Mark Forstater's Blog

From my journal- July 29 2002

August 4, 2009 at 9:55 am Leave a comment

We have a negative conception of human nature, while the Taoists and Confucians had a positive conception. This means we also have a negative conception of nature itself, which may come from the experience of living through the plague, or it may come from much earlier- from Christianity itself, which had a view of fallen man and fallen nature. Christianity may be at root a negative philosophy and so incapable of being reformed. How to find a positive conception of human nature now? The only way may be through the new cosmology, through science, since this is not touched by Christian negativity. The positive nature of humanity means that it can adapt to change and improve situations, to turn negative to positive. It is capable of transformation. The problem is that psychology since Freud, and religion and much of philosophy is negative or nihilistic or cynical or sceptical, all attitudes that make real change very difficult.

Entry filed under: My Old Journals.