The nature versus nurture debate in philosophy questions how the environment affects one’s personality and intelligence. The concept of a blank slate or tabula rasa has been debated for centuries, with some arguing that only the environment shapes a child’s development. However, genetic influences have been discovered, and the idea of a soul also complicates the debate. Freud believed behavior stems from education, while Jung believed in a universal unconscious. Today, most agree that children are not blank slates but are influenced by both genetics and upbringing.
In philosophy, an often debated topic is the idea of how the environment affects the growth and change of one’s personality, intellectual gifts and the whole “being” of a person. This is part of the “nature versus nurture” argument that has plagued philosophers and many scientists for years. We now know that some things, including aspects of our personality, intelligence level, and ability to succeed in the world, can be genetically influenced in part. Yet, for thousands of years, some philosophers have argued that the infant is born with a clean slate or “blank slate,” arguing that only the environment influences what that child will learn and who they will become when they grow up.
This concept is one that appears in Eastern philosophy, though clearly not in all Eastern religions. Reincarnation goes against the concept of a clean slate, as people who believe in reincarnation believe they come into the world with a certain amount of karmic debt. The first mention of the idea of a tabula rasa in Western society is implied rather than specifically written about. Aristotle writes of the mind as a blackboard with nothing written on it, which differs greatly from Plato’s concept of the soul existing before it came to earth.
Thomas Aquinas takes up the tabula rasa theories of Aristotle in the thirteenth century, but it is only in the seventeenth century that the words tabula rasa are used by John Locke to express the idea that the mind when it enters the world is nothing and contains nothing . It is simply the blank slate on which experience begins to “write” the person. As the person matures, she is able to begin to ‘write’ herself, expressing the individual’s freedom to build the soul. This freedom can be compromised by how early experiences have shaped the person.
It is interesting that in the early 19th century many romantic writers discarded the concept of a tabula rasa in favor of the Platonic idea of the soul coming from heaven. For William Wordsworth, the child comes into the world “drawing clouds of glory,” but as he grows older, his freedom is limited by his experience. Romantic writers and philosophers saw children as imbued with special powers and a sense of the heaven from which they came.
This is also a time in art in the Western world where artistic depictions of children actually begin to look like children, instead of poorly constructed little adults. It is somewhat ironic that, in refuting the concept of a clean slate, Wordsworth and others like him begin the argument that children are important and interesting, which has encouraged an interest in raising them, often resulting in adults with a greater sense of of Locke’s idea of freedom. the soul.
Freud in the latter part of the 19th century readjusted the idea of a tabula rasa, suggesting that all human behavior stems from education, and usually a pre-established pattern of educational behavior which results in such things as the unresolved Oedipus complex. One of Freud’s main differences from the other important psychologist of his time, Carl Jung, is his idea of a clean slate. For Carl Jung, people come into the world with a universal unconscious, a set of shared symbols and beliefs that exist both inside and outside the person, regardless of the culture to which they belong.
Today, even though many geneticists have brushed aside the concept of a clean slate, it is still puzzling to many why some people have genetic predictors for mental or physical conditions that never surface. Most scientists and philosophers are inclined to conclude that children are not a blank slate, but a set of possibilities that can be influenced by the way they are raised. Furthermore, the genetic possibilities do not take into account the concept of soul, and questions remain as to whether the soul is the tablet on which something is already written, or the blank slate on which the child’s experiences are written. The debate still matters to many and clearly influences how parents choose to raise their children.
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