马斯洛需要学说的悖论剖析

The Analysis of the Paradox of Maslow’s Needs Theory

马斯洛的人本心理学将“需要”视为人的本质,抓住了人们从事各种行为的动机源头这个要害,并克服了西方理性思潮和反理性思潮各执一端的理论弊端,被视作是重要的原创贡献。但是,由于未能深入辨析认知需要与非认知需要的关系,他却凭借应然压倒实然的态度,为需要设定了规范性的五层次等级次序,扭曲了现实中人们处理这些需要之间关系的本来面目。同时,由于未能深入辨析好与正当的微妙差异,他又把任何需要在冲突情况下都会面临的“正当”考虑,说成是与其他四层次需要并列的“安全”需要,在某种程度上遮蔽了正当(正义)约束人们行为的底线效应,导致他的需要学说陷入了自败的悖论。

Maslow’s humanistic psychology regards “needs” as the nature of human beings, grasps the key point of people’s motivation for engaging in various acts, and it overcomes the theoretical drawbacks of these two extremes of the Western: rational thought and anti-rational thought, and thereby makes important original contributions. However, he failed to differentiate the relationship between cognitive needs and non-cognitive needs, but still set up a normative five-level hierarchical order for needs with the attitude of overriding factualness by oughtness, which distorts the truth how people deal with the relationship between these needs in real life. Meanwhile, he also failed to distinguish the subtle differences between the good and the right, but described the “right” consideration that any need takes in any conflict as the “safety” need, and juxtaposed it with the other four levels of needs, with a result of obscuring the bottom-line effect of right(justice) to constrain people’s acts and making his theory of needs fall into a self-defeating paradox.