Essays on Human Nature PDF Download

Author: William Maberry Strickler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Conduct of life
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Author: Robert B. Louden
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019991110X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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In Kant's Human Being, Robert B. Louden continues and deepens avenues of research first initiated in his highly acclaimed book, Kant's Impure Ethics. Drawing on a wide variety of both published and unpublished works spanning all periods of Kant's extensive writing career, Louden here focuses on Kant's under-appreciated empirical work on human nature, with particular attention to the connections between this body of work and his much-discussed ethical theory. Kant repeatedly claimed that the question, "What is the human being" is philosophy's most fundamental question, one that encompasses all others. Louden analyzes and evaluates Kant's own answer to his question, showing how it differs from other accounts of human nature. This collection of twelve essays is divided into three parts. In Part One (Human Virtues), Louden explores the nature and role of virtue in Kant's ethical theory, showing how the conception of human nature behind Kant's virtue theory results in a virtue ethics that is decidedly different from more familiar Aristotelian virtue ethics programs. In Part Two (Ethics and Anthropology), he uncovers the dominant moral message in Kant's anthropological investigations, drawing new connections between Kant's work on human nature and his ethics. Finally, in Part Three (Extensions of Anthropology), Louden explores specific aspects of Kant's theory of human nature developed outside of his anthropology lectures, in his works on religion, geography, education ,and aesthetics, and shows how these writings substantially amplify his account of human beings. Kant's Human Being offers a detailed and multifaceted investigation of the question that Kant held to be the most important of all, and will be of interest not only to philosophers but also to all who are concerned with the study of human nature.

Author: Derek Freeman
Publisher: ANU Press
ISBN: 1922144819
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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With great eloquence, Derek Freeman takes the reader on an intellectual journey through the complexities of philosophical anthropology. Even while the controversial Nature–Nurture debate raged, Freeman contended that the crucial fact that humans had the capacity to make choices was ‘both intrinsic to our biology and basic to the very formation of cultures’. Thus the scene was set for his widely publicised criticism of Margaret Mead’s book Coming of Age in Samoa. Publishing her research in 1926, Mead concluded that all human behaviour was the result of social conditioning. Freeman refuted this assumption in 1983, urging closer interactions between the biological sciences and cultural studies to bridge the ever-widening chasm threatening all studies of humankind. Dilthey’s Dream is an engagingly powerful set of essays depicting the depth of one man’s thinking on issues, which consumed a lifetime.

Author: Robert Pogue Harrison
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1459606264
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Humans have long turned to gardens - both real and imaginary - for sanctuary from the frenzy and tumult that surrounds them. Those gardens may be as far away from everyday reality as Gilgamesh's garden of the gods or as near as our own backyard, but in their very conception and the marks they bear of human care and cultivation, gardens stand as restorative, nourishing, necessary havens. With Gardens, Robert Pogue Harrison graces readers with a thoughtful, wide-ranging examination of the many ways gardens evoke the human condition. Moving from the gardens of ancient philosophers to the gardens of homeless people in contemporary New York, he shows how, again and again, the garden has served as a check against the destruction and losses of history. The ancients, explains Harrison, viewed gardens as both a model and a location for the laborious self-cultivation and self-improvement that are essential to serenity and enlightenment, an association that has continued throughout the ages. The Bible and Qur'an; Plato's Academy and Epicurus's Garden School; Zen rock and Islamic carpet gardens; Boccaccio, Rihaku, Capek, Cao Xueqin, Italo Calvino, Ariosto, Michel Tournier, and Hannah Arendt - all come into play as this work explores the ways in which the concept and reality of the garden has informed human thinking about mortality, order, and power. Alive with the echoes and arguments of Western thought, Gardens is a fitting continuation of the intellectual journeys of Harrison's earlier classics, Forests and The Dominion of the Dead. Voltaire famously urged us to cultivate our gardens; with this compelling volume, Robert Pogue Harrison reminds us of the nature of that responsibility - and its enduring importance to humanity.

Author: Strachan Donnelley
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813167299
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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The philanthropist and philosopher Strachan Donnelley (1942--2008) devoted his life to studying the complex relationship between humans and nature. Founder and first president of the Center for Humans and Nature, Donnelley was a pioneer in the exploration and promotion of the idea that human beings individually and collectively have moral and civic responsibilities to natural ecosystems. In this wide-ranging volume, Donnelley traces the connections between influential figures such as Aldo Leopold and Charles Darwin, as well as lesser-known but original thinkers that he met during the course of a full life -- ministers at his church, friends with whom he fished, and colleagues who shared his passion for research and writing. He grounds his work in classic philosophers such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Whitehead and reinterprets their writings about the natural world to develop a conservation-centered philosophy, which he dubs "democratic ecological citizenship." Edited by his daughter, Ceara Donnelley, and Bruce Jennings, Frog Pond Philosophy illuminates the dominant strands of Donnelley's intellectual identity as a philosopher, naturalist, agitator, and spiritualist. Despite his often grim depiction of the current state of the environment, Donnelly never surrenders his faith in humanity's ability to meet its ethical obligations to conserve, respect, and nurture the complexity and diversity of the natural world. His vivid and personal essays, rooted in everyday experiences, offer a distinctive perspective on questions of urgent contemporary importance.

Author: Douglas P. Fry
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190232463
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 583

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"The chapters in this book [posit] that humans clearly have the capacity to make war, but since war is absent in some cultures, it cannot be viewed as a human universal. And counter to frequent presumption, the actual archaeological record reveals the recent emergence of war. It does not typify the ancestral type of human society, the nomadic forager band, and contrary to widespread assumptions, there is little support for the idea that war is ancient or an evolved adaptation. Views of human nature as inherently warlike stem not from the facts but from cultural views embedded in Western thinking"--Amazon.com.

Author: Tim Ingold
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 9780877451679
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Author: Robert Pasnau
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521001892
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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A major new study of Aquinas and his central project: the understanding of human nature.

Author: Matthew Boyle
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674241045
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Against the dominant view of reductive naturalism, John McDowell argues that human life should be seen as transformed by reason so that human minds, while not supernatural, are sui generis. This collection assembles eleven critical essays that highlight the enduring significance and wide ramifications of McDowell’s unorthodox position.

Author: William Golding
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571290582
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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A plane crashes on a desert island and the only survivors, a group of schoolboys, assemble on the beach and wait to be rescued. By day they inhabit a land of bright fantastic birds and dark blue seas, but at night their dreams are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast. As the boys' delicate sense of order fades, so their childish dreams are transformed into something more primitive, and their behaviour starts to take on a murderous, savage significance. First published in 1954, Lord of the Flies is one of the most celebrated and widely read of modern classics. Now fully revised and updated, this educational edition includes chapter summaries, comprehension questions, discussion points, classroom activities, a biographical profile of Golding, historical context relevant to the novel and an essay on Lord of the Flies by William Golding entitled 'Fable'. Aimed at Key Stage 3 and 4 students, it also includes a section on literary theory for advanced or A-level students. The educational edition encourages original and independent thinking while guiding the student through the text - ideal for use in the classroom and at home.