It seems likely that once prehumans became “human,”they began to abserve and form an understanding of tjemselves. Intuitively, we regard this effort at self-oservation and self-understanding as intrisic towhat we mean by being human. Less obviously, the effort to understand ourselves merges into the effort to understand human nature or the mind.
Before long, the tendency toward role specialization, inherent in the social nature of humanlife, led to certain persons becoming accredited as experts in understanding humans. The fisrt authorities, called priests, soon were followed by philosophers and play wrights. From antiquity until the end of the 18th century, the members of these three groups were te acknowledged experts on human nature. Attributted to divine sources, the authority of the priesthood was unquestioned and unquestionable and was insepaable from the authorit of the “state”.
With the advebt of mdernity, the authority of religion to legitimize the state in general, andsocial sanctions in particulaar, gradually declined
and was replaced by the authority of reason. We call the result of this metamorphosis the Enlightenment and attribute its authority to science. By the end of the 19th century, moral-philosophical accounts of mind-as-brain.
References
Camus,A. (1961). The wager of our generation. In Resictance, rebellion, and death.New York.
