THE WESTERN ILLUSION OF HUMAN NATURE

For more than two millennia, the peoples called "Western" have been haunted by the specter of their own inner being: an apparition of human nature so avaricious and contentious that, unless it is somehow governed, it will reduce society to anarchy. Sahlins claims that it is a specifically Western metaphysics, for it supposes an opposition between nature and culture that is distinctive to the West and contrastive with the many other peoples who think beasts are basically human rather than humans are basically beasts--for them there is no "nature," let alone one that has to be overcome.