What does it mean to be human in the modern world? This question has been answered in radically different ways across history. While traditional civilizations saw human beings as spiritual creatures bound by moral obligations, modern thought took a different turn. It redefined humanity as a mind-body complex driven primarily by desires, passions, and the pursuit of material fulfilment. This shift in understanding has profound implications for how we conceive of progress, development, and the very purpose of life. The dominant paradigm of development, which shapes global policies and individual aspirations today, is rooted in this modern conception of human nature.
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The modern view of ‘man as he is’
Traditional philosophies, whether rooted in Greek virtue ethics or Indian dharmic traditions, were concerned with “man as he ought to be”-an idealised vision of human potential guided by moral and spiritual principles. The modern era, however, brought a decisive shift toward understanding “man as he is.” This transition was significantly advanced by thinkers like Giambattista Vico and Thomas Hobbes, who rejected metaphysical speculation in favour of empirical observation of human behaviour.
Thomas Hobbes, in particular, articulated a materialist view of human nature that would become foundational to modern thought. For Hobbes, human beings are essentially material entities whose actions can be explained through the motions and interactions of physical bodies. He did not believe in an immortal soul or a mind separate from the body. Instead, he saw humans as machines driven by the push and pull of pleasure and pain, relentlessly pursuing their own self-interest. This perspective strips away the spiritual dimension of human existence, reducing it to a mechanism of desires and calculations.
In Hobbes’s view, what we call “good” is simply whatever satisfies our personal desires, and “evil” is whatever we wish to avoid. There is no objective moral order independent of human wants. This understanding elevates the fulfilment of material desires-wealth, power, and prestige-to the central purpose of existence. When life is conceived in these terms, economic development naturally becomes the supreme value, the measure against which all progress is judged.
Man as a “broken totality” and “open-ended” being
The modern paradigm presents a distinctive view of human identity. Drawing on insights from philosophers like Iris Murdoch and John Cooper, we can understand this view as portraying the human being as a “broken totality”-a fragmented entity characterised by unlimited and often conflicting desires. Unlike traditional conceptions that saw humans as complete beings capable of achieving wholeness through virtue or spiritual discipline, the modern view sees humans as fundamentally incomplete and restless.
Murdoch’s moral philosophy is particularly illuminating here. She recognised that human consciousness is dominated by what she called the “fat relentless ego”-a persistent self-centredness that clouds our perception of reality. According to her analysis, the main forces shaping our being are fantasies, distortions, and egoistic desires rarely aligned with genuine moral development. This creates a picture of human nature as inherently fractured, pulled in multiple directions by competing impulses.
This fragmentation makes human life fundamentally “open-ended.” Unlike traditional worldviews that prescribed definite goals and limits to human striving-such as the Indian framework where dharma (moral duty) was meant to govern kama (desire) and artha (material wealth)-the modern paradigm removes such constraints. There are no predetermined limits to what humans should desire or acquire. Life becomes an endless project of maximising satisfaction without any ultimate telos or purpose beyond the satisfaction itself.
The consequence is a being whose identity is defined by endless striving. Contentment becomes not a goal but an obstacle to overcome. The individual must constantly seek more-more wealth, more power, more recognition-because there is no principle that says “enough.” This creates what might be called a psychology of perpetual dissatisfaction, where the modern focus on the self disconnects individuals from a “larger order” and shared values that might otherwise provide meaning and limits.
Instrumental rationality and strategic power
Within the dominant paradigm, reason itself undergoes a transformation. Rather than serving as a faculty for discerning truth, achieving wisdom, or regulating moral life, reason becomes primarily instrumental-a tool for calculating the optimal means to fulfil whatever desires happen to motivate us.
The philosopher Charles Taylor has offered perhaps the most penetrating analysis of this shift. In his influential work The Malaise of Modernity, Taylor identifies instrumental reason as one of the central problems of contemporary life. As he explains, instrumental reason focuses on calculating the most efficient application of means to achieve given ends, prioritising utility, productivity, and profit without necessarily considering broader ethical or moral implications.
This understanding of reason traces back to Hobbes’s reduction of human motivation to the avoidance of pain and pursuit of pleasure. If our passions and desires are the ultimate arbiters of what we should pursue, then reason’s role is reduced to figuring out how best to satisfy them. As Taylor notes, the dominance of such instrumental thinking leads to the commodification of human life and the natural world, where everything, including relationships and nature, is valued primarily in terms of its usefulness for satisfying our wants.
Human superiority over other creatures, in this framework, consists not in any capacity for higher understanding or moral regulation but in our strategic power-our superior ability to plan, calculate, and acquire. We are not wiser than other animals; we are simply better at getting what we want. This represents a profound flattening of traditional ideas about human dignity and purpose.
The loss of meaning and moral horizons
Taylor identifies three major malaises resulting from this paradigm: the path of individualism leading to a loss of meaning and moral horizon; the primacy of instrumental reason leading to a loss of ends or purpose beyond narrow calculation; and the consequent loss of personal and political freedom. When efficiency and cost-benefit analysis become the dominant mode of decision-making in all spheres of life, something essential about human existence is lost.
The role of discord in progress and culture
Perhaps the most paradoxical element of the dominant development paradigm is its claim that conflict, competition, and what might seem like vices actually drive human progress. This idea finds its most sophisticated expression in Immanuel Kant’s concept of “unsocial sociability.”
In his 1784 essay Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View, Kant defined unsocial sociability as the human tendency to enter into society, combined with a constant resistance that threatens to break up this society. We are simultaneously drawn to community and inclined to isolate ourselves and pursue our own advantage at others’ expense. Kant argued that this antagonistic quality awakens latent human powers that would otherwise remain dormant.
In Kant’s striking formulation, without the unamiable characteristics of unsociability from which opposition springs, all human talents would remain hidden. He compared humans to trees in a forest: each tree, seeking air and sunlight from others, must strive upward, thereby achieving beautiful, straight stature. Trees growing in isolated freedom put out branches at random and grow stunted and crooked. Similarly, competition and conflict among humans drive the transition from barbarism to civilisation, developing talents, refining taste, and establishing the foundations of moral thought.
This means that desires for honour, power, and possession-traditionally viewed as vices to be overcome-become necessary engines of progress. The first true steps from barbarism to culture occur not through harmony and cooperation but through the productive tension of competing interests. Discord becomes not a problem to be solved but a feature to be embraced.
The malleability of human nature
Supporting this view is the modern concept of human nature as fundamentally malleable-what philosophers have called the tabula rasa or blank slate idea. Rousseau’s challenge to Hobbes argued that people are born neither good nor bad but as blank slates shaped by society and environment. Human nature itself becomes something that can be transformed through interaction with a changing external world.
Similarly, some interpretations suggest that the process of satisfying desires can itself cultivate positive qualities. Through the discipline of working to fulfil our wants, interacting with others in pursuit of our goals, and learning from the friction of social life, humans potentially develop capacities for cooperation and even kindness. The market, the political arena, and other competitive spaces become schools for human improvement-not despite their competitive nature but because of it.
This view has profound implications for development theory. If human nature is malleable, then development is not merely about providing material goods but about transforming human beings themselves. The institutions, incentives, and environments created by development policies are understood to shape the very nature of the people living within them.
The consequences for development thinking
The modern view of human nature directly shapes what we understand development to mean and how we measure it. If humans are essentially desire-satisfying machines, then development is about expanding the means for satisfaction-increasing GDP, multiplying consumer choices, and removing obstacles to acquisition. If conflict and competition drive progress, then development strategies should harness rather than suppress these forces.
This explains why instrumental rationality has come to dominate development discourse. Projects are evaluated primarily through cost-benefit analysis. Success is measured in quantitative terms-income levels, growth rates, consumption patterns. Questions about meaning, community, spiritual well-being, or the quality of human relationships are often marginalised as “soft” concerns secondary to the hard data of economic performance.
Yet as thinkers like Taylor have pointed out, this paradigm generates its own problems. When all of life is subjected to instrumental calculation, when there are no ends beyond the satisfaction of desires, when competition replaces cooperation as the primary social dynamic, human beings may find themselves materially richer but spiritually impoverished-achieving development by one measure while losing something essential by another.
What do you think? Does the modern conception of human nature-as a desiring, competing, materially-oriented being-capture what is essential about us? Or does it miss something crucial that traditional perspectives understood better?
References
- https://iep.utm.edu/vico/
- https://iep.utm.edu/hobmoral/
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/murdoch/
- https://www.platoforphilosophy.com/post/ethics-of-authenticity
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Taylor_(philosopher)
- https://www.numberanalytics.com/blog/understanding-charles-taylor-philosophy
- https://www.philosophyhammer.com/text.php?id=171
- https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/kant/universal-history.htm
- https://philosophynow.org/issues/140/Kant_Conflict_and_Universal_History
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_nature
- https://idealsandidentities.com/2022/01/07/charles-taylor-the-malaise-of-modernity-in-the-21-century/
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