IB Philosophy Unit 1 Content Exam Review

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the philosophers, concepts, and categories for the IB Philosophy Unit 1 Content Exam on Human Nature theories.

Aristotle: Core Theory of Human Nature

Humans are rational and communal beings with an innate purpose (telos). Human nature is teleological and developmental, fulfilled through the exercise of reason (logos) and moral virtue within the political community (polis).

Aristotle: Telos

The ultimate purpose, end goal, or final cause toward which a living being naturally aims; for human beings, this end is the realization of an active life governed by rational virtue.

Aristotle: Ergon

The specific function or characteristic activity of an entity; the unique human function is the active exercise of the soul's rational capacities in accordance with excellence.

Aristotle: Zoon Politikon

The classification of the human as a 'political animal' or naturally social creature that can only realize ethical potential and full self-sufficiency within an organized community (polis).

Aristotle: Eudaimonia

Human flourishing, well-being, or the highest good, achieved not through passive pleasure but through a complete lifetime of virtuous rational activity.

Aristotle: Arete

Excellence or virtue, comprising intellectual virtues acquired through learning and moral virtues developed by habituation and following the golden mean between extremes.

Aristotle: Logos

The capacity for reason, logical thought, and meaningful speech that enables humans to articulate ethical concepts such as justice and participate in civil discourse.

Thomas Hobbes: Core Theory of Human Nature

Humans are self-interested, mechanistic physical systems driven by appetites and aversions. Lacking an external governing authority, their inherent equality of vulnerability produces mutual fear and conflict.

Thomas Hobbes: Mechanistic Materialism

The philosophical doctrine that all phenomena, including human thoughts, emotions, and voluntary actions, consist exclusively of matter in motion governed by deterministic physical laws.

Thomas Hobbes: Appetite

The internal mechanical motion or striving within a human body toward external stimuli perceived as beneficial, driving attraction, desire, and pursuit.

Thomas Hobbes: Aversion

The internal mechanical motion that impels a person away from external stimuli perceived as harmful or threatening, centered on the foundational fear of violent death.

Thomas Hobbes: Human Automata

The mechanistic analogy depicting human beings as complex machines whose heart functions as a spring, nerves as strings, and joints as wheels responding mechanically to stimuli.

Thomas Hobbes: State of Nature

The hypothetical condition of mankind without political society or sovereign enforcement, leading to a perpetual state of war where life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Thomas Hobbes: Causes of Human Conflict

The three primary natural drivers of warfare among individuals: competition (for material gain), diffidence (mistrust prompting defensive preemptive strikes), and glory (pursuit of reputation).

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Core Theory of Human Nature

Humans are fundamentally good, peaceful, and compassionate in their natural state; vice, psychological corruption, and moral decay are products of social institutions and institutional inequality.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Amour de Soi (Amour Soi)

Natural, benign self-preservation guided by basic survival needs and tempered by innate empathy (pitié), independent of social comparison or the opinions of others.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Amour-Propre

Artificial, competitive pride and vanity developed through societal comparison, driving individuals to seek superior status and base their self-worth on the deference of others.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Perfectibility

The distinct human capacity for self-transformation and adaptive development over time; it makes intellectual progress possible while simultaneously opening the door to moral degeneration.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Origin of Inequality

The socio-historical development initiated by the privatization of property, which destroyed primitive independence and established divisions of labor, legal protections for the wealthy, and systemic servitude.

Karl Marx: Core Theory of Human Nature

Human nature is not a static essence but is continuously produced through material labor and social relations; conscious, creative transformation of the natural world defines authentic human life.

Karl Marx: Species-Being (Gattungswesen)

The universal human capacity for conscious, collaborative, and uncoerced creative production, distinguishing humans from animals whose activity is confined to immediate physical needs.

Karl Marx: Alienation under Capitalism

The separation of workers from their essential humanity across four modes: alienation from the product made, from the act of labor, from human creative potential (species-being), and from other workers.

Karl Marx: Historical Materialism

The socioeconomic framework holding that the material economic base (forces and relations of production) conditions the legal, political, and ideological superstructure of society.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Core Theory of Human Nature

Human beings are dynamic, instinctual organisms driven by competing physiological forces rather than a unified rational soul; human identity is shaped by the will to power and the capacity for self-overcoming.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Will to Power

The fundamental life drive toward expansion, overcoming obstacles, creative self-mastery, and the assertion of vital strength over environment and self.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Death of God

The cultural collapse of transcendent, objective foundations for truth and morality in the Western world, necessitating the deliberate creation of new, life-affirming values to avoid nihilism.

Friedrich Nietzsche: No Single Self

The rejection of a unified metaphysical subject or fixed ego; the psyche is conceptualized as an evolving multiplicity of competing drives, desires, and physiological instincts.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Last Man vs. Ubermensch

The dichotomy between the mediocre, complacent individual seeking only comfort and equality (the Last Man) versus the transcendent, self-legislating individual who creates original values (the Ubermensch).

Friedrich Nietzsche: Genealogy of Morals

The historical critique exposing how ethical norms are contingent products of historical power dynamics and psychological resentment rather than timeless divine truths.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Master Morality

An affirmative ethical system created by noble elites that defines 'good' as noble, powerful, healthy, and beautiful, while designating 'bad' as base, weak, and pathetic.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Slave Morality

A reactive value framework born of resentment (ressentiment) by the oppressed, which recasts elite traits as 'evil' while praising humility, obedience, and meekness as 'good'.

Jean-Paul Sartre: Core Theory of Human Nature

There is no predefined human essence or purpose; conscious individuals exist first, encounter themselves in the world, and define their identities entirely through radical, unconditioned freedom and choice.

Jean-Paul Sartre: Existence Precedes Essence

The foundational existentialist claim that humans are not created with a predetermined nature or design; each individual must continually construct their identity through deliberate choices.

Jean-Paul Sartre: Facticity

The unchosen, concrete background conditions of one's existence, such as biological makeup, birthplace, and past deeds, which constitute the objective context within which freedom operates.

Jean-Paul Sartre: Transcendence

The consciousness's dynamic capacity to project beyond current objective circumstances (facticity) toward self-chosen future goals and possibilities.

Jean-Paul Sartre: Anguish, Abandonment, Despair

The existential realities of human freedom: anguish from full responsibility for one's actions, abandonment from the absence of external divine guidance, and despair from acting only within probabilities under one's control.

Jean-Paul Sartre: Condemned to be Free

The inescapable condition of human existence; humans did not create themselves, yet are conscious, and therefore have no choice but to make decisions and bear complete accountability for every action.

Simone de Beauvoir: Core Theory of Human Nature

Human existence is an ongoing ambiguity between physical constraint and open consciousness; human identity is not biologically predetermined, but shaped through projects that must engage with the freedom of others.

Simone de Beauvoir: Transcendence vs. Immanence

The tension between transcendence (the active pursuit of open-ended future goals) and immanence (being relegated to passive, repetitive existence and objectification, as historically imposed on women).

Simone de Beauvoir: Ambiguity of Existence

The dual condition of human beings as both free subjects capable of self-determination and physical objects limited by worldly situations and the perspectives of others.

Simone de Beauvoir: The Sub-Man

An existential figure who shrinks from authentic freedom and responsibility, living in apathetic indifference and letting external social forces or leaders dictate action.

Simone de Beauvoir: Serious Man

An existential posture in which an individual surrenders personal freedom to an external cause or institution, treating socially invented values as unconditional, objective absolutes.

Simone de Beauvoir: The Nihilist

An individual who recognizes that the universe contains no objective moral foundation, but responds with cynical rejection, denying the value of existence and the freedom of everyone.

Simone de Beauvoir: The Adventurer

An individual who boldly pursues their own subjective projects and freedom for the thrill of action, but treats other people merely as disposable tools rather than recognizing their freedom.

Simone de Beauvoir: The Passionate Man

An individual who obsessively fixes their pursuit of meaning onto a single external object or person, treating it as an absolute while remaining detached from and blind to the freedom of the broader world.

Simone de Beauvoir: Woman as a Construct

The thesis that feminine essence is not a natural biological fact ('one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman'), but an identity culturally constructed as the subordinate 'Other' relative to men.