A critique of liberal conception of human nature

The aim of this study is to present a critique of human nature conceptualisation of liberal thought which has a constitutive importance on formation of modern age. As a conceptualisation updated on door steps of every new age, human nature contained the vital codes of new society. Universalising the form of human character in a certain historical period and a set of social relations by taking it out of the time has always been a basis for justification of newly built social system. Therefore, analysing the fictiveness of human nature defined in the direction of specific aims forms one of the primary bases of a total system critique. In this way, our effort aims at describing which historical needs shaped the conception of human nature underlying the idea of individual in the modern age. In our study, historical background of defining human as nature was tried to be presented. As associated with the development way of scientific thought, the interaction of this case with the liberal thought arising in the Europe and market economy was emphasized. The liberal human nature concept became concrete in the transition of feudalism to modernity, was tried to be analysed to reveal its content gathered from historical conflicts. Through this way, our study focuses on the John Locke's ideas of state of nature and human nature who is reputed to be the founder of liberal thought. Locke, contributed the transmission of natural law tradition to modernity, was investigated in his effort of combining the qualities of bourgeois person with human nature as part of the natural right theory. In this context, roll played by the concept of property as Locke's main concept was told. As the first comprehensive critique of modernity, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's critique of civil society is also the first step of our critique in this study. The limits of Rousseau's moral critique taking a stand of society and equality against liberalism's fiction of rational person was presented. With his position as the critic of the liberal fiction and the "critic of critique", Marx's analyses on historicity, on relation of mind with labour and on sociality form the main base of our critique in this study. In conclusion, our study points out the restrictiveness of liberal conception of human nature supposed to be static and universal. It's argued that assertion of liberal thought about immutability of bourgeois society referring to human nature is baseless. Keywords: Nature, Human Nature, State of Nature, Natural Law, Property,Individual, Negative Liberty, Need, Feudalism, Liberalism, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx