suggests the possibility to sythesize these various kind of outlooks of human beings from the viewpoint of the total structure of human beings