The Biosocial Essence of Man from the Standpoint of Evolutionary Anthropology

The article presents a biological approach to the problem of the essence of man and society. The focus is on the contradiction between human’s humanitarian concepts and the biological approach to this issue. Humanitarian concepts within the framework of cultural studies, philosophy, economics and other sciences represent a person as a purely cultural and rational being. The evolutionary, biological roots of man are ignored or directly denied. Descartes’ words “I think, therefore I exist” are the best illustration of the definition of human nature from the point of view of humanitarians. But research in the field of ethology, sociobiology and genetics over the past 70-80 years has forced us to disagree with humanitarian approaches. The biologists’ conclusions suggest that the biological, evolutionary nature of man continues to be the basis on which both individual behavior and large-scale social processes depend. The essence of man is predetermined by his evolutionary history, which is essentially a stochastic process and not programmed in advance. Biological and evolutionary determinism can be considered a relevant theory explaining social processes. From the point of view of modern evolutionary anthropology, man is a biosocial being who remains heavily dependent on his natural self. It is necessary to recognize the serious inconsistency of human nature, since reason does not dominate the life of either an individual or society as a whole. This inconsistency is seen as the reason for the challenges faced by modern humanity. We are also talking about global issues such as general militarization, the tendency to resolve conflicts by force, hunger and mass diseases, stratification of society, environmental pollution, and much more.

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