ABSTRACT
It is currently unfashionable to argue for a relatively autonomous concept of human nature that is independent of social and economic circumstances and institutional conditions. The widely accepted and often unquestioned philosophical assumption, so evident in the work of Rousseau and Marx and their remaining adherents, is that it is social circumstances which determine the nature of human nature and that, if only the ‘right’ changes were made in social and institutional arrangements, these will bring about significant changes in human behaviour. To some extent there is a truism here. The important objection to this approach, however, arises from the in-built belief that this process has no terminal point-a stage beyond which individuals may be impervious to directional, even directed, change. Most major political programmes appear to me either to be based upon a complete neglect of any consideration of human nature or to include an erroneous notion of man being subject to social forces which ‘oversocialise’ him (Wrong 1961).
