Quote:
Originally Posted by peter12
What does it mean to be natural? As moderns, we interpret natural man through the eyes of the liberal theorists, Hobbes, Descartes etc... We reduce ourselves to mean creatures who operate in a mechanical fashion almost entirely around the basis of avoiding pain and propagating our genes.
Who says this is correct? Science? When Dawkins wrote "The Selfish Gene" think about the theoretical and political assumptions he made as he interpreted the science.
Humanity is not subject to the natural sciences, but to the human sciences, ie. philosophy, a subject which as almost been entirely lost to us in this age post-Darwin, Freud, Weber etc...
I don't know where I am going without erupting into a full-scale post about philosophy and the background of the humanities endeavour, but suffice to say that there are more rich and complete views of humanity buried into our past.
Maybe instead of Darwin we should be reading Plato, Shakespeare, Rousseau etc...
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Shakespeare isn't going to provide any great insight into anything relevant that science covers, IMO. I have an English degree and I learned a lot of interesting things studying the guys you've listed above, but at the end of the day Shakespeare was just writing plays and poems. I don't think he contributed much of anything to humanity. I know I'll get flamed for that, but somebody like Alexander Flemming (inventor of penicillin) is much more valuable to humanity than a story teller.