The human question

Abstract

Biologists speak of man's instinct for self-preservation. S. Freud considered the sexual urge as one of man's basic drives. For the philosopher, an equally fundamental human urge is what we may dub 'the inquisitive drive'. Some biologists would reduce all of our drives to the primary instinct for self-preservation. Other secondary drives are, in their view, developed in the service of biological well-being. Some extreme Freudians trace man's inquisitive drive back to the sexual-aggressive instinctual couple. The philosopher, however, views the inquisitive drive as a primary phenomenon, which cannot be reduced to more basic instinctual sources.