Western philosophers have different views on the nature of human beings:

1. French materialist and naturalistic humanists regard human beings as beings with higher sensory abilities. Animals believe that the essence of man lies in man himself, that is, man's natural nature.

2. Lametri declared: Man is a machine.

3. Helvetius claimed that human beings are "just a perceptual entity" and that the physical sensibility of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain is the eternal nature that governs all human activities.

4. The modern bourgeois rationalist theory of human nature elevates people from sensory entities to thinking entities, and believes that human nature is rational. And reason is freedom. Kant believed that only when a person is not dominated by the sensory world and obeys the "categorical imperative" issued by his own reason can he be a person in the true sense of mastering himself.

5. Feuerbach started from humanism and opposed Hegel's view that humans are reduced to self-consciousness. He believed that humans are a "perceptual" quasi-being...a natural essence. .

Personal essence is the intrinsic relationship between the fundamental nature of a specific and specific person and its various attributes.

There are three major aspects of human attributes:

1. Natural attributes (including appearance, beauty, etc.).

2. Social attributes (including the good and evil of virtue, etc.).

3. Mental attributes (including IQ, etc.).

Virtue is a concentrated expression of personal essence; in other words, the most important criterion for identifying personal essence is the quality of moral character.

Concerning the essence of human beings, Marx has a famous saying: "The essence of human beings is not an abstract object inherent in a single person. In terms of its reality, it is the sum of all social relations." Many scholars refer to this The famous quote is incorrectly interpreted as: "The essence of human beings is determined by social relationships."