Description
Title: On Human Nature: paperback
Author: SCRUTON ROGER
Format: PAPERBACK
Publication date: 15/08/2018
Imprint: PRINCETON UNI PRESS
Price: $28.00
Publishing status: Active
In this short book, acclaimed writer and philosopher Roger Scruton presents an original and radical
defense of human uniqueness. Confronting the views of evolutionary psychologists, utilitarian
moralists, and philosophical materialists such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, Scruton argues
that human beings cannot be understood simply as biological objects. We are not only human animals;
we are also persons, in essential relation with other persons, and bound to them by obligations and
rights. Our world is a shared world, exhibiting freedom, value, and accountability, and to understand
it we must address other people face to face and I to I.
Scruton develops and defends his account of human nature by ranging widely across intellectual
history, from Plato and Averros to Darwin and Wittgenstein. Ultimately, Scruton offers a new way
of understanding how self-consciousness affects the question of how we should live. The result is a
rich view of human nature that challenges some of todays most fashionable ideas about our species.
On Human Nature is a tour de force of a rare kind. In clear, elegant prose it makes large claims in
metaphysics, morals and, by implication, politics. The Economist
ISBN: 9780691183039
Pages: 160
Edition: 01