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Is there a human nature? Can knowledge of it help us live better lives? This book synthesises ancient and modern philosophical ideas and draws on scientific research to answer yes to both these questions. It develops an innovative normative theory on the basis of commonsensical, naturalistic, premisses; and it defends an Aristotelian normative theory -- whereby we should understand human goods as realisations or perfections of human nature -- against both traditional and emerging challenges to perfectionist ethics, including evolutionary biology and transhumanism. The result is a ground-breaking theory of 'natural perfectionism', which both returns perfectionistic ethics to its Aristotelian roots and shows how this is compatible with evolutionary biology and cognitive science. At a time when the very idea of human nature is viewed as something that can be readily transcended, this work recalls us to a realistic, sober and better-founded vision of it.
List of contents
Introduction; Part I. Foundations: 1. All roads lead to goods; 2. Analytic theories of goods; 3. Goodness as natural perfection; 4. Fortifying natural perfectionism; Part II. The Natural Perfections: 5. Framing goods; 6. Bodily goods; 7. Intellectual goods; 8. Perceptual goods; 9. Productive goods; Part III. Challenges: 10. The fact/value dichotomy; 11. Evolutionary biology; 12. Human enhancement; List of works cited; Index.
About the author
Tom Angier is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town. He is the author of Natural Law Theory (Cambridge, 2021) and Natural Law and Human Rights (Cambridge, 2023).
