Egoisme

by Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Dag O. Hessen

I vår tid har biologiske årsaksforklaringer av mennesket en sterk posisjon i offentligheten. Under det tynne laget av sivilisasjon er vi dyr, blir det sagt, og vi er dypest sett egoister.

Denne boken nærmer seg spørsmålet om menneskets egoisme fra en rekke ulike synsvinkler. Biologen Dag O. Hessen går inn i biologiens verden, fra genetikken til økosystemene, og ser på forholdet mellom egoisme og samarbeid på de ulike nivåene. Sosialantropologen Thomas Hylland Eriksen tar leseren med på en rundreise i verdens kulturelle mangfold og spør om det finnes noen fellestrekk som tyder på at mennesket er den fødte egoist. Med stort engasjement formidles kunnskaper fra et bredt spekter av områder, og det fokuseres vel så mye på spørsmålene som på svarene.

366 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Geir Thomas Hylland Eriksen was a Norwegian anthropologist known for his scholarly and popular writing on globalization, identity, ethnicity, and nationalism. He was Professor of Social Anthropology in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. He has previously served as the President of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (2015–2016), as well as the Editor of Samtiden (1993–2001), Norsk antropologisk tidsskrift (1993–1997), the Journal of Peace Research, and Ethnos.
Hylland Eriksen was among the most prolific and highly cited anthropologists of his generation, and had been recognized for his remarkable success in bringing an anthropological perspective to a broader, non-academic audience. In Norway, Hylland Eriksen was a well-known public intellectual whose advocacy of diversity and cultural pluralism had earned both praise and scorn. Right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks, cited Eriksen critically in his manifesto and during his 2012 trial.
In the academy and beyond, Hylland Eriksen had been highly decorated for his scholarship. He was the recipient of honorary degrees from Stockholm University (2011), the University of Copenhagen (2021), and Charles University in Prague (2021), as well as one of anthropology's most prestigious honors, the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography's Gold Medal (2022). He was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Reviews

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those books that are too wide-reaching on a topic and go into too many tangents, so that it becomes something that is not as memorable in the end, even if every chapter brought with it some insight. I'd rather read a book each on the topic from each of the authors rather than something they wrote into one book together. I was somehow lost in the discussion here. Did they hold any opinions on the topics? That needs a second read to figure out, and I don't think this is worth it.

If your interest is in the topic, this can be a really good book to pick up something you missed or if you need inspiration to look into some parts of it further. It has the potential to be a very good book for the target audience.