The Boundaries Of Human Nature

Are animals capable of wonder? Can they be said to possess language and reason? What can animals teach us about how to live well? How can they help us to see the limitations of human civilization? Is it possible to draw firm distinctions between humans and animals? And how might asking and answering questions like these lead us to rethink human-animal relations in an age of catastrophic ecological destruction? In this accessible and engaging book, Matthew Calarco explores key issues in the philosophy of animals and their significance for our contemporary world. He leads readers on a spirited tour of historical and contemporary philosophy, ranging from Plato to Donna Haraway and from the Cynics to the Jains. Calarco unearths surprising insights about animals from a number of philosophers while also underscoring ways in which the philosophical tradition has failed to challenge the dogma of human-centeredness. Along the way, he indicates how mainstream Western philosophy is both complemented and challenged by non-Western traditions and noncanonical theories about animals. Throughout, Calarco uses examples from contemporary culture to illustrate how philosophical theories about animals are deeply relevant to our lives today. The Boundaries of Human Nature shows readers why philosophy can help transform not just the way we think about animals but also how we interact with them.

To the age-old debate over what it means to be human, the relatively new fields of sociobiology and artificial intelligence bring new, if not necessarily compatible, insights. What have these two fields in common? Have they affected the way we define humanity? These and other timely questions are addressed with colorful individuality by the authors of The Boundaries of Humanity. Leading researchers in both sociobiology and artificial intelligence combine their reflections with those of philosophers, historians, and social scientists, while the editors explore the historical and contemporary contexts of the debate in their introductions. The implications of their individual arguments, and the often heated controversies generated by biological determinism or by mechanical models of mind, go to the heart of contemporary scientific, philosophical, and humanistic studies. Contributors: Arnold I. Davidson, John Dupré, Roger Hahn, Stuart Hampshire, Evelyn Fox Keller, Melvin Konner, Alan Newell, Harriet Ritvo, James J. Sheehan, Morton Sosna, Sherry Turkle, Bernard Williams, Terry Winograd This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1991.

From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power comes the definitive new book on decoding the behavior of the people around you Robert Greene is a master guide for millions of readers, distilling ancient wisdom and philosophy into essential texts for seekers of power, understanding and mastery. Now he turns to the most important subject of all - understanding people's drives and motivations, even when they are unconscious of them themselves. We are social animals. Our very lives depend on our relationships with people. Knowing why people do what they do is the most important tool we can possess, without which our other talents can only take us so far. Drawing from the ideas and examples of Pericles, Queen Elizabeth I, Martin Luther King Jr, and many others, Greene teaches us how to detach ourselves from our own emotions and master self-control, how to develop the empathy that leads to insight, how to look behind people's masks, and how to resist conformity to develop your singular sense of purpose. Whether at work, in relationships, or in shaping the world around you, The Laws of Human Nature offers brilliant tactics for success, self-improvement, and self-defense.

A philosophical account of human nature that defends the concept against dehumanization, Darwinian, and developmentalist challenges. Human nature has always been a foundational issue for philosophy. What does it mean to have a human nature? Is the concept the relic of a bygone age? What is the use of such a concept? What are the epistemic and ontological commitments people make when they use the concept? In What's Left of Human Nature? Maria Kronfeldner offers a philosophical account of human nature that defends the concept against contemporary criticism. In particular, she takes on challenges related to social misuse of the concept that dehumanizes those regarded as lacking human nature (the dehumanization challenge); the conflict between Darwinian thinking and essentialist concepts of human nature (the Darwinian challenge); and the consensus that evolution, heredity, and ontogenetic development result from nurture and nature. After answering each of these challenges, Kronfeldner presents a revisionist account of human nature that minimizes dehumanization and does not fall back on outdated biological ideas. Her account is post-essentialist because it eliminates the concept of an essence of being human; pluralist in that it argues that there are different things in the world that correspond to three different post-essentialist concepts of human nature; and interactive because it understands nature and nurture as interacting at the developmental, epigenetic, and evolutionary levels. On the basis of this, she introduces a dialectical concept of an ever-changing and “looping” human nature. Finally, noting the essentially contested character of the concept and the ambiguity and redundancy of the terminology, she wonders if we should simply eliminate the term “human nature” altogether.

This book explores the interconnections between world politics and non-human nature to overcome the anthropocentric boundaries that characterize the field of international relations. By gathering contributions from various perspectives, ranging from post-humanism and ecological modernization, to new materialism and post-colonialism, it conceptualizes the embeddedness of world politics in non-human nature, and proposes a reorientation of political practice to better address the challenges posed by climate change and the deterioration of the Earth’s ecosystems. The book is divided into two main parts, the first of which addresses new ways of theoretically conceiving the relationship between non-human nature and world politics. In turn, the second presents empirical investigations into specific case studies, including studies on state actors and international organizations and bodies. Given its scope and the new perspectives it shares, this edited volume represents a uniquely valuable contribution to the field.

"Translated by Frederick Amrine and Konrad Oberhuber from shorthand reports unrevised by the lecturer, from the 4th edition (1969) of the German text published under the title Grenzen der Naturerkenntnis (Vol. 322 in the Bibliographic survey)"--Copyright page.

Contemporary ideas of nature were largely shaped by schools of thought from Western cultural history and philosophy until the present-day concerns with environmental change and biodiversity conservation. There are many different ways of conceptualising nature in epistemological terms, reflecting the tensions between the polarities of humans as masters or protectors of nature and as part of or outside of nature. The book shows how nature is today the focus of numerous debates, calling for an approach which goes beyond the merely technical or scientific. It adopts a threefold – critical, historical and cross-disciplinary – approach in order to summarise the current state of knowledge. It includes contributions informed by the humanities (especially history, literature and philosophy) and social sciences, concerned with the production and circulation of knowledge about "nature" across disciplines and across national and cultural spaces. The volume also demonstrates the ongoing reconfiguration of subject disciplines, as seen in the recent emergence of new interdisciplinary approaches and the popularity of the prefix "eco-" (e.g. ecocriticism, ecospirituality, ecosophy and ecofeminism, as well as subdivisions of ecology, including urban ecology, industrial ecology and ecosystem services). Each chapter provides a concise overview of its topic which will serve as a helpful introduction to students and a source of easy reference. This text is also valuable reading for researchers interested in philosophy, sociology, anthropology, geography, ecology, politics and all their respective environmentalist strands.

Beyond Boundariessteps into hitherto unknown territory in taking an interdisciplinary approach to the subject of animals.