The Study of Human Nature: A Reader Book

This unique anthology provides an introduction to a wide variety of views on human nature. Drawing from diverse cultures over three millennia, Leslie Stevenson has chosen selections ranging from ancient religious texts up to contemporary theories based on evolutionary science. An ideal companion to the editor's previous book, Ten Theories of Human Nature, 3/e (OUP 1998), this interdisciplinary reader can also be used independently.

The second edition of The Study of Human Nature offers substantial selections illustrating the perspectives discussed in Ten Theories of Human Nature, 3/e--the Bible, Hinduism, Confucianism, Plato, Kant, Marx, Freud, Sartre, B.F. Skinner's behaviorism, and Konrad Lorenz's ethnological diagnosis of human aggression. The Islamic tradition and 17th-18th century philosophers Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, and Rousseau are also represented. Selections from Rousseau, J.S. Mill, and Nancy Holmstrom raise feminist issues, and Henry Bracken's paper deals with racial issues. Examples from E.O. Wilson's sociobiology and his critics are also included, together with Chomsky and recent examples from evolutionary psychology.