The Western illusion of human nature : with reflections on the long history of hierarchy, equality, and the sublimation of anarchy in the West, and comparative notes on other conceptions of the human condition

Marshall Sahlins

Reflecting the decline in college courses on Western Civilization, Marshall Sahlins aims to accelerate the trend by reducing "Western Civ" to about two hours. He cites Nietzsche to the effect that deep issues are like cold baths; one should get into and out of them as quickly as possible. The deep issue here is the ancient Western specter of a presocial and antisocial human nature: a supposedly innate self-interest that is represented in our native folklore as the basis or nemesis of cultural order.Yet these Western notions of nature and culture ignore the one truly universal character of human sociality: namely, symbolically constructed kinship relations. Kinsmen are members of one another: they live each other's lives and die each other's deaths. But where the existence of the other is thus incorporated in the being of the self, neither interest, nor agency nor even experience is an individual fact, let alone an egoistic disposition. "Sorry, beg your pardon," Sahlins concludes, "Western civilization has been built on a perverse and mistaken idea of human nature."

「Nielsen BookData」より

この本の情報

書名 The Western illusion of human nature : with reflections on the long history of hierarchy, equality, and the sublimation of anarchy in the West, and comparative notes on other conceptions of the human condition
著作者等 Sahlins, Marshall David
Sahlins Marshall
出版元 Prickly Paradigm Press
刊行年月 c2008
ページ数 112 p.
大きさ 18 cm
ISBN 9780979405723
NCID BA88782606
※クリックでCiNii Booksを表示
言語 英語
出版国 アメリカ合衆国
この本を: 
このエントリーをはてなブックマークに追加

このページを印刷

外部サイトで検索

この本と繋がる本を検索

ウィキペディアから連想