I often catch myself wondering what really drives my actions. Is it desire, duty, survival, love, or something deeper? This simple question—"Why do we do what we do?"—has followed humanity through the ages. Philosophers from ancient Athens to modern science have all taken turns trying to answer it. Each era's thinkers, in their own way, held up a mirror to human motives. In this journey through time, I reflect on how different schools of thought have grappled with the engines of human action, and what their insights mean for us today.
In a personal reflection: when I think about why I do what I do in light of all this, I see fascinating layers in my daily actions. I make coffee each morning, not just because I'm habitually craving caffeine (pragmatic habit, physiological drive), but also because the ritual itself brings a meditative start to my day. The simple act of boiling water and mixing my black coffee, stripped of any unnecessary complexity, becomes a moment of clarity and focus, perhaps reflecting a broader philosophical preference for essence over ornament.
I find myself drawn to helping friends and colleagues, partly because I empathize (emotional intuition) and because I've adopted a value that meaningful connections matter (second-order endorsement). But there's also a deeper satisfaction in being part of a supportive community, perhaps touching on what Aristotle called the social nature of human flourishing. This extends to my approach to learning and problem-solving. I immerse myself in coding challenges and complex problems not just for practical skill-building, but because there's a profound joy in the intellectual pursuit itself (a blend of Nietzsche's will to power and Aristotle's natural human curiosity).
My eclectic taste in music, spanning different genres and languages, reflects both a desire for aesthetic pleasure and a deeper yearning to connect with diverse human experiences. Whether it's classical, jazz, or folk music from across the globe, each genre offers a unique lens into human expression and emotion. And yes, I often find myself overthinking small decisions or interactions, a tendency that can be both a curse and a blessing. It's the philosopher's burden: to seek meaning even in mundane moments, though sometimes this very seeking can overshadow the simple joy of being.
Yet, I also use reasoning to discern what is true and good, and that rational motive can override others. A touch of Kantian duty pushing me to write clean, maintainable code rather than quick hacks, or to give honest feedback instead of just pleasing others. All this occurs while navigating the practical demands of a tech career (Marx's material dimension) and the influence of modern digital culture.
This multifaceted nature of my motivations is both humbling and empowering. Humbling because it shows how many factors, from caffeine cravings to cultural conditioning, influence my daily choices. I can't claim to be purely rational in my decisions. Empowering because understanding these various drives gives me a chance to align them better with my values and growth. As the ancient oracle advised, "Know thyself," whether in code, coffee, or conversation, that remains a lifetime's journey.
Plato and Aristotle in Raphael's School of Athens, symbolizing the ancient quest to understand human motives.
In ancient Greece, philosophers began our story by rooting human action in a search for the good. Plato suggested that "Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge." In works like the Republic, he portrayed the soul as tripartite: a charioteer of reason struggling to reign in the spirited horses of emotion and the wild horses of appetite.
Why do we do what we do, according to Plato? Because our soul's parts push and pull us – our desires draw us toward what seems good, our emotions spur us or hold us back, and our reason seeks a higher understanding of the true Good. If reason rules, we act wisely; if appetite or anger takes over, we might stray. Plato believed no one knowingly does wrong – we err out of ignorance, mistaking what is truly good. This optimistic view implies that if we know the Good, we will do it. Knowledge, in this sense, is motivation.
Aristotle took up a similar theme but added nuance. For Aristotle, every action aims at some end or purpose, and ultimately at happiness (eudaimonia). "All human actions must be for an end," he wrote, meaning we always act for the sake of something we perceive as good. If you go to work, maybe it's for money (a proximate end), which in turn is for security or pleasure, all leading toward the ultimate end of well-being or fulfillment.
Aristotle grounded this in a natural teleology: just as a seed acts to become a tree, a person acts to achieve flourishing. We do what we do because we seek our "proper good," whether we realize it or not. He also famously observed that habits shape our character – "we are what we repeatedly do", hinting that virtuous actions, repeated, spring from a trained motivation to be excellent.
Meanwhile, the Stoics offered a more stern answer to the question of action. They agreed that humans are rational beings and claimed that a life according to nature (i.e. aligned with reason and virtue) is the ultimate purpose of action. A Stoic might say that why a wise person acts is straightforward: to exercise virtue, the only true good.
The motivations behind human actions are understood in terms of assent to impressions – we experience desires and aversions, but it is our judgment that assents (or not) to acting on them. Wrong actions, they thought, come from faulty judgment rather than malice. "They do wrong through ignorance and unintentionally," wrote the Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius, sounding much like Socrates.
As philosophy moved into the Medieval era, the question of human motivation took on a theological flavor. Thinkers like Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas blended classical ideas with Christian doctrine, asking not just why we act, but how our actions relate to God's plan and our ultimate salvation.
For Augustine, the restless heart of human motivation is love. In his view, what you love defines why you act: "amor meus, pondus meum" – "My love is my weight," he writes, by it I am carried wherever I go. This beautiful metaphor suggests that love is the gravity of the soul. Why do we do what we do? Because we are pulled by the weight of our affections.
Augustine saw the whole drama of life as a conflict between love of God and love of worldly things. If we love God (the highest good), our actions will tend toward charity and virtue. If we let disordered loves (for power, pleasure, self) rule us, we will act wrongly. In stories like his famous youthful theft of pears, Augustine analyzed his own motive and found it stemmed from a perverse thrill in doing wrong – a misdirection of love.
Aquinas, writing later in the High Middle Ages, systematized the question of motivation under his grand synthesis of Christian theology with Aristotelian philosophy. He echoes Aristotle: "Every agent acts for an end," and for human beings that ultimate end is beatitudo – the blessed happiness of union with God.
The Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries shifted focus toward human reason and the individual mind. Philosophers in this era asked: are we fundamentally rational actors, or driven by passion? As scientific thinking rose, explanations of behavior began to look for natural (not just supernatural) causes.
Descartes, a 17th-century rationalist, straddled old and new. Famously, he said "I think, therefore I am," putting consciousness at the center of human identity. Descartes was intrigued by how the passions (emotions/desires) move us, yet he believed reason was meant to hold the reins.
Then comes David Hume, the great empiricist, who turned Descartes' view upside down. Hume boldly claimed that reason alone is not the motive for any action. Instead, "Passions are the engine for all our deeds: without passions we would lack all motivation… 'reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions'."
Kant, coming in at the end of the 18th century, tried to rescue the power of reason at least in the moral realm. Immanuel Kant famously drew a line between inclinations (our desires and emotions) and duty (the moral law dictated by reason). He answered our question on two levels: for ordinary choices, yes, we often act from self-interest or desire; but for moral actions, Kant argued the only valid motive is good will.
The 19th century saw an explosion of new ideas about human motivation, influenced by the tumult of the industrial age, political revolutions, and scientific advancements. Philosophers during this era—figures like Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Søren Kierkegaard—broke with many past assumptions.
Enter Nietzsche, who put forward one of the most provocative answers: behind all human actions lies the Will to Power. For Nietzsche, every living thing, whether it realizes it or not, strives to expand its power, to assert itself. He argued that this will to power offers a deeper explanation of human behavior than earlier theories that focused on survival or happiness.
On a very different front, Karl Marx approached human behavior through the lens of material conditions and class. Marx essentially relocated the "why" of human actions from individual minds to the structure of society. In his view, the broad patterns of what people do (especially in groups) are driven by economic forces and relations of production.
Meanwhile, Kierkegaard in Denmark delved into the inner dimension of motivation, arguably kicking off existentialist thought. He didn't look to power or economics, but to the individual's relationship with meaning, self, and God. Kierkegaard spoke of different "stages of life" – the aesthetic, ethical, and religious – each with its own answer to why we act.
The 20th century, marked by world wars, rapid scientific progress, and global ideological clashes, brought yet new angles. Three broad movements in philosophy tackled our question in different ways: existentialism (focused on individual freedom and meaning), pragmatism (focused on practical consequences and habits), and analytic philosophy (focused on language, logic, and the mechanics of mind).
The existentialists (like Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus) inherited Kierkegaard's torch of personal authenticity but usually without a theistic framework. For them, human beings are condemned to freedom – there is no preset answer to why we must act, so we have to choose it for ourselves.
Switch to pragmatism, an American-born philosophy with figures like William James and John Dewey. Pragmatists were less concerned with metaphysical ultimates and more with what works in human life. They effectively answer "why do we do what we do?" with because it is useful or makes a difference to us.
Finally, the analytic philosophers of the 20th century took a more fine-grained approach, dissecting the language and logic of how we explain actions. They asked not so much "What ultimate force drives action?" but "What does it mean to have a reason or motive? How do reasons explain actions?"
Standing in the 21st century, we have a more interdisciplinary understanding of human behavior than ever before. Cognitive science, neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology provide vast data on how and why humans (and other animals) act. Contemporary philosophers often engage with these findings, creating a field one might call philosophical psychology or philosophy of mind in action.
One significant contemporary insight is the role of the unconscious. Research strongly suggests that a lot of our decision-making happens below the surface of conscious reasoning. For instance, psychologists have documented phenomena like implicit biases (attitudes that affect our actions without our awareness) and heuristics (mental shortcuts that operate automatically).
Neuroscience adds another layer, connecting motivations to brain regions and chemicals. We know dopamine pathways are involved in reward and thus in motivating seeking behavior. We know the amygdala can trigger fight-or-flight actions out of fear. We've even identified "mirror neurons" that might explain empathetic motivations.
Philosophical psychology today often focuses on concepts like intention, agency, and identity. For instance, Harry Frankfurt's theory of persons distinguishes between first-order desires (simple wants) and second-order desires (wants about our wants). His idea was that what we truly want – and thus what we act on when we are being our genuine selves – is determined by these higher-order volitions.