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Sobre a natureza humana
Neste livro curto e ágil, Roger Scruton apresenta uma defesa radical e original da singularidade humana. Confrontando a visão dos psicólogos evolucionistas, moralistas utilitários e materialistas filosóficos como Richard Dawkins e Daniel Dennett, o autor argumenta que seres humanos não podem ser explicados simplesmente como objetos biológicos. Não somos apenas animais somos pessoas, essencialmente ligadas a outras pessoas por obrigações e direitos. Nosso mundo é compartilhado e para compreendê-lo, precisamos nos comunicar com as pessoas face a face, eu a eu. Scruton desenvolve e defende sua visão perpassando toda a história intelectual, de Platão e Averróis a Darwin e Wittgenstein, e oferece uma nova maneira de compreender como a autoconsciência afeta a questão sobre a forma como deveríamos viver. O resultado é uma visão enriquecedora da natureza humana, que desafia as noções mais consolidadas sobre a nossa espécie.
150 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2017
122 people are currently reading
1428 people want to read
About the author
Roger Scruton
139 books1,347 followersSir Roger Scruton was a writer and philosopher who has published more than forty books in philosophy, aesthetics and politics. He was a fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He taught in both England and America and was a Visiting Professor at Department of Philosophy and Fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, he was also a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington D.C.
In 2015 he published two books, The Disappeared and later in the autumn, Fools Frauds and Firebrands. Fools Frauds and Firebrands is an update of Thinkers of the New Left published, to widespread outrage, in 1986. It includes new chapters covering Lacan, Deleuze and Badiou and some timely thoughts about the historians and social thinkers who led British intellectuals up the garden path during the last decades, including Eric Hobsbawm and Ralph Miliband.
In 2016 he again published two books, Confessions of A Heretic (a collection of essays) and The Ring of Truth, about Wagner’s Ring cycle, which was widely and favourably reviewed. In 2017 he published On Human Nature (Princeton University Press), which was again widely reviewed, and contains a distillation of his philosophy. He also published a response to Brexit, Where We Are (Bloomsbury).
In 2015 he published two books, The Disappeared and later in the autumn, Fools Frauds and Firebrands. Fools Frauds and Firebrands is an update of Thinkers of the New Left published, to widespread outrage, in 1986. It includes new chapters covering Lacan, Deleuze and Badiou and some timely thoughts about the historians and social thinkers who led British intellectuals up the garden path during the last decades, including Eric Hobsbawm and Ralph Miliband.
In 2016 he again published two books, Confessions of A Heretic (a collection of essays) and The Ring of Truth, about Wagner’s Ring cycle, which was widely and favourably reviewed. In 2017 he published On Human Nature (Princeton University Press), which was again widely reviewed, and contains a distillation of his philosophy. He also published a response to Brexit, Where We Are (Bloomsbury).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 92 reviews
June 30, 2020
This is a finely crafted book which presents an original way on how we think about ourselves, what sets apart human nature and the issues that touch on the definition of person hood and identity.
June 17, 2017
This brief collection of lectures is pure Scruton: witty, pithy, dismissive, erudite, art-obsessed, and ultimately enjoyable to read even if you reject several of his premises. His initial conflict with scientific materialism is not nearly as large as he would like it to be. While he may wish to hold on to the idea or aspects of the, "human," being something not explicable through natural/evolutionary means, he does not have nearly the amount of disagreements he thinks he does with the likes of Dennett, Pinker, and Dawkins when it comes to the importance those elements of human culture (art, music, poetry, philosophy) in modern life. There is a tone of the tired discussion that to explain something is to rob it of his power. To this end he gives the example of a Beethoven symphony; perhaps it's my training in music but I find the study and understanding of the origin, composition, context, as well as theoretical analysis of a piece of music (on the part of conductor, musician, and audience alike) to be invaluable to creating worthwhile performances from the artists and heightened involvement with the audience. His dismissive discussion of Singer and Parfit is unnecessary and entirely unilluminating however his concluding remarks on moral life, absent these abrupt condemnations, is definitely worth reading. Likely to be called antiquarian or supernaturalist, this is still worth a read if for no other reason than the beauty of Scruton's prose even when he is uttering thoughts you may find to be greatly in error.
March 2, 2017
Roger Scruton is always good, though this book is very brief. His discussion of sexual morality is very fascinating and reminds me I need to read his book on that.
August 28, 2025
"Only a being who makes judgments can laugh. Typically we laugh at things that fall short, or witticisms that place our actions side by side with the aspirations that they ridicule… Insofar as children are amused by things, it is because—in their own way—they’re comparing those things with the norms that they challenge.”
"For Aristotle, virtue consists in the ability to pursue what reason recommends by the motives that strive against it... Virtue consists in the ability to take full responsibility for one's acts, intentions, and avowals in the face of all the motives for renouncing or denouncing them."
"Sexual pleasure is focused on another person, conceived not as an object but as a subject like me. It's not exactly pleasure over or about the other, and so is not exactly like other emotional pleasures—but it is a kind of pleasure in the other. And it is conditional on seeing the other as another..."
"In a cogent biological theory, all such teleological idioms must be replaced with functional explanations... A population genetically averse to cooperation, to parental affection, to self-sacrifice on behalf of children, and to sexual restraint and control of violence is a population endowed with dysfunctional traits relative to reproduction. Hence, it will disappear."
"Once again, it seems, we are in the habit of telling ourselves stories that make no reference to the biological realities in which they are rooted."
"For Aristotle, virtue consists in the ability to pursue what reason recommends by the motives that strive against it... Virtue consists in the ability to take full responsibility for one's acts, intentions, and avowals in the face of all the motives for renouncing or denouncing them."
"Sexual pleasure is focused on another person, conceived not as an object but as a subject like me. It's not exactly pleasure over or about the other, and so is not exactly like other emotional pleasures—but it is a kind of pleasure in the other. And it is conditional on seeing the other as another..."
"In a cogent biological theory, all such teleological idioms must be replaced with functional explanations... A population genetically averse to cooperation, to parental affection, to self-sacrifice on behalf of children, and to sexual restraint and control of violence is a population endowed with dysfunctional traits relative to reproduction. Hence, it will disappear."
"Once again, it seems, we are in the habit of telling ourselves stories that make no reference to the biological realities in which they are rooted."
January 25, 2020
Someone once described Roger Scruton as 'the unthinking man's thinking man'. Being somewhat sympathetic to that description, I found myself suprised at how much I've enjoyed this book. Scruton makes a clear and elegant case that the strides we've made in understanding evolutionary biology offer a fundamentally incomplete account of human nature. To be human, argues Scruton, is of course to be subject to the laws and pressures of evolution. But that is at most half the story: being human also means to want to be treated as a person and to explain your world in terms of moral concepts such as guilt, responsibility and evil. These features are not merely accidents, epiphenomena (or "adaptations"); rather, they are the building blocks of an altogether different mode of understanding ourselves. Just as electricity and magnetism, orthogonally, give you the full description of light, Scruton argues that only by bringing back morality into the picture can you get clarity on the kinds of creatures that we are.
An analogy he often uses is with a portrait. Physically, it is nothing but a series of blobs of paint on a canvas. But get enough of those blobs in just the right order, and a face appears. In other words, a new way to describe the painting becomes possible: we are now able to say what the picture *refers to* as opposed to what the picture is (i.e. smudges of colour). Personhood, Scruton argues, is a phenomenon that emerges in a similar fashion, from the building blocks of our biology, yet irreducible to them. (For a snippet of some of his arguments in this vein, consider the idea that the presence of many features of our morality are simply adaptive strategies to evolutionary pressures. Scruton points out that, for example, you can condition an animal to feel fear, but not guilt - and it's precisely the moral difference between the two which biology leaves unexplained. A very similar, and well argued debate between Ian Morris and Christine Korsgaard is found in Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve).
Consisting of just 4 lectures, the book only touches on topics which could be broadened. One point of note, though, is the discussion of modern liberalism and its overemphasis on the notion of choice (and consent):
"One thing that is unacceptable in the political philosophies that compete for our endorsement today is their failure to recognize that most of what we are and owe has been acquired without our own consent to it". Other cultures - notably, in the East - place a higher obligation on fulfilling duties that you did not choose to have - towards your family, towards your social class or nation. While very much in line with the classical liberal tradition of respects for the individual person, Scruton does wish to call to attention that there are more 'tastes' in the moral palate than choice and harm (a point well-made by Jonathan Haidt).
For a book that is generally carefully written, the only massive howler I can see is when Scruton insists that personhood is binary: there are no blurred lines between the conscious and the self-conscious animal, "anymore than there are intermediate stages between patterns in which you cannot see a face and patterns in which you can". Anyone who can dim the lights in his house (or has seen a time-lapse video of a painter at work) knows that there *are*, in fact such intermediate stages, where you kinda see something, but not sure exactly what. (And, to use one of Dennett's suggestions, this might hold true even for the shades of consciousness in different creatures).
Finally, Scruton does have a tendency to wax lyrical about things like the transcendental 'I-You' encounter in a way which, were it to occur in Derrida or Deleuze, he'd surely dismiss as "nonsense". But then again, anyone familiar with videos with Scruton on horseback, or shivering aesthetically next to some 17th century Madonna (of which, alas, there are too many - both videos and Madonnas), should come to expect this.
An analogy he often uses is with a portrait. Physically, it is nothing but a series of blobs of paint on a canvas. But get enough of those blobs in just the right order, and a face appears. In other words, a new way to describe the painting becomes possible: we are now able to say what the picture *refers to* as opposed to what the picture is (i.e. smudges of colour). Personhood, Scruton argues, is a phenomenon that emerges in a similar fashion, from the building blocks of our biology, yet irreducible to them. (For a snippet of some of his arguments in this vein, consider the idea that the presence of many features of our morality are simply adaptive strategies to evolutionary pressures. Scruton points out that, for example, you can condition an animal to feel fear, but not guilt - and it's precisely the moral difference between the two which biology leaves unexplained. A very similar, and well argued debate between Ian Morris and Christine Korsgaard is found in Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve).
Consisting of just 4 lectures, the book only touches on topics which could be broadened. One point of note, though, is the discussion of modern liberalism and its overemphasis on the notion of choice (and consent):
"One thing that is unacceptable in the political philosophies that compete for our endorsement today is their failure to recognize that most of what we are and owe has been acquired without our own consent to it". Other cultures - notably, in the East - place a higher obligation on fulfilling duties that you did not choose to have - towards your family, towards your social class or nation. While very much in line with the classical liberal tradition of respects for the individual person, Scruton does wish to call to attention that there are more 'tastes' in the moral palate than choice and harm (a point well-made by Jonathan Haidt).
For a book that is generally carefully written, the only massive howler I can see is when Scruton insists that personhood is binary: there are no blurred lines between the conscious and the self-conscious animal, "anymore than there are intermediate stages between patterns in which you cannot see a face and patterns in which you can". Anyone who can dim the lights in his house (or has seen a time-lapse video of a painter at work) knows that there *are*, in fact such intermediate stages, where you kinda see something, but not sure exactly what. (And, to use one of Dennett's suggestions, this might hold true even for the shades of consciousness in different creatures).
Finally, Scruton does have a tendency to wax lyrical about things like the transcendental 'I-You' encounter in a way which, were it to occur in Derrida or Deleuze, he'd surely dismiss as "nonsense". But then again, anyone familiar with videos with Scruton on horseback, or shivering aesthetically next to some 17th century Madonna (of which, alas, there are too many - both videos and Madonnas), should come to expect this.
July 2, 2020
A thoughtful essay by one of our best living philosophers about what human nature really is. Human nature has two aspects: biology says humans are objects, organisms that have evolved, with an evolved behavior and responses to its environment. At the same time humans are subjects, invisible to science, because they're not part of the empirical world but a point of view upon it, in social relationships with other subjects. Scruton speaks of persons. Beings with a self, who can say 'I', and relate to others who can also say I, and talk to each other by saying 'you'. Persons can only be persons because of other persons. Because of this we are also moral beings, who are accountable for what they do. Who have rights and obligations towards others. Even though they are animals biologically, they are not of the same kind. If there were conscious, intelligent aliens, or if angels existed, they would be of the same kind.
This kind does not feature in science. It requires a different kind of understanding. That's why it's not studied by science but by the humanities. It's mistaken to think of the humanities as inferior and that it will be gobbled up by science once the brain is completely understood.
That humans are subjects is not an extra, supernatural attribute beyond their existence as physical organisms, but emerges from it, rather like a face in a painting emerges from the paint on the canvas. The face isn't the paint, and it's not something extra that has been added, but it's still there.
Scruton takes issue against the materialist and reductionist philosophy that is popular today, for instance in the writings of people like Dawkins, Dennett and Harris. As Scruton says elsewhere: what they say we really are is exactly what we really aren't.
In this book he says that in materialism 'human nature, once something to live up to, becomes something to live down to instead. Biological reductionism nurtures this 'living down', which is why people so readily fall for it. It makes cynicism respectable and degeneracy chic. It abolishes our kind – and with it our kindness'.
This kind does not feature in science. It requires a different kind of understanding. That's why it's not studied by science but by the humanities. It's mistaken to think of the humanities as inferior and that it will be gobbled up by science once the brain is completely understood.
That humans are subjects is not an extra, supernatural attribute beyond their existence as physical organisms, but emerges from it, rather like a face in a painting emerges from the paint on the canvas. The face isn't the paint, and it's not something extra that has been added, but it's still there.
Scruton takes issue against the materialist and reductionist philosophy that is popular today, for instance in the writings of people like Dawkins, Dennett and Harris. As Scruton says elsewhere: what they say we really are is exactly what we really aren't.
In this book he says that in materialism 'human nature, once something to live up to, becomes something to live down to instead. Biological reductionism nurtures this 'living down', which is why people so readily fall for it. It makes cynicism respectable and degeneracy chic. It abolishes our kind – and with it our kindness'.
May 29, 2017
I read this book in the sense that I read all the pages, but it took me many weeks to slog through it - and it's a short book. A lot of hand-wavy stuff, mostly religious or mystical or referring to literary and artistic masterpieces. Not really sure what his point was. Individual sentences are well written and sometime provocative - but overall it just seemed to wander around. Maybe it would have been better to read it in two or three days. Maybe it's way past me.
February 16, 2022
من هر دو ترجمه ی این کتاب رو به فارسی خوندم؛ یعنی عملا دو بار این کتاب رو خوندم. هر دو ترجمه ضعف ها و قوت هایی نسبت به هم داشتند. این ترجمه روانی متن بهتری داشت و ترجمه ی نشر طرح نو، معادل های بهتر و پانویس ها و ارجاعات دقیق تر و بهتری استفاده کرده بود. در کل کتاب بسیار جذاب و بی نظیری هست، اسکروتن در عین کوتاهی عمیق ترین و مهم ترین چالش های نظری درباره ی انسان رو به زبانی نه چندان ساده شرح داده. برای علاقه مندان به فلسفه و تبارشناسی، بسیار پیشنهاد می کنم.
January 21, 2019
Very difficult read. Very few takeaways.
May 15, 2025
3.5ish stars. Scruton asks really good questions, and makes really good observations (though true to form, long-winded) without always reaching good conclusions. He was good on ‘me and my neighbor’, not so much on ‘God, me, and my neighbor’. Nonetheless, I found this to be a really enjoyable read. His sections in chapter 2—most notably, “Sex, Art, and the Subject” and “Recentering and Decentering the Passions” were thought-provoking.
November 20, 2023
I don't really feel like this book is complete enough. It's a sort of "light ramblings" book, which is sometimes fun but it's too erratic to recommend to a philosopher and probably too technical to recommend to the layman.
April 22, 2020
Excellent. Philosophical anthropology at it's best and most accessible, with an application to moral philosophy. He combines deontological ethics with positive statements on virtue and piety; very interesting.
December 31, 2022
A good concise summary of the last 15 years of his work (repeats his Gifford Lectures a bit). I think this period is where Scruton bloomed. Definitely worth the time.
December 31, 2024
Arată greșeala lui Descartes de a identifica subiectul în mod intelectual și prin introspecție, atribuindu-i astfel substanță, tratându-l, deci, ca obiect. Scruton e kantian, adoptă conceptul subiectului transcendental în care subiectul este un punct de vedere asupra lumii și centru al conștiinței, aflat dincolo de empiric, fiind, totuși, un orizont, „un hotar îngust al lumii”.
Scruton e îngrijorat de teoriile biologice și evoluționiste care se mulțumesc să definească omul drept un simplu animal, influențat și constrâns de gene, că până și cele mai nobile trăsături umane, potrivit acestor teorii, au o realitate biologică. Face o trecere în revistă a acestora (Freud, Bowlby, Fisher, Darwin, Dawkins) și delimitează între conștiință vs conștiință de sine, cea din urmă ducând la perspectiva persoanei I, argumentând personalismul pe linia lui Aristotel și Toma de Aquino. Mizează pe relația Eu-Tu (a lui Martin Buber) și pe ceea ce viața morală cere de la persoană; tocmai din această relația se fundamentează adevărul moral din care derivă obligațiile noastre.
Scruton e îngrijorat de teoriile biologice și evoluționiste care se mulțumesc să definească omul drept un simplu animal, influențat și constrâns de gene, că până și cele mai nobile trăsături umane, potrivit acestor teorii, au o realitate biologică. Face o trecere în revistă a acestora (Freud, Bowlby, Fisher, Darwin, Dawkins) și delimitează între conștiință vs conștiință de sine, cea din urmă ducând la perspectiva persoanei I, argumentând personalismul pe linia lui Aristotel și Toma de Aquino. Mizează pe relația Eu-Tu (a lui Martin Buber) și pe ceea ce viața morală cere de la persoană; tocmai din această relația se fundamentează adevărul moral din care derivă obligațiile noastre.
July 13, 2024
Dear reader, let me begin (as I’ve already done a couple of times before) on a personal note: I am a middle-aged man. One of the (perhaps unavoidable) consequences of this has been a growing skepticism towards simplistic, side-tacking, black-and-white explanations of everything, and that includes political ideas. A practical consequence of this is a strong unwillingness to be pigeonholed, and a personal effort to listen to different perspectives and see the truths within them that cannot be scrubbed away. In the realm of public affairs, this means I have become aware of the different ways and areas in which conservatism, liberalism and social democracy are at least partly right, even if this doesn’t mean we can just cherrypick what we like about each of them and cook the perfect, eclectic recipe. Sometimes, goods are incompatible, but it always pays to be aware of this when deciding to make trade-offs.
A couple of years ago I stumbled upon Roger Scruton’s How to Be a Conservative, and found much to like in it, along with the surprise of having found that rarest of mythological creatures, the conservative philosopher. I decided I had to read some follow-up to this work, and today I have just finished another (this time, very little) very little book of his, so let me tell you about it.
On Human Nature is a collection of three lectures that the author gave at Princeton in the fall of 2013. They constitute 3 of the four chapters of this book, with a fourth one added as a tip. As the title makes pretty clear, the book is a reflection on the nature of human beings from a liberal-conservative perspective, as well as about what morality is and/or should be about. As such, it engages in a critical dialogue with different approaches -most notably with scientific reductionism and evolutionary psychology, but also with Utilitarian/Consequentialist strands of thought and with some perceived limitations of standard, liberal views of ethics.
In the first essay, "Human Kind", Scruton explores the concept of personhood and self-consciousness, with a particularly critical view of those who would reduce the chasm between ourselves and other animals, and who would posit that our minds, feelings and values are just an excrescence of evolutionary pressures and advantageous adaptations (Dawkins and Dennett mostly come to mind). Although he doesn’t deny our biological nature and our continuum with other living beings, Scruton does suggest that while our mental life is grounded in our biological nature, it cannot be fully explained by it, and he argues that humans are unique and qualitatively different in their ability to see themselves as subjects and others as subjects too, and gives examples of things like laughter, responsibility, guilt or self-awareness that distinguish us and are linked to our moral agency and responsibility, as manifested in the importance of personal identity, moral law, and the intrinsic value of individuals: "We are animals, certainly; but we are also incarnate persons, with cognitive capacities that are not shared by other animals and which endow us with an entirely distinctive emotional life - one dependent on the self-conscious thought processes that are unique to our kind".
Chapter two, "Human Relations", further delves into the specific social nature of human beings. Scruton argues for a balancing act in which our identity is shaped not only by our existence as autonomous selves, but also by our relationships with others (this is what you would expect from a conservative philosopher after all, an attenuation of the classical Enlightenment, liberal and rationalist view of the sovereign individual and his/her rights). This he mostly discusses through the introduction of the concept of the "I-Thou" relationship, apparently borrowed from Martin Buber. These relationships are characterized by mutual recognition and respect, in contrast to "I-It" relationships, where others are seen as objects to be used. This leads to an interesting dialectic in which self and others interact, in which we look into others and need to justify our actions to them: "I am this thing that you too observe and which can be understood in two ways - as an organism and as a person. In addressing me as ‘you’ you address me as a person and are asking me to respond as an ‘I’ ". There is a dualism at play here, not only relating to human nature but to how we view the world, and to the contrasting impulses of explaining and understanding.
Chapter three, "The Moral Life" is the one I found the most enjoyable. Here the author moves more specifically to disputing with different contemporary views of morality while positing his own, a kind of socially-orientated deontology in which persons have to balance their individuality with their social nature. "If, as I suggest, morality is rooted in the practice of accountability between self-conscious agents, this is exactly what we would expect. The impartial other sets the standard that we all must meet’. The author goes full attack-mode on utilitarian and consequentialist views (Parfit and Singer being taken as representatives), the gists of his argument being that we cannot reduce morality to a simple ‘moral arithmetic’ and thought experiments that brush away under the table the unequalness of our moral obligations: "We recognize obligations to those who depend on us and on whom we depend, and we exist at the center of a sphere of accountability, which stretches out from us with dwindling force across the world of other people. Our moral principles are the precipitate of personal relations , in which we are face-to-face with those who have a claim on us and who are more interested in our virtues and vices than on our ability to derive output from input on our pocket moral calculators". Scruton also mobilizes into his account the common complaints of unknowability of one’s actions and those cases in which the road to Hell was paved with good intentions. One could argue here that he isn’t being really fair, as most utilitarians tend to be rule-based, and not naive utilitarians (still, taking for myself, I feel that consequentialists might always have a higher degree of temptation towards the idea of bending the rules and overestimating their own intelligence).
Chapter four, "Sacred Obligations", is one I’ve also found very engaging, although for reasons completely different to the previous one. All in all, Scruton has shown himself to be pretty squarely in the line of a very Enlightenment, quasi-Kantian and very liberal line of seeing human nature and morality as essentially of the western, individualistic, ‘contractarian’ and secular kind. In the last pages of his book he presents the challenge that would come from more traditional views of morality (if you have read Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind, these are the aspects covered by the aspects of Loyalty-Betrayal, Authority-Subversion and Sanctity-Degradation from the conservative moral matrix). Not being pure, noumenal selves, unencumbered by ties and attachments and by anything beyond the curtailment of our freedoms, we have to deal with the moral negotiation of more ‘embodied’ aspects of ourselves, "erotic and familial emotions that create radical distinctions, unequal claims, fatal attachments and territorial needs". Also, our ties and obligations aren’t only of the contractual, freely-agreed upon type: we are born in a world which comes with strings attached, ties we never chose and challenges that go beyond the negotiation of social contracts. Scruton goes over these in some detail, attempting to reconcile them with his more classical liberal self. Notions of disgust are explored related to sexual violence and choice, and of conservative beliefs in pollution. Piety, understood as the subordination of an individual to obligations that one hasn’t chosen freely, also gets its day under the sun. The book finally concludes with some reflections on the sacred and of religion’s moral powers and relevance. "Good and evil, sacred and profane, redemption, purity, and sacrifice all then make sense to us, and we are guided along a path of reconciliation, both to the people around us and to our own destiny as dying things".
To conclude with some lines on my personal impressions, I rather liked the book, and found myself agreeing with quite a bit. I am not altogether sure though that this is not a case of confirmation bias - a lot of the arguments that Scruton is offering connect a lot with some of my own intuitions. I would have appreciated the book more if it were more systematic and less accidental, but overall, I think it packs quite a lot of food for thought in a very small container. 144 pages feel like a nutshell, but in their inside one could himself a king of an infinite moral space.
A couple of years ago I stumbled upon Roger Scruton’s How to Be a Conservative, and found much to like in it, along with the surprise of having found that rarest of mythological creatures, the conservative philosopher. I decided I had to read some follow-up to this work, and today I have just finished another (this time, very little) very little book of his, so let me tell you about it.
On Human Nature is a collection of three lectures that the author gave at Princeton in the fall of 2013. They constitute 3 of the four chapters of this book, with a fourth one added as a tip. As the title makes pretty clear, the book is a reflection on the nature of human beings from a liberal-conservative perspective, as well as about what morality is and/or should be about. As such, it engages in a critical dialogue with different approaches -most notably with scientific reductionism and evolutionary psychology, but also with Utilitarian/Consequentialist strands of thought and with some perceived limitations of standard, liberal views of ethics.
In the first essay, "Human Kind", Scruton explores the concept of personhood and self-consciousness, with a particularly critical view of those who would reduce the chasm between ourselves and other animals, and who would posit that our minds, feelings and values are just an excrescence of evolutionary pressures and advantageous adaptations (Dawkins and Dennett mostly come to mind). Although he doesn’t deny our biological nature and our continuum with other living beings, Scruton does suggest that while our mental life is grounded in our biological nature, it cannot be fully explained by it, and he argues that humans are unique and qualitatively different in their ability to see themselves as subjects and others as subjects too, and gives examples of things like laughter, responsibility, guilt or self-awareness that distinguish us and are linked to our moral agency and responsibility, as manifested in the importance of personal identity, moral law, and the intrinsic value of individuals: "We are animals, certainly; but we are also incarnate persons, with cognitive capacities that are not shared by other animals and which endow us with an entirely distinctive emotional life - one dependent on the self-conscious thought processes that are unique to our kind".
Chapter two, "Human Relations", further delves into the specific social nature of human beings. Scruton argues for a balancing act in which our identity is shaped not only by our existence as autonomous selves, but also by our relationships with others (this is what you would expect from a conservative philosopher after all, an attenuation of the classical Enlightenment, liberal and rationalist view of the sovereign individual and his/her rights). This he mostly discusses through the introduction of the concept of the "I-Thou" relationship, apparently borrowed from Martin Buber. These relationships are characterized by mutual recognition and respect, in contrast to "I-It" relationships, where others are seen as objects to be used. This leads to an interesting dialectic in which self and others interact, in which we look into others and need to justify our actions to them: "I am this thing that you too observe and which can be understood in two ways - as an organism and as a person. In addressing me as ‘you’ you address me as a person and are asking me to respond as an ‘I’ ". There is a dualism at play here, not only relating to human nature but to how we view the world, and to the contrasting impulses of explaining and understanding.
Chapter three, "The Moral Life" is the one I found the most enjoyable. Here the author moves more specifically to disputing with different contemporary views of morality while positing his own, a kind of socially-orientated deontology in which persons have to balance their individuality with their social nature. "If, as I suggest, morality is rooted in the practice of accountability between self-conscious agents, this is exactly what we would expect. The impartial other sets the standard that we all must meet’. The author goes full attack-mode on utilitarian and consequentialist views (Parfit and Singer being taken as representatives), the gists of his argument being that we cannot reduce morality to a simple ‘moral arithmetic’ and thought experiments that brush away under the table the unequalness of our moral obligations: "We recognize obligations to those who depend on us and on whom we depend, and we exist at the center of a sphere of accountability, which stretches out from us with dwindling force across the world of other people. Our moral principles are the precipitate of personal relations , in which we are face-to-face with those who have a claim on us and who are more interested in our virtues and vices than on our ability to derive output from input on our pocket moral calculators". Scruton also mobilizes into his account the common complaints of unknowability of one’s actions and those cases in which the road to Hell was paved with good intentions. One could argue here that he isn’t being really fair, as most utilitarians tend to be rule-based, and not naive utilitarians (still, taking for myself, I feel that consequentialists might always have a higher degree of temptation towards the idea of bending the rules and overestimating their own intelligence).
Chapter four, "Sacred Obligations", is one I’ve also found very engaging, although for reasons completely different to the previous one. All in all, Scruton has shown himself to be pretty squarely in the line of a very Enlightenment, quasi-Kantian and very liberal line of seeing human nature and morality as essentially of the western, individualistic, ‘contractarian’ and secular kind. In the last pages of his book he presents the challenge that would come from more traditional views of morality (if you have read Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind, these are the aspects covered by the aspects of Loyalty-Betrayal, Authority-Subversion and Sanctity-Degradation from the conservative moral matrix). Not being pure, noumenal selves, unencumbered by ties and attachments and by anything beyond the curtailment of our freedoms, we have to deal with the moral negotiation of more ‘embodied’ aspects of ourselves, "erotic and familial emotions that create radical distinctions, unequal claims, fatal attachments and territorial needs". Also, our ties and obligations aren’t only of the contractual, freely-agreed upon type: we are born in a world which comes with strings attached, ties we never chose and challenges that go beyond the negotiation of social contracts. Scruton goes over these in some detail, attempting to reconcile them with his more classical liberal self. Notions of disgust are explored related to sexual violence and choice, and of conservative beliefs in pollution. Piety, understood as the subordination of an individual to obligations that one hasn’t chosen freely, also gets its day under the sun. The book finally concludes with some reflections on the sacred and of religion’s moral powers and relevance. "Good and evil, sacred and profane, redemption, purity, and sacrifice all then make sense to us, and we are guided along a path of reconciliation, both to the people around us and to our own destiny as dying things".
To conclude with some lines on my personal impressions, I rather liked the book, and found myself agreeing with quite a bit. I am not altogether sure though that this is not a case of confirmation bias - a lot of the arguments that Scruton is offering connect a lot with some of my own intuitions. I would have appreciated the book more if it were more systematic and less accidental, but overall, I think it packs quite a lot of food for thought in a very small container. 144 pages feel like a nutshell, but in their inside one could himself a king of an infinite moral space.
May 22, 2019
Though worth pondering his many arguments, IMHO Roger Scruton is at his best as a critic. As a critic he is concise, a little acerbic, and manages to make clear the faults in the work of others. As for his own arguments, he gestures rather than says, implies rather than argues. In its simplest form, the argument is something like....there is more to being human than evolutionary biology can talk about, and he argues for this using many different examples, but the clarity is almost lost in the plethora of examples. I do think he's right on most counts, which probably leans my opinion generously in his favour. However, I also wish he was a little quicker to the punch. Overall though his voice is a good one to have in the ring against the materialists; he does a far better job, of protecting the sanctity and richness of being human, than I ever could
June 21, 2020
These four essays explore many questions and ideas central to our human nature, those of (1) our kind, (2) our relations, (3) the moral life, and (4) the sacred obligations.
I have enjoyed the three out of four essays that I read immensely, and almost count this as the philosophical book that I learned the most from, maybe outranked soon by another Scruton work that I'm going to read, Modern Philosophy.
The first essay is the most powerful, yet the third is the most accessible of all to lay reader. I'd suggest to the perspective reader to begin from last to first essays.
I have enjoyed the three out of four essays that I read immensely, and almost count this as the philosophical book that I learned the most from, maybe outranked soon by another Scruton work that I'm going to read, Modern Philosophy.
The first essay is the most powerful, yet the third is the most accessible of all to lay reader. I'd suggest to the perspective reader to begin from last to first essays.
May 31, 2023
A book that simply blows your mind. Not necessarily through the comprehensive explanations which it does not provide but, rather, via the thoughts and ideas which relentlessly "harass" the reader.
Extremely dense and hermetic initially, the book starts to make sense towards the end so in a pardoxical way I think it is best, if you really want to understand what Scruton aims to do, to start with the end.
I read the book in Romanian, superbly translated by Adina Arvatu! Congratulations!
Extremely dense and hermetic initially, the book starts to make sense towards the end so in a pardoxical way I think it is best, if you really want to understand what Scruton aims to do, to start with the end.
I read the book in Romanian, superbly translated by Adina Arvatu! Congratulations!
April 23, 2021
Scruton’s take on the makings of human nature. He provides many unique perspectives that run counter to accepted evolutionary psychology and secular philosophy. Some are eloquent and masterfully cutting . At points , he was a little hard to follow but worth the effort in my opinion.
January 19, 2022
Feels incomplete, mostly refers to others without contributing much of originality himself
May 25, 2024
3.5 Stars
January 27, 2024
Roger Scruton divides his book on human Nature into 4 categories each one of which reflects a main theme that separates humans from any other species.
1)-On humankind, I think Roger follows the opinion of Kant that our kind should be referred to as " The Person", not "human being".
Language is very nuanced here because "The Person" refers to an emerged entity rooted in the human being brought to another order of explanation than that explored by biology.
It is not something beyond this reality but not reducible to it either.
Kant said: "Persons are by nature free, self-conscious, rational agents, obedient to reason and bound by the moral law", so we created sexual restraints and held each other accountable.
Scruton by this, is taking the side of Alija Izetbegović and Abdel Wahab El-Messiri as both of them emphasise that topic.
El-Messiri mentioned the idea of similarities between us and animals in some biological definitions. However, we also have some Phenomena that are unexplainable by evolution theory, ex: Art, Language, Sacrifice and Beauty.الفلسفة المادية وتفكيك الإنسان
Izetbegović argued that we must be understood through another order of explanation than that offered by genetics because the higher faculties of humankind are in a different category from those features that we share with "our evolutionary neighbours". الإسلام بين الشرق والغرب
Those higher faculties are cognitive capacities, Language, rational, exchange and information which enable us to recognize the beauty and the sublime and to have the virtue of self-sacrifice and love.
This self-awareness, that metaphysical moment, led our kind to build societies which are not just groups of cooperating primates but rather communities of persons who live in mutual judgement organizing their world in terms of moral concepts.
So we haven't only adapted to our surrounding environment but also worked on adapting our environment to us, by shaping our world from chaos to order because of our ability to see the future (by having faith), then we manifested that by architecture, mainly religious architecture.
Creating architecture has led us inevitably to create cultures as a conscious activity of the critical mind. Culture embodied in a moral and religious tradition helps us to feel at home and resonate with its significance.
All of this was a consequence of intentionality, which is the mental direction upon an object because shaping the environment is a work of explanation to our reality, so it depends upon a prior work of interpretation, which will lead to a different behaviour if it was caused by a natural programme and not by expressive of intentional state.
Science sees us as objects rather than subjects, objects which can be measured and are a part of (die Naturwelt). On the contrary, we are the kind of thing that relates to members of its kind through interpersonal attitudes and self-predication. This is making us transcend (die Naturwelt) to (die Lebenswelt), which is the world of interpersonal attitudes in which we live, which contains a certain level of complexity in the way of see others and ourselves beyond Nature.
Although, as El-Messiri said: "الإنسان جزء يتجزأ من الطبيعة" is a truth which would still be the truth even without religion because of the process of (Verstehen) as Scruton describes which is the process of understanding of human action in terms of its social meaning rather than its biological cause.
Additionally, Al-Farabi said: "Truth furnished to the intellect by philosophy is made available to the imagination by religious faith", so by applying this, we can combine critical thinking and means of logic with the understanding of faith grasped by rituals and prayers. Then we will have a more imagistic truth which could be translated into rational arguments.
2)-On Human Relations, Scruton mentioned that we are subjects. Therefore, The subject is a point of view upon the world of objects and not an item within it. Even if the subject is not a "something", it is not a "nothing" either.
The subject exists on the edge of the world addressing reality from a point on the horizon that no one else can occupy (die Lebenswelt), from a standpoint that accords a privileged place to our thoughts and feelings.
Hence, this first-person privilege is the foundation of personal relations.
Here arises the demand for accountability from creatures who can know themselves, where at the heart of this belief lies the belief in the freedom of the other.
Giving each other reasons, holding each other to account, praising, blaming and negotiating are all ways in which we work for the other's acceptance we are, in turn, influenced to accept others. Those are moments in which each of us aims attention not to the body of the other but to the first-person perspective that shines in it.
We can address the true but hidden self that is veiled by the flesh. My contribution to that is that we can even address our flesh by describing the action of doing something intentionally to it.
It is obvious by saying: (Ich habe mich gewaschen) or (Mir ist kalt), where we are addressing the flesh as an object.
Using (I) we set the body aside, replacing the organism with the self.
This led us to the metaphysical truth which is that the self is a social product. As a first-person, each one of us can make statements about ourselves, answer questions and engage in reasoning. As we engage through the dialogue in which we fit together in communities of mutual interest, we summon the other person and make him present as we are present.
Due to the mutual dialogue, communities emerged through participation in responsibilities, moralities, law, institutions, religion, love, art and recognition of beauty. This couldn't have been manifested without Language, self-consciousness, moral judgment and aesthetic tastes where those qualities define the human condition as distinctively meaningful from other creatures, which means there is a significant noticeable gap.
3)-In The Moral Life, Scruton said that morality is rooted in the practice of accountability between self-conscious agents. Morality exists in part because it enables us to live on negotiated terms with others. Contracts arise as a special case of the transcendental encounter between beings who identify themselves in the first-person status.
People come to depend on each other in many ways and from the point of view of morality it is often the noncontractual forms of dependence that are the most significant. Additionally, the consequences of our actions stretch infinitely outward in both space and time.
Freedom is a product of social condition and it brings the recognition that the other's voice has just as much authority as mine.
Theists see the goal of human life as the knowledge and love of a personal God whose presence is revealed in the natural order. This goal can be manifested through virtues which are dispositions we praise and their absence is an object of shame. Through virtue, our actions and emotions remain centered in the self and vice means the decentering of action and emotion.
Vice is a loss of self-control and the vicious person is the one on whom we cannot rely in matters of obligations and commitment, whereas virtue is taking full responsibility for one's acts and intentions.
We must differentiate between individualism which emphasises individuals as the creators of their life and its value, and deep individuality which is a metaphysical condition that as a person, we share, whether or not we are also individualists. The habit of self-definition as an individual is a part of the human condition itself.
Around each individual is a wall of rights that protects him or her from injustice and on every individual is imposed a set of duties by which those rights are guaranteed.
4)-In the last chapter of the book "Sacred Obligations", Scruton talked about Rituals and how all religions treat rites as a passage in such a way as the point of intersection of the timeless (God) with time (us).
Such events are lifted out of the run of everyday life and offered up to the realm of eternal things. This offering up is an act of sacrifice which requires faith.
Furthermore, sacred things are seen as belonging to another order than the order of the empirical world.
It is as Izetbegović describes, that there are rituals which were invented only to differentiate between humans and animals. On the other hand, a trait within an animal is shown to be an adaption just as soon as we can show that its absence will be a genetic disadvantage. Therefore it was a necessity.
Scruton mentioned two criticisms of the picture of moral life, the first is that the contractarian position fails to take our situation as an organism seriously, and the second is that our obligations are not and cannot be reduced to those that guarantee our mutual freedom, there is ties that we never chose but has been chosen for us (predistinatied), and Piety is a posture of submission and obedience toward authorities that you have never chosen.
The world is a gift from a transcendental God whose presence is displayed in sacred moments.
Those who pray to plant their moral thinking in the fertile soil of religious practice, so Religion in this understanding, is a dedication of one's being.
1)-On humankind, I think Roger follows the opinion of Kant that our kind should be referred to as " The Person", not "human being".
Language is very nuanced here because "The Person" refers to an emerged entity rooted in the human being brought to another order of explanation than that explored by biology.
It is not something beyond this reality but not reducible to it either.
Kant said: "Persons are by nature free, self-conscious, rational agents, obedient to reason and bound by the moral law", so we created sexual restraints and held each other accountable.
Scruton by this, is taking the side of Alija Izetbegović and Abdel Wahab El-Messiri as both of them emphasise that topic.
El-Messiri mentioned the idea of similarities between us and animals in some biological definitions. However, we also have some Phenomena that are unexplainable by evolution theory, ex: Art, Language, Sacrifice and Beauty.الفلسفة المادية وتفكيك الإنسان
Izetbegović argued that we must be understood through another order of explanation than that offered by genetics because the higher faculties of humankind are in a different category from those features that we share with "our evolutionary neighbours". الإسلام بين الشرق والغرب
Those higher faculties are cognitive capacities, Language, rational, exchange and information which enable us to recognize the beauty and the sublime and to have the virtue of self-sacrifice and love.
This self-awareness, that metaphysical moment, led our kind to build societies which are not just groups of cooperating primates but rather communities of persons who live in mutual judgement organizing their world in terms of moral concepts.
So we haven't only adapted to our surrounding environment but also worked on adapting our environment to us, by shaping our world from chaos to order because of our ability to see the future (by having faith), then we manifested that by architecture, mainly religious architecture.
Creating architecture has led us inevitably to create cultures as a conscious activity of the critical mind. Culture embodied in a moral and religious tradition helps us to feel at home and resonate with its significance.
All of this was a consequence of intentionality, which is the mental direction upon an object because shaping the environment is a work of explanation to our reality, so it depends upon a prior work of interpretation, which will lead to a different behaviour if it was caused by a natural programme and not by expressive of intentional state.
Science sees us as objects rather than subjects, objects which can be measured and are a part of (die Naturwelt). On the contrary, we are the kind of thing that relates to members of its kind through interpersonal attitudes and self-predication. This is making us transcend (die Naturwelt) to (die Lebenswelt), which is the world of interpersonal attitudes in which we live, which contains a certain level of complexity in the way of see others and ourselves beyond Nature.
Although, as El-Messiri said: "الإنسان جزء يتجزأ من الطبيعة" is a truth which would still be the truth even without religion because of the process of (Verstehen) as Scruton describes which is the process of understanding of human action in terms of its social meaning rather than its biological cause.
Additionally, Al-Farabi said: "Truth furnished to the intellect by philosophy is made available to the imagination by religious faith", so by applying this, we can combine critical thinking and means of logic with the understanding of faith grasped by rituals and prayers. Then we will have a more imagistic truth which could be translated into rational arguments.
2)-On Human Relations, Scruton mentioned that we are subjects. Therefore, The subject is a point of view upon the world of objects and not an item within it. Even if the subject is not a "something", it is not a "nothing" either.
The subject exists on the edge of the world addressing reality from a point on the horizon that no one else can occupy (die Lebenswelt), from a standpoint that accords a privileged place to our thoughts and feelings.
Hence, this first-person privilege is the foundation of personal relations.
Here arises the demand for accountability from creatures who can know themselves, where at the heart of this belief lies the belief in the freedom of the other.
Giving each other reasons, holding each other to account, praising, blaming and negotiating are all ways in which we work for the other's acceptance we are, in turn, influenced to accept others. Those are moments in which each of us aims attention not to the body of the other but to the first-person perspective that shines in it.
We can address the true but hidden self that is veiled by the flesh. My contribution to that is that we can even address our flesh by describing the action of doing something intentionally to it.
It is obvious by saying: (Ich habe mich gewaschen) or (Mir ist kalt), where we are addressing the flesh as an object.
Using (I) we set the body aside, replacing the organism with the self.
This led us to the metaphysical truth which is that the self is a social product. As a first-person, each one of us can make statements about ourselves, answer questions and engage in reasoning. As we engage through the dialogue in which we fit together in communities of mutual interest, we summon the other person and make him present as we are present.
Due to the mutual dialogue, communities emerged through participation in responsibilities, moralities, law, institutions, religion, love, art and recognition of beauty. This couldn't have been manifested without Language, self-consciousness, moral judgment and aesthetic tastes where those qualities define the human condition as distinctively meaningful from other creatures, which means there is a significant noticeable gap.
3)-In The Moral Life, Scruton said that morality is rooted in the practice of accountability between self-conscious agents. Morality exists in part because it enables us to live on negotiated terms with others. Contracts arise as a special case of the transcendental encounter between beings who identify themselves in the first-person status.
People come to depend on each other in many ways and from the point of view of morality it is often the noncontractual forms of dependence that are the most significant. Additionally, the consequences of our actions stretch infinitely outward in both space and time.
Freedom is a product of social condition and it brings the recognition that the other's voice has just as much authority as mine.
Theists see the goal of human life as the knowledge and love of a personal God whose presence is revealed in the natural order. This goal can be manifested through virtues which are dispositions we praise and their absence is an object of shame. Through virtue, our actions and emotions remain centered in the self and vice means the decentering of action and emotion.
Vice is a loss of self-control and the vicious person is the one on whom we cannot rely in matters of obligations and commitment, whereas virtue is taking full responsibility for one's acts and intentions.
We must differentiate between individualism which emphasises individuals as the creators of their life and its value, and deep individuality which is a metaphysical condition that as a person, we share, whether or not we are also individualists. The habit of self-definition as an individual is a part of the human condition itself.
Around each individual is a wall of rights that protects him or her from injustice and on every individual is imposed a set of duties by which those rights are guaranteed.
4)-In the last chapter of the book "Sacred Obligations", Scruton talked about Rituals and how all religions treat rites as a passage in such a way as the point of intersection of the timeless (God) with time (us).
Such events are lifted out of the run of everyday life and offered up to the realm of eternal things. This offering up is an act of sacrifice which requires faith.
Furthermore, sacred things are seen as belonging to another order than the order of the empirical world.
It is as Izetbegović describes, that there are rituals which were invented only to differentiate between humans and animals. On the other hand, a trait within an animal is shown to be an adaption just as soon as we can show that its absence will be a genetic disadvantage. Therefore it was a necessity.
Scruton mentioned two criticisms of the picture of moral life, the first is that the contractarian position fails to take our situation as an organism seriously, and the second is that our obligations are not and cannot be reduced to those that guarantee our mutual freedom, there is ties that we never chose but has been chosen for us (predistinatied), and Piety is a posture of submission and obedience toward authorities that you have never chosen.
The world is a gift from a transcendental God whose presence is displayed in sacred moments.
Those who pray to plant their moral thinking in the fertile soil of religious practice, so Religion in this understanding, is a dedication of one's being.
October 5, 2023
This book was buns, man. It felt completely devoid of any direction. It reads like the ramblings of someone who has read a lot of other people’s work and was thinking if all of them simultaneously. I do not think a single solid argument was made. Not to mention that it assumes that you as the reader know how to speak and read German, as well as have read every single thing he references instead of explaining his points.
I dont know… It seemed lazy and like he struggles with one of the accusations, for lack of a better word, he throws at other “thinkers” who lack the intellect to defend their arguments.
I dont know… It seemed lazy and like he struggles with one of the accusations, for lack of a better word, he throws at other “thinkers” who lack the intellect to defend their arguments.
May 15, 2023
Filosoful Roger Scruton pledează pentru înțelegerea profundă a naturii umane, și prin aceasta pune la îndoială folosirea teoriilor științifice care nu explică în mod satisfăcător distincția principală între om și celelalte ființe. Ideile, raționalitatea, cultura, moralitatea, altruismul sunt trăsăturile specific umane pe care biologia a încercat să le explice reducându-le la structuri inanimate supuse unei dezvoltări graduale. Orice încercare reducționistă nu înlocuiește demersul filosofiei etice. „De fapt, nu rezultă nimic care ar putea justifica fie eluda, fie discreditarea eforturilor depuse de filosofie în examinarea fundamentelor judecății morale și a locului pe care îl ocupă aceasta în viața unei ființe raționale.”
Materialismul, prin biologie, ajunge să ridiculizeze „ideile noastre morale și religioase” atunci când biologii reduc condiția umană la o însumare de trăsături genealogice și trag concluzia că „Moralitatea nu are alt scop final demonstrabil decât să păstreze intact materialul genetic uman”; argumentul materialist astfel exprimat apare de necombătut datorită unei rigori științifice care nu i-ar garanta și validitatea.
Scruton consideră că o teorie plauzibilă a naturii umane nu poate fi formulată prin reducerea la biologie, prin termeni materialiști, care nu pot sta la baza unor legi definitorii pentru comportamentul nostru ce ne definește ca specie. „Trebuie totodată să fim pregătiți să recunoaștem că legile pe care le-am stabilit cu privire la particularitățile speciei — legile geneticii și analiza funcțională a caracterelor moștenite — nu sunt încă apte nici să descrie, nici să explice comportamentul nostru normal. Ele își ratează ținta tocmai pentru că noi nu suntem ceea ce presupun ele că suntem.”
Și sinele, subiectul însuși este acela care scapă observației științifice. Scruton operează distincția dintre persoană și corpul fizic. Pledoaria lui Scruton este pentru a încadra ființa într-o altă categorie decât cea biologică. Ideea lui este de a depăși paradigma materialistă în care biologia este elementul definitoriu în clasificarea ființelor și a o înlocui cu o paradigmă orientată pe manifestările subiective ale ființei, pe trăirile imposibil de cuantificat științific, pe acele impulsuri simțite și imposibil de exprimat, pe intuiția profuncă că în celălalt e un sine similar cu al nostru generând în noi sentimentul de responsabilitate și etică. Astfel, genul uman, care subsumează asemenea însușiri poate la rândul lui să aibă în comun aceleași trăsături cu alt gen nu neapărat biologic. „Dar oare nu am putea să ne imaginăm alte ființe, membri ai unei alte specii sau care nu aparțin nici unei specii biologice, ce prezintă aceeași complexitate și care sunt în stare să stabilească cu noi un raport ca de la eu la eu?”
Operarea la acest nivel profund subiectiv rămâne apanajul unei alte forme de cunoaștere a condiției umane; determinismul materialismului, anume biologia, genetica, psihologia evoluționistă etc. sunt inutile. Studiile clasice, filosofia și chiar credința religioasă accesează acest nivel nedeterminist care definește o serie de adevăruri. „Dar chiar și fără religie, adevărurile acestea tot adevăruri rămân, și una din sarcinile filosofiei în vremurile noastre e să ne arate că așa stau lucrurile.” Căci un adevăr nu ar fi doar ceva dedicat simțurilor empirice, ci este simțit și de intelect — sau platonic spus, este inteligibil. Libertatea, conștiința de sine, responsabilitatea sunt percepute doar de minte fără mijlocirea simțurilor. Atunci filosofia se folosește de doctrina religioasă ca să transmită intelectului aceste adevăruri. O asemenea realitate, construită din asemenea imagini inteligibile n-au un caracter discursiv, nu se pot construi cu ele argumentații logice, nu țin de sfera rațiunii, ci se pot „înțelege cu ajutorul imaginației, prin ritual și rugăciune, trăind după canoanele unei cunoașteri pe care însă nu o pot traduce în limbaj argumentativ.”
Tocmai accesul la această dimensiune inteligibilă, accesibilă filosofic ne conduce la concluzia că genul uman nu e biologic, iar „reducționismul biologic promovează această coborâre de nivel, ceea ce explică atracția facilă pe care o exercită asupra multora.” Nu putem explora cu gândirea orientată spre obiectivitate acest tărm al subiectului; e inadecvat să formulăm o metodologie pentru a explica ceva incompatibil cu ea din punct de vedere ontologic. „Limba, conștiința de sine, judecata morală, gustul estetic și așa mai departe au apărut cumva, iar ipoteza lui Darwin — conform căreia astfel de lucruri apar prin variație aleatorie și supraviețuiesc prin selecție — încă n-a fost infirmată. Dar rămân devotat vechiului apel al filosofiei, acela de a distinge lucrurile, de a nu le amesteca.”
Întreprinderea lui Scruton poate fi considerată și-o filosofie a minții prezentând formarea eu-ului, relația lui cu celălalt eu, tu-ul din care emerg o serie de trăiri precum responsabilitatea, libertatea, intenția, morala cu al ei simț al dreptății și al datoriei, elemente ce stau la baza naturii umane, a acelui „centru al alegerii libere și responsabile care constituie realitatea interpersonală a fiecăruia dintre noi”, o interrelaționare care face ca două entități separate fizic să devină una, printr-o stare de intuiție indescriptiblă, dar coerentă sub auspiciile naturii umane: „Tu e aici eul transcedental al celuilalt, care nu poate fi descris”.
În acest fel e prezentată și viața morală. Scruton se opune moralității consecvențialiste; sistemul moral care pornește din calcul rațional, al viziunii moderne asupra moralității, apare ca golit de sens. În schimb, el prezintă morala ca fiind inerentă individului ca răspuns la identificarea cu celălalt conform relației eu-tu. Ajutorul este o datorie față de nevoia celui din apropiere, nu are o țintă binele general. Viața morală se exprimă prin manifestarea obligațiilor personale.
Relația eu-tu, conform lui Scruton, definește și conceptul de persoană împăcând două poziții care definesc persoana în moduri diametral opuse: libertarienii, pentru care libertatea de a face alegeri autonome e esențială, iar guvernul trebuie să aibă o implicare minimă pentru a nu o perturba; și poziția comunitariană care definește persoana ca esențialmente dependentă de ajutor reciproc astfel încât guvernul poate inteveni prin restricții împotriva comportamentelor antisociale. Scruton introduce relația eu-tu ca fiind nuclecul conceptului. Astfel accesul la propriul sine intim și a-l recunoașterii în celălalt ca fiind similar mie realizează o relație de răspundere a mea față de el în care propriile autonomii sunt recunoscute și odată cu ele e generat și simțul libertății și al limitelor lui. „LIbertatea și responsabilitatea coincid în agentul uman”. Ca persoane, suntem liberi în manifestări, cum văd libertarienii, dar punem opreliști libertății în contact cu celălalt, asemeni comunitarienilor.
Deci persoana, conform filosofiei moderne, este definită de rețeaua de relații interpersonale, iar pentru asta individul trebuie să aibă o serie de însușiri fără de care relalațiile interpersonale nu s-ar petrece: conștiință de sine, responsabilitate și rațiune practică. Astfel interrelaționarea și drepturile și meritele induc o sferă de suveranitate. „Drepturile și meritele sunt inerente condiției înseși de persoană și nu decurg din vreo convenție sau înțelegere. Cu alte cuvinte ele sunt naturale.”
Ideea viziunii lui Scruton este că modelul științific de explicare a comportamentului uman, sau chiar modelul explicativ al unor filosofi, nu ajunge la țintă, nu explică suficient, este incomplet, „fie pornesc de lao situație în care conceptul vizat e deja aplicat, fie nu reușesc să arate cum anume ajungem să-l aplicăm.” Modelele acestea nu ajung să explice gândurile pe care se întemeiază anumite comportamente ”și nici intenționalitatea profundă pe care teoria pretinde să le explice.”
Materialismul, prin biologie, ajunge să ridiculizeze „ideile noastre morale și religioase” atunci când biologii reduc condiția umană la o însumare de trăsături genealogice și trag concluzia că „Moralitatea nu are alt scop final demonstrabil decât să păstreze intact materialul genetic uman”; argumentul materialist astfel exprimat apare de necombătut datorită unei rigori științifice care nu i-ar garanta și validitatea.
Scruton consideră că o teorie plauzibilă a naturii umane nu poate fi formulată prin reducerea la biologie, prin termeni materialiști, care nu pot sta la baza unor legi definitorii pentru comportamentul nostru ce ne definește ca specie. „Trebuie totodată să fim pregătiți să recunoaștem că legile pe care le-am stabilit cu privire la particularitățile speciei — legile geneticii și analiza funcțională a caracterelor moștenite — nu sunt încă apte nici să descrie, nici să explice comportamentul nostru normal. Ele își ratează ținta tocmai pentru că noi nu suntem ceea ce presupun ele că suntem.”
Și sinele, subiectul însuși este acela care scapă observației științifice. Scruton operează distincția dintre persoană și corpul fizic. Pledoaria lui Scruton este pentru a încadra ființa într-o altă categorie decât cea biologică. Ideea lui este de a depăși paradigma materialistă în care biologia este elementul definitoriu în clasificarea ființelor și a o înlocui cu o paradigmă orientată pe manifestările subiective ale ființei, pe trăirile imposibil de cuantificat științific, pe acele impulsuri simțite și imposibil de exprimat, pe intuiția profuncă că în celălalt e un sine similar cu al nostru generând în noi sentimentul de responsabilitate și etică. Astfel, genul uman, care subsumează asemenea însușiri poate la rândul lui să aibă în comun aceleași trăsături cu alt gen nu neapărat biologic. „Dar oare nu am putea să ne imaginăm alte ființe, membri ai unei alte specii sau care nu aparțin nici unei specii biologice, ce prezintă aceeași complexitate și care sunt în stare să stabilească cu noi un raport ca de la eu la eu?”
Operarea la acest nivel profund subiectiv rămâne apanajul unei alte forme de cunoaștere a condiției umane; determinismul materialismului, anume biologia, genetica, psihologia evoluționistă etc. sunt inutile. Studiile clasice, filosofia și chiar credința religioasă accesează acest nivel nedeterminist care definește o serie de adevăruri. „Dar chiar și fără religie, adevărurile acestea tot adevăruri rămân, și una din sarcinile filosofiei în vremurile noastre e să ne arate că așa stau lucrurile.” Căci un adevăr nu ar fi doar ceva dedicat simțurilor empirice, ci este simțit și de intelect — sau platonic spus, este inteligibil. Libertatea, conștiința de sine, responsabilitatea sunt percepute doar de minte fără mijlocirea simțurilor. Atunci filosofia se folosește de doctrina religioasă ca să transmită intelectului aceste adevăruri. O asemenea realitate, construită din asemenea imagini inteligibile n-au un caracter discursiv, nu se pot construi cu ele argumentații logice, nu țin de sfera rațiunii, ci se pot „înțelege cu ajutorul imaginației, prin ritual și rugăciune, trăind după canoanele unei cunoașteri pe care însă nu o pot traduce în limbaj argumentativ.”
Tocmai accesul la această dimensiune inteligibilă, accesibilă filosofic ne conduce la concluzia că genul uman nu e biologic, iar „reducționismul biologic promovează această coborâre de nivel, ceea ce explică atracția facilă pe care o exercită asupra multora.” Nu putem explora cu gândirea orientată spre obiectivitate acest tărm al subiectului; e inadecvat să formulăm o metodologie pentru a explica ceva incompatibil cu ea din punct de vedere ontologic. „Limba, conștiința de sine, judecata morală, gustul estetic și așa mai departe au apărut cumva, iar ipoteza lui Darwin — conform căreia astfel de lucruri apar prin variație aleatorie și supraviețuiesc prin selecție — încă n-a fost infirmată. Dar rămân devotat vechiului apel al filosofiei, acela de a distinge lucrurile, de a nu le amesteca.”
Întreprinderea lui Scruton poate fi considerată și-o filosofie a minții prezentând formarea eu-ului, relația lui cu celălalt eu, tu-ul din care emerg o serie de trăiri precum responsabilitatea, libertatea, intenția, morala cu al ei simț al dreptății și al datoriei, elemente ce stau la baza naturii umane, a acelui „centru al alegerii libere și responsabile care constituie realitatea interpersonală a fiecăruia dintre noi”, o interrelaționare care face ca două entități separate fizic să devină una, printr-o stare de intuiție indescriptiblă, dar coerentă sub auspiciile naturii umane: „Tu e aici eul transcedental al celuilalt, care nu poate fi descris”.
În acest fel e prezentată și viața morală. Scruton se opune moralității consecvențialiste; sistemul moral care pornește din calcul rațional, al viziunii moderne asupra moralității, apare ca golit de sens. În schimb, el prezintă morala ca fiind inerentă individului ca răspuns la identificarea cu celălalt conform relației eu-tu. Ajutorul este o datorie față de nevoia celui din apropiere, nu are o țintă binele general. Viața morală se exprimă prin manifestarea obligațiilor personale.
Relația eu-tu, conform lui Scruton, definește și conceptul de persoană împăcând două poziții care definesc persoana în moduri diametral opuse: libertarienii, pentru care libertatea de a face alegeri autonome e esențială, iar guvernul trebuie să aibă o implicare minimă pentru a nu o perturba; și poziția comunitariană care definește persoana ca esențialmente dependentă de ajutor reciproc astfel încât guvernul poate inteveni prin restricții împotriva comportamentelor antisociale. Scruton introduce relația eu-tu ca fiind nuclecul conceptului. Astfel accesul la propriul sine intim și a-l recunoașterii în celălalt ca fiind similar mie realizează o relație de răspundere a mea față de el în care propriile autonomii sunt recunoscute și odată cu ele e generat și simțul libertății și al limitelor lui. „LIbertatea și responsabilitatea coincid în agentul uman”. Ca persoane, suntem liberi în manifestări, cum văd libertarienii, dar punem opreliști libertății în contact cu celălalt, asemeni comunitarienilor.
Deci persoana, conform filosofiei moderne, este definită de rețeaua de relații interpersonale, iar pentru asta individul trebuie să aibă o serie de însușiri fără de care relalațiile interpersonale nu s-ar petrece: conștiință de sine, responsabilitate și rațiune practică. Astfel interrelaționarea și drepturile și meritele induc o sferă de suveranitate. „Drepturile și meritele sunt inerente condiției înseși de persoană și nu decurg din vreo convenție sau înțelegere. Cu alte cuvinte ele sunt naturale.”
Ideea viziunii lui Scruton este că modelul științific de explicare a comportamentului uman, sau chiar modelul explicativ al unor filosofi, nu ajunge la țintă, nu explică suficient, este incomplet, „fie pornesc de lao situație în care conceptul vizat e deja aplicat, fie nu reușesc să arate cum anume ajungem să-l aplicăm.” Modelele acestea nu ajung să explice gândurile pe care se întemeiază anumite comportamente ”și nici intenționalitatea profundă pe care teoria pretinde să le explice.”
October 10, 2021
Reading this book was part of my investigations into man's brutal nature, still inspired by reading a previous book about human stupidity. I saw so much barbarity on TV and on the news that I started to question the very arrogance of the human being who thinks he is the most intelligent and superior creature of all.
The book is short with accessible language, in which the writer defends the uniqueness of the human species. The writer confronts evolutionist theories, confronting the view of scholars whose arguments are that human beings cannot be explained simply as biological objects.
We are not just human animals: we are persons, essentially bound to other persons by obligations and rights-is a critical point within the book. Scruton provides readers with a new way of understanding self-consciousness and points out challenges for the human species. It's an introductory book that is sure to please readers of the genre.
The book is short with accessible language, in which the writer defends the uniqueness of the human species. The writer confronts evolutionist theories, confronting the view of scholars whose arguments are that human beings cannot be explained simply as biological objects.
We are not just human animals: we are persons, essentially bound to other persons by obligations and rights-is a critical point within the book. Scruton provides readers with a new way of understanding self-consciousness and points out challenges for the human species. It's an introductory book that is sure to please readers of the genre.
December 28, 2020
Scruton is not as unintelligible as some philosophers, but he does assume his reader is well read in philosophy and literature. He can be difficult to understand at times, but he does not seem to have delighted in deliberate obscurity.
The main thrust of his view (if I understand him) is that society and ethics rest upon an assumption that the words "I" and "you" refer to something other than merely our biological existence. In making this argument, he makes several interesting observations, which prompted my own contemplation of the issues.
The main thrust of his view (if I understand him) is that society and ethics rest upon an assumption that the words "I" and "you" refer to something other than merely our biological existence. In making this argument, he makes several interesting observations, which prompted my own contemplation of the issues.
April 3, 2017
A not very successful rebuttal to evolutionary psychology. A rehash of the defeated philosophical idea that there is a distinction between home sapiens and other animals. Reminded me of another defeated idea of the duality and distinction of between the body and the soul or the body and the brain.
Sad to say first book of Roger Scruton I have not enjoyed and sadder still that it made me glad that I did not major in Philosophy. Glad to have a minor.
Sad to say first book of Roger Scruton I have not enjoyed and sadder still that it made me glad that I did not major in Philosophy. Glad to have a minor.
October 20, 2021
Did not finish. Every person is a human animal and can be understood as such. Certainly our minds seem more complex than any other animals', but I suspect Scruton is just the latest in a long line of people trying to justify neglect of animal welfare by drawing artificial distinctions between us and them. Certainly humans are unique - as is every other species - but we don't need to deny that animals have language and emotions, feel pain etc to make ourselves feel special.
October 8, 2019
The book is a perfect mix of an informative and interesting text which describes the human race and its relations. It is interesting how it references different sources. It describes the human anatomy as its body features, also it references the mind, the voice and how humans behave with each other. I recommend the book to understand what it means to be human as well as its features
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