LOVE AND THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN NATURE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6574288Keywords:
creation, cult, culture, evolution, human being, love, natureAbstract
This is the love story of human nature, of human culture, and of human cult. This story may scarcely make sense to many who see man, as Nietzsche wrote, ‘a thing dark and veiled’ (in the first section of his third ‘untimely meditation’). Should they concede however to read on, they will know for themselves, and by themselves, whether the half-forgotten ‘know yourself ’ still carries any weight these days. In this most modest contribution to a dignified debate, I argue that the origin of human nature is truly in the love of God. To wit, God’s love of humans led to humans’ love of God, and we grew fully human as we fell in love with God. ‘We love because he first loved us’ (1 John 4:19). And, as the Holy Father Benedict XVI said half a century ago, ‘The clay became man at that moment in which a being for the first time was capable of forming, however dimly, the thought “God”’. Now, my working hypothesis is that, far back in time, in times far less sophisticated than our own, to think ‘God’ was to love God, and this sort of love, for God, love at the first sight, made us human. The origin of human love, to be specific, the origin of myriad human loves of fellow humans, is in the human love of God.
References
• Arendt, Hannah, ‘Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government’, Review of Politics 15 (1953: 3) 303-327.
• Aristotle, The Complete Works: The Revised Oxford Translation, edited by Jonathan Barnes, 2 volumes, Bollingen Series 71:2, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1984, xiii + 2487 p. (Source text: Aristoteles, Graece: ex recensione Immanuelis Bekkeri, 5 volumes, Berlin, Reimer, 1831-1870.)
• [Benedict XVI] Horn, Stephan Otto, SDS – Wiedenhofer, Siegfried (editors), Creation and Evolution: A Conference with Pope Benedict XVI in Castel Gandolfo, translated by Michael J. Miller, San Francisco, Ignatius, 2008, 210 p.
• Besançon, Alain, Les origines intellectuelles du léninisme, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1977. 327 p.
• [The Bible] Senior, Donald – Collins, John J. – Getty, Mary Ann (editors), The Catholic Study Bible: The New American Bible Revised Edition: Translated from the Ancient Languages with Critical Use of All the Ancient Sources, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 20163, 2560 p. [multiple pagination] (Source text for the Hebrew Bible/ the Old Testament: Karl Elliger et al.
(editors), Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, Stuttgart, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 19975, 1629 p. ; Source text for the New Testament: Barbara Aland et al. (editors), Novum Testamentum Graece, based on the work of Eberhard and Erwin Nestle, Stuttgart, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 201228, 1008 p.)
• Brown, Francis et al., ’Correlation of the KHS Tuff of the Kibish Formation to Volcanic Ash Layers at Other Sites, and the Age of Early Homo Sapiens (Omo I and Omo II)’, Journal of Human Evolution, 63 (2012: 4) 577-585.
• Cacioppo, John – Petty, Richard, ‘The Need for Cognition’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42 (1982: 1) 116-131.
• Callaway, Ewen, Oldest Homo Sapiens Fossil Claim Rewrites Our Species’ History, http://www.nature.com/news/oldest-homo-sapiens-fossil-claim-rewrites-our-species-history-1.22114.
• Dancă, Wilhelm, Mircea Eliade: Definitio sacri, Iași, Ars Longa, 1998.
• Darwin, Charles, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, London, Murray, 18742, 688 p.
• Dweck, Carol, ‘Forum’, in Michael Tomasello (with Carol Dweck, Joan Silk, Brian Skyrms, and Elizabeth Spelke), Why We Cooperate: Based on the 2008 Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Stanford, Cambridge MA, Boston Review, 2009, 206 p., 125-134.
• Eliade, Mircea, The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1969, 180 p.
• Foley, Robert – Mirazon Lahr, Marta, ‘Mode 3 Technologies and the Evolution of Modern Humans’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 7 (1997: 1) 3-36.
• Hinton, David (Translated and with Commentary by), The Four Chinese Classics: Tao Te Ching – Chuang Tzu – Analects – Mencius, Berkeley, Counterpoint, 2013, 575 p.
• Hublin, Jean-Jacques et al., ‘New Fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the Pan-African Origin of Homo Sapiens’, Nature, 546 (7657) 289-292.
• Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason, translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, xi + 785 p. (Source text: Kant, Immanuel, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Hamburg, 1956.) Love and the Origin of Human Nature 643
• Kruglanski, Arie – Webster, Daniel, ‘Motivated Closing of the Mind: “Seizing” and “Freezing”’, Psychological Review, 103 (1996: 2) 263-283.
• Lonergan, Bernard J. F., SJ, Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964, edited by Robert C. Crocken, SJ, Frederick E. Crowe, SJ, and Robert M. Doran, SJ, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan 6, Toronto, Buffalo, and London, University of Toronto Press, 1996, xv + 278 p.
• –– ––, Method in Theology, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 19902, xii + 405 p.
• Martin, Roderick, ‘The Concept of Power: A Critical Defence’, The British Journal of Sociology, 22 (1971, 3) 240-256.
• May, Simon, Love: A History, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2011, xiv + 294 p.
• McDougall, Ian et al., ‘Sapropels and the Age of Hominins Omo I and II, Kibish, Ethiopia’, Journal of Human Evolution, 55 (2008: 3) 409-420.
• –– ––, ‘Stratigraphic Placement and Age of Modern Humans from Kibish, Ethiopia’, Nature, 433 (2005: 7027) 733-736.
• Meyer, Marvin (editor), The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition, New York, Harper, 2007, 844 p.
• Meyer, Matthias et al., ‘Nuclear DNA Sequences from the Middle Pleistocene Sima de los Huesos Hominins’, Nature, 531 (2016: 7595) 504-507.
• Mithen, Steven, The Prehistory of the Mind: A Search for the Origins of Art, Religion and Science. London: Phoenix, 1998. 357 p.
• Nietzsche, Friedrich, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, edited by Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter, translated by R. J. Hollingdale, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, xlii + 247 p.
• –– ––, Untimely Meditations, edited by Daniel Breazeale, translated by R. J. Hollingdale, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, xlvii + 276 p.
• Nye, Joseph S., ‘The Changing Nature of World Power’, Political Science Quarterly, 105 (1990, 2) 177-192.
• Orwell, George, Nineteen Eighty-Four, edited with an Introduction and Notes by John Bowen, Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2021, xxxviii + 250 p.
• Plato, Complete Works, edited, with introduction and notes, by John M. Cooper, associate editor D. S. Hutchinson, Indianapolis, Hackett, 1997. (Source text: Platonos, Opera: recognovit brevique adnotatione critica instruxit Joannes Burnet, 5 volumes, Oxford Classical Texts, Oxford, Clarendon, 1905-19152.)
• Renfrew, Lord Colin, ‘Neuroscience, Evolution and the Sapient Paradox: The Factuality of Value and of the Sacred’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 363 (2008: 1499) 2043.
• –– ––, Prehistory: The Making of the Human Mind, London, Phoenix, 2008, 254 p.
• Richter, Daniel et al., ‘The Age of the Hominin Fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the Origins of the Middle Stone Age’, Nature, 546 (2017: 7657) 293-296.
• Rossano, Matt, Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010, 294 p.
• Searle, John R., Mind, Language and Society: Philosophy in the Real World, New York, Basic Books, 1998, x + 175 p.
• Tomasello, Michael, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 2000, 248 p.
• Voegelin, Eric, ‘Autobiographical Reflections’, Collected Works, 34 volumes, Columbia, University of Missouri Press, 1990-20092, volume 34, p. 9-148.
• –– ––, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism: Two Essays, Washington, Regnery, 1997, 114 p.
• –– ––, The New Science of Politics: An Introduction, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1952, 193 p.
• –– ––, Die politische Religionen, Stockholm, Berman-Fischer, 19392, 67 p.
• Weber, Max, Collected Methodological Writings, edited by Hans Henrik Bruun and Sam Whimster, translated by Hans Henrik Bruun, London and New York, Routledge, 2012, xxxiii + 563 p.
