| Description |
1 online resource (x, 454 pages) |
| Contents |
Front Cover -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Prologue Human Nature and Human Morality: The Challenge of Grounding the Moral Sense -- I. Introduction -- II. The Foundations Laid by Hume in His Moral Philosophy -- III. On the Origin of Sympathy and Selfishness: An Initial Determination -- IV. Unevenly Valorized Binary Oppositions: A Question of Life and Death -- V. Hume's Affective Polarity Revisited -- VI. The Culture/Nature Opposition -- From the Perspective of Mythology and Religion -- From the Perspective of Patriarchal Symbolism |
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From the Perspective of Practices in Present- Day Western Science -- From the Perspective of the Cultural Practice of War -- VII. Conclusion -- Notes -- Part I -- CHAPTER 1 Size, Power, and Death: Constituents in the Making of Human Morality -- I. Introduction -- II. Size and Power -- III. Cultural Translations of Biological Facts -- IV. Cultural Transformations and Evolutionary Ethics -- V. Immortality Ideologies -- VI. Implications -- Notes -- CHAPTER 2 Death and Immortality Ideologies in Western Philosophy -- I. Introduction -- II. Descartes |
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On the Purpose of the Meditations as Specified in the Synopsis -- Mind as Immaterial Substance -- Mind and the Question of Time -- III. Heidegger and Immortality Ideologies -- IV. Psychological Underpinnings of Immortality Ideologies -- V. Derrida's Immortality Reading of Husserl and Derrida's Own Immortality Ideology -- VI. The Double: A Further Sign of Derrida's Immortality Ideology -- VII. The Last Word and the Ultimate Mortal Question -- Notes -- CHAPTER 3 Real Male-Male Competition -- I. Introduction -- II. On Natural and Sexual Selection |
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III. Darwin's Seminal Insights into Male-Male Competition and Their Total Neglect in Current Research -- IV. Exemplifications -- V. Evolutionary Considerations -- VI. A Methodological Imperative and A Closing Apologue -- VII. An Afterword -- Notes -- CHAPTER 4 On the Pan-Cultural Origins of Evil -- I. Introduction -- II. The Banality of Evil -- III. Affective Elaborations of the Banality of Evil -- IV. Toward Pan-Cultural Understandings of the Banality of Evil -- V. Beginning Evolutionary Considerations -- VI. Clarifications Along Motivational Lines |
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VII. Killing, Death, Fear: Elementary Facts of Human Life -- VIII. Warriors and the Heroic Honing of Males -- IX. A Finer Analysis of Motivation -- X. Broader Socio-Political Understandings of the Heroic Honing of Males: A Return to Evolutionary Considerations -- XI. Classic Studies: An Afterword on History and Science -- Notes -- Part II -- CHAPTER 5 Empathy -- I. Introduction -- II. Early Clues and Husserl's Archival Texts -- III. Affect Attunement and the Qualitative Nature of Movement -- IV. Emotions and Movement -- V. Spontaneity -- VI. The Kinetic Foundations of ''Knowing Other Minds'' |
| Summary |
This book argues the case for a foundationalist ethics centrally based on an empirical understanding of human nature. For Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, "an ethics formulated on the foundations of anything other than human nature, hence on anything other than an identification of pan-cultural human realities, lacks solid empirical moorings. It easily loses itself in isolated hypotheticals, reductionist scenarios, or theoretical abstractions-in the prisoner's dilemma, selfish genes, dedicated brain modules, evolutionary altruism, or psychological egoism, for example-or it easily becomes itself an ethical system over and above the ethics it formulates," such as the deontological ethics of Kantian categorical imperatives, the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, or the ethics of care. Taking her cue from Hume, especially his Treatise on Human Nature, where he grounds "the moral sense" in human nature seen as always in tension between the natural tendencies of selfish acquisitiveness and sympathy for others, Sheets-Johnstone pursues her phenomenological investigation of the natural basis of human morality by directing her attention, first in Part I, to what is traditionally considered the dark side of human nature, and then, in Part II, to the positive side. The tension between the two calls for an interdisciplinary therapeutic resolution, which she offers in the Epilogue by arguing for the value of a moral education that enlightens humans about their own human nature, highlighting both the socialization of fear and the importance of play and creativity |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and indexes |
| Notes |
Print version record |
| Subject |
Ethics, Evolutionary.
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PHILOSOPHY -- Ethics & Moral Philosophy.
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Ethics, Evolutionary
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9780271036014 |
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027103601X |
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