The Politics of Human NatureTransaction Publishers, 01/01/1988 - 241 من الصفحات The effort to understand human nature in a political context is a daunting challenge that has been undertaken in a variety of ways and by a myriad of disciplines through the ages. From Plato to Hobbes and Burke, to Wallas and Oakeschott in our era, efforts have been made to provide some organic framework for the political study of mankind. What has added greatly to the complexity of the task is the increasing denial, even rejection, in the positivist and behaviorist traditions, of the very notion of a human nature. The work can be described as a series of interlocking propositions: the proverbial view of human nature can be explained by evolutionary theory. Biological differences between men and women are responsible for family, community and group life. Social evolution goes through stages which are recapitulated in the moral life of individuals. A well-defined federal system mirrors human development. And finally, for Fleming, most problems in social and political life stem from violations of this federalist system. Fleming's volume takes up a variety of issues: sex and gender differences, democracy and dictatorship, individual and familial patterns of association. He does so in the context of showing how forms of legitimate authority such as families, communities and nations establish such authority by appeals to human nature, and that these appeals, while presumably resting on empirical evidence, also confirm the existence of normative structures. Fleming's work is an effort of synthesis that is sure to arouse discussion and debate. It represents a serious addition to a literature retrieved from the historical dustbins to which it has been repeatedly consigned. |
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... tradition to correct the ar- rogance of the living . What Chesterton called " the democracy of the dead " serves as ... traditional society their impatience is restrained by the constant admonitions to remember the deeds and customs of ...
Thomas Fleming. Modern man does not live in a traditional society . In love with tomorrow , with what we are just about to create , we have little patience with any restraint upon our imagination . We like to think of ourselves as the ...
... tradition . If the United States has a national tradition , it is the habit of change and the worship of the dynamo . Our most poignant folkhero is John Henry , the defeated enemy of progress . The ordinary restraints imposed by ...
... tradition and contempt for the past that is at work . What every specialist scholar needs - if he wants to make his work serve anything beyond self - promotion — is an integrated vi- sion . Without some philosophical tradition , some ...
... traditions have — outside of science - perished , and philosophy has been smashed into a thousand bright ideas . This intellectual isolation from our ancestors and those who should be our colleagues is related to a psychic fragmentation ...
المحتوى
1 | |
Against the Grain | 27 |
Natural Law and Laws of Nature | 45 |
Male and Female He Created Them | 73 |
The Natural Family | 101 |
In the Beginning | 135 |
Order Without Law | 159 |
The Federal Principle | 185 |
Natural Remedies | 207 |
Index | 235 |