The Consensus on Human Nature
"The descriptions of how people think, feel, and act. These descriptions are studied within psychology and philosophy.""
Everyone talks about "human nature" like it's a settled question. It isn't.
Two thousand years of philosophy and psychology, and we still can’t agree on the basics: Are humans fundamentally rational beings who occasionally slip up? Or are we emotional creatures who occasionally think clearly?
The answer determines everything — how we build societies, how we judge each other, how we understand our own behavior.
Two camps keep emerging across centuries. And the debate between them reveals something profound about how we see ourselves.
Plato is to Aristotle as Freud is to Pinker
Plato had a complicated view of human nature. He thought of human nature as having three distinct parts, calling it the “Tripartite Soul.” These parts were the rational soul that governed the logical intellect. Then, the spirited soul was the source of emotions and courage. And lastly, there was the appetitive soul, which was associated with desires and bodily needs.
Aristotle, however, thought that the defining feature of humans was our capacity to be rational. He talked about how humans were social and that morals were important, but our rationality set us apart.
Similarly Freud had a complicated view of human nature that mirrored Plato’s view, where there was an interplay between three elements: the id, ego, and superego that pull at the human psyche.
However, again, like Aristotle, the modern psychologist Steven Pinker focuses on rationality. He calls on humans to be rational to mitigate potential chaos.
Plato and Freud’s concepts unified
Freud’s theory of the mind like Plato describes three components: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id can be seen as analogous to Plato’s appetite, representing the instinctual and primitive drives 💪. The ego, like Plato’s reason, represents the rational and conscious aspect of the mind, mediating between the id’s demands and the external reality 🧠. The superego, similar to Plato’s spirit, represents internalized societal values and moral standards ❤️.
| Plato | Emoji | Freud |
|---|---|---|
| Reason- rational, logical, and concerned with the most profound and abstract matters | 🧠 | Ego- operates on the reality principle, responsible for decision-making and problem-solving |
| Spirit- associated with emotions, passions, and desires related to social standing and honor | ❤️ | Superego- moral part of the psyche, internalizes societal rules, moral standards, and values |
| Appetite- all the primal, fundamental drives such as hunger, thirst, sexual desire, and other bodily urges | 💪 | Id- instinctual part of the mind, operates on the pleasure principle, seeking immediate satisfaction of basic drives |
Pinker calling for Rationality
If only we could purge all the misinformation and fake news. If only we could establish a ministry of truth. If only people were smarter and more rational.
It’s easy to boil things down to being rational and irrational, it makes everything black and white. Who doesn’t want to live in a simple world?
- “I am right and you are wrong”,
- “I am rational, you are irrational”
- “I was once wrong but now I have learned and am right again, I was irrational but now I am back to being rational”
- “We are not making progress because we are irrational and we need to be more rational”
What if everything wasn’t that simple? What if we are oversimplifying the problem by boiling human nature down to the pursuit of being rational?
Explaining the repeated calls for rationality
Freud talked in great depth about his theory of the conscious and unconscious mind. He suggested that a significant portion of our mental processes occurs outside of our conscious awareness. Freud thought that the unconscious mind contains repressed thoughts, memories, desires, and unresolved conflicts that influence our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
A potential reason why discussions often focus on the rational aspect of the psyche, while neglecting the other parts is because the rational or conscious mind is more readily accessible and controllable. We have a direct awareness of our conscious thoughts and can easily articulate our logical ideas.
In contrast, the unconscious aspects of the psyche are not immediately accessible. It is easier to critique someone’s logic than it is their perceived morals or instincts.
By historicair - Structural-Iceberg.svg by Jordangordanier, Public Domain, Link
Andrew Huberman on the model of the mind
Here is Andrew Huberman and Dr. Paul Conti, M.D., who trained at Stanford School of Medicine talking about this iceberg model of the mind.
Huberman Lab Iceberg Model
The Pattern That Won’t Go Away
Here’s what’s interesting: the three-part model keeps showing up.
Plato. Freud. Modern neuroscience (reptilian brain, limbic system, neocortex). The Enneagram’s three intelligence centers — head, heart, and gut.
Maybe this isn’t coincidence. Maybe humans really do operate on three distinct frequencies, and different thinkers keep rediscovering the same fundamental architecture.
The Enneagram maps directly onto these ancient frameworks — fear-based thinking, shame-based feeling, anger-based instinct. It’s not descended from Plato or Freud, but it arrived at the same structure.
Which raises the question: If we keep finding the same pattern across millennia, maybe human nature isn’t as mysterious as we pretend.
Maybe we just don’t like what the pattern reveals about ourselves.