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Niccolo Machiavelli's View On Human Nature

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Social/Political Psychology One of the interest parts in human in this era emphasizes on how people interact and influence one another in groups. Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), an Italian bureaucrat wrote in his book The Prince in 1532 about guideline for how to take over, defeat, and rule groups of people. The content of the book is based on his observations and descriptions of human behavior. He suggests that “most people can easily be manipulated to behave as a leader wishes, even against their own best interests. Thus, in order to achieve this goal, the leader must only exploit the people’s desire for self-defense and their need to maintain social cohesion or unity among society. Machiavelli argues that the best leader is the one who …show more content…

In Plato, the supreme ideal of human life is to recognize the idea of the Good. For Aristotle, reason is what makes a person human, and he said that virtue is best realized in the communal life of the polis (city-state) and that the human being is a social animal (or polis-animal). Greek philosophers, generally speaking, held the view that reason is the essence of human nature, and that if a person 's reason is allowed to operate fully, that person will become an ideal being. According to Shadiya (2012), Karl Marx is a sociologist proposed a theory that human beings are the outcomes of the materials and economic circumstances. Therefore, they have no fixed and independent nature. In other words, for Marx, there is no such thing as human nature. The real nature of human beings is consisted of the totality of social relations. They will change, according to the changes in society. According to Marx, society will influence people due to the moral, ideas and attitudes. Stevenson (as cited in Shadiya, 2012) in his words “it is not the consciousness of men that determines their beings, but, on the contrary, their social existence/being determines their …show more content…

According to Christianity doctrines, human beings are made of both materials, that is dust from the ground, and immaterial, that is soul or mind. So, when human beings die, they only die as physical body, and are raised as spiritual body. Islamic View on Human Nature Human consists of various combinations which are biological, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral elements. Islam views human from two different perspectives; spiritual and metaphysical. In reality, psychology deals with the soul. ‘Psyche’ means soul. From Islamic perspective, human are dualistic possessing both a body and a soul. Human made up of two parts; body and soul in which body as a vehicle for the soul. Thoughts, feelings and behavior affect the soul. They are interconnecting one another. Mohyuddin reported that there is components in human nature. Qur’an uses words like nafs, ruh, and qalb to represent the nature of man. Spirit is transcendent and the center of man’s being. Whereas soul (nafs), in its downward or corporeal tendency, is attached to the body and in its upward or spiritual tendency, is attached to the spirit

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