On Human Nature, Roger Scruton
On Human Nature, Roger Scruton
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On Human Nature

Author: Roger Scruton

Narrator: Mike Cooper

Unabridged: 3 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/12/2021


Synopsis

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.

About Roger Scruton

Roger Scruton is widely seen as one of the greatest conservative thinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A polymath who wrote a wide array of fiction, nonfiction, and reviews, he was also the author of over fifty books.

A graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge, Scruton was professor of aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London; university professor at Boston University, and a visiting professor at Oxford University. He was one of the founders of the Salisbury Review, contributed regularly to the Spectator, the Times, and the Daily Telegraph and was for many years wine critic of the New Statesman. Sir Roger Scruton died in January 2020.


Reviews

Goodreads review by H.A. on 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.......more

Goodreads review by Dan on June 16, 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 hol......more

Goodreads review by Dobre on March 01, 2024

3.5☆......more

Goodreads review by Alex on March 01, 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.......more

Goodreads review by Iancu on 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 fu......more