Beast & Man: The Roots Of Human Nature
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Tanning and foxing
At the crossroads of biology, philosophy, and ethics stands Mary Midgley's landmark work, Beast & Man: The Roots of Human Nature — a bold and rigorous challenge to the artificial divide between human beings and the animal world. Midgley argues with formidable clarity that human nature is not a blank slate shaped purely by culture, but is instead deeply rooted in our evolutionary inheritance, drawing on ethology, moral philosophy, and the history of ideas to construct a powerful case against the exceptionalism that has long dominated Western thought. She presents humanity not as a creature apart from nature, but as a thoroughly animal species whose rationality, sociality, and moral life all have their origins in biological drives shared across the animal kingdom. What makes Beast & Man a landmark of 20th-century philosophy is not merely its thesis but the intellectual courage and wit with which Midgley prosecutes it. She takes on the reductive determinism of sociobiology, the romanticism of existentialism, and the hubris of a rationalism that imagines reason to be independent of instinct, dismantling each with precision and a characteristic dry brilliance. Her prose is accessible without sacrificing depth, making this essential reading for anyone seeking to understand where humanity truly sits within the natural order — and what our animal nature demands of our moral lives.
Author: Mary Midgley
Format: Hardback
Published: 1979, UQP
Genre: Philosophy
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Tanning and foxing
At the crossroads of biology, philosophy, and ethics stands Mary Midgley's landmark work, Beast & Man: The Roots of Human Nature — a bold and rigorous challenge to the artificial divide between human beings and the animal world. Midgley argues with formidable clarity that human nature is not a blank slate shaped purely by culture, but is instead deeply rooted in our evolutionary inheritance, drawing on ethology, moral philosophy, and the history of ideas to construct a powerful case against the exceptionalism that has long dominated Western thought. She presents humanity not as a creature apart from nature, but as a thoroughly animal species whose rationality, sociality, and moral life all have their origins in biological drives shared across the animal kingdom. What makes Beast & Man a landmark of 20th-century philosophy is not merely its thesis but the intellectual courage and wit with which Midgley prosecutes it. She takes on the reductive determinism of sociobiology, the romanticism of existentialism, and the hubris of a rationalism that imagines reason to be independent of instinct, dismantling each with precision and a characteristic dry brilliance. Her prose is accessible without sacrificing depth, making this essential reading for anyone seeking to understand where humanity truly sits within the natural order — and what our animal nature demands of our moral lives.