Belief in a fixed human nature rests on a tragic fallacy.

Evidence

The tragic fallacy of all these prophecies; originating in a world that was still safe, was to suppose that there was such a thing as one human nature established for all time, to identify this human nature with history, and thus to declare that the idea of total domination was not only inhuman but also unrealistic. Meanwhile we have learned that the power of man is so great that he really can be what he wishes to be. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1023

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Malleability of human nature as the premise that makes total domination thinkable — a cornerstone for later anti-essentialist theory.
• XREF: Builds toward the anti-essentialist conception of the self that postcolonial and critical race theory assume. — connects to: Postwar ruin and atrocity discredited belief in fixed human nature — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 40