Abraham Harold Maslow (b.1908 – d.1970 CE) is the most cited person who theorised on human motivation. His 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation” in the journal Psychological Review suggested that humans move along defined stages in the fulfilment of their needs. Maslow used the terms “physiological”, “safety”, “belonging and love”, “social needs” or “esteem”, “self-actualization” and “transcendence” to describe the pattern through which human needs and motivations generally move. Today Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is often represented as a pyramid, but Maslow never drew the pyramid in his paper.
Maslow is not the first person to recognise the patterns of human motivations.
Abu Zayd ‘Abd ar-Raḥman ibn Muḥammad ibn Khaldun al-Ḥaḍrami (b.1332 – d.1406 CE), or Ibn Khaldun as he is widely known, was one of the earliest to observe patterns of human motivations. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest social scientists of the Middle Ages. He writes in The Muqaddimah:
“It should be known that differences of condition among people are the result of the different ways in which they make their living. Social organisation enables them to cooperate toward that end and to start with the simple necessities of life, before they get to conveniences and luxuries.”
In another part of his book, he says:
“Man seeks first the (bare) necessities. Only after he has obtained the (bare) necessities, does he get to comforts and luxuries.”
Perhaps Ibn Khaldun’s work has shaped the thinking of many social scientists who came after him. One such example is Giambattista Vico (b.1668 – d.1744 CE), an Italian philosopher and jurist during the Italian Enlightenment, who outlined six steps in the evolution of motivation. He wrote:
“Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance.”
It is clear that social scientists theorised about human motivations way before Maslow’s time. Going back to the period prior to Ibn Khaldun, the likes of Imam Ghazali (d. 1111 CE) have written extensively, and even before the Islamic era, it is suggested that perhaps Hippocrates (460–377 BC) was the first person to document and describe the patterns of human motivation.
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