from PolicyReview:
"...to understand human conduct in all its dazzling variety you must understand the universal features of human nature. To be sure, many economists and political scientists assume that human beings are rational, self-interested actors. And influential schools of psychology and linguistics hold that the mind is constituted by fixed structures that organize and direct perception, cognition, and language. But it remains a common opinion among significant swaths of social scientists and the dominant opinion in the humanities — including political theory and philosophy — that human nature is a discredited notion, the search for which reflects reactionary tendencies.
The disbelief in human nature stems from several sources..."