On Human Nature

by Roger Scruton Narrated by Mike Cooper

Overview

In this short book, 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. Scruton develops and defends his account of human nature by ranging widely across intellectual history, from Plato and Averroës to Darwin and Wittgenstein.



The book begins with Kant's suggestion that we are distinguished by our ability to say "I"-by our sense of ourselves as the centers of self-conscious reflection. This fact is manifested in our emotions, interests, and relations. It is the foundation of the moral sense, as well as of the aesthetic and religious conceptions through which we shape the human world and endow it with meaning. And it lies outside the scope of modern materialist philosophy, even though it is a natural and not a supernatural fact. 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 today's most fashionable ideas about our species.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - James Ryerson

In his finely written, compactly argued book On Human Nature, [Scruton] sets out to defend human uniqueness—without denying that "human beings are animals, governed by the laws of biology." His contention is that human beings are animals but also "persons," by which he means "free, self-conscious, rational agents, obedient to reason and bound by the moral law." Personhood, in this view, is not some extra thing to be placed supernaturally atop our organism selves. But neither is it something reducible to our biology. Rather, Scruton argues, our animal nature and our personhood are two distinct, contrasting aspects of us. One or the other comes into focus depending on what sort of questions we ask about ourselves. Science has much to say about one aspect, but not about the other.

The Economist

"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."

From the Publisher

One of Blackwell’s Best of Non-Fiction 2017

Library Journal

02/15/2017
Scruton's (The Soul of the World) latest book is a collection of four short essays, three of which are revised from Charles E. Test memorial lectures presented at Princeton University. Although engaging, these essays are written for academics and can be somewhat bewildering and intractable to wider audiences. Scruton begins the first chapter by claiming that we are essentially physical, biological animals, but he ultimately rejects this view, concluding that we are embodied, incarnate persons, where persons are emergent entities that are irreducible to the sum of their parts. What differentiates persons from other emergent entities, he says, is that they laugh, judge other persons morally responsible, see themselves as moral agents persisting through time, and are free. Scruton's claim that personhood is irreducible to biological organisms allows him to sidestep the debate concerning whether freedom is compatible with determinism; causal determinism might be true of the physical world but not necessarily the emergent world—that is, so long as reductionism is not true of personhood. This is a novel yet precarious way to avoid questions of freedom and its apparent inconsistency with the scientific assumption of determinism. VERDICT Recommended for all academic libraries.—William Simkulet, Cleveland State Univ., OH

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176090291
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	10/12/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

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