
On Human Nature
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Narrated by:
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Mike Cooper
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By:
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Roger Scruton
About this listen
In this short book, Roger Scruton presents an original and radical defense of human uniqueness. Confronting the views of evolutionary psychologists, utilitarian moralists, and philosophical materialists such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, Scruton argues that human beings cannot be understood simply as biological objects. We are not only human animals; we are also persons, in essential relation with other persons, and bound to them by obligations and rights. Scruton develops and defends his account of human nature by ranging widely across intellectual history, from Plato and Averroës to Darwin and Wittgenstein.
The book begins with Kant's suggestion that we are distinguished by our ability to say "I" - by our sense of ourselves as the centers of self-conscious reflection. This fact is manifested in our emotions, interests, and relations. It is the foundation of the moral sense, as well as of the aesthetic and religious conceptions through which we shape the human world and endow it with meaning. And it lies outside the scope of modern materialist philosophy, even though it is a natural and not a supernatural fact. Ultimately, Scruton offers a new way of understanding how self-consciousness affects the question of how we should live. The result is a rich view of human nature that challenges some of today's most fashionable ideas about our species.
©2017 Princeton University Press (P)2021 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Better studied...
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Beauty
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Introduction to Beauty
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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-
-
"Against Reductionism"
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By: Roger Scruton
-
Strange New World
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- Narrated by: Carl R. Trueman
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
How did the world arrive at its current, disorienting state of identity politics, and how should the church respond? Historian Carl R. Trueman discusses how influences ranging from traditional institutions to technology and pornography moved modern culture toward an era of "expressive individualism." Investigating philosophies from the Romantics, Nietzsche, Marx, Wilde, Freud, and the New Left, he outlines the history of Western thought to the distinctly sexual direction of present-day identity politics and explains the modern implications of these ideas.
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Read and reread
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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-
-
Better studied...
- By Mao Dom on 08-03-19
By: Roger Scruton
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Beauty
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- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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-
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Introduction to Beauty
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Kant
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Not as good as I hoped
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Performance
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The definitive edition of the late Sir Roger Scruton's philosophical and political essays and reviews, now collected in one volume, edited by Mark Dooley. The philosopher Roger Scruton was the leading conservative thinker of the post-war years. In this audiobook are assembled the very best of his essays and commentaries, arranged thematically. The selection has been made and edited by Mark Dooley, Scruton’s literary executor.
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Precient opinions which used to be controversialist hot-takes and have aged poignantly over the decades
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Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays
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Overall
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Performance
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A collection of essays that discusses such issues as the media, immigration, the minimum wage, and multiculturalism.
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Mr. Sowell exposed the soul of America.
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He does it again.
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The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self
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Performance
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Story
Since the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision in 2015, sexual identity has dominated both public discourse and cultural trends — yet no historical phenomenon is its own cause. From Augustine to Marx, various views and perspectives have contributed to the modern understanding of the self.
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Best book I read in 2021 by far
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Ought to be read more
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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BEWARE: shortened version
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Overall
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Performance
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Not appropriate for audible and the reader don’t know how to read math
- By Anonymous User on 08-01-24
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Reflections on the Revolution in France
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Written in the form of a letter to a Frenchman, Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France is an impassioned attack on the French Revolution and its hasty destruction of the Church, the old elites, and the Crown. Burke tackles the new republic and its allegiance to principles such as liberty and equality, as well as its failure to recognize the complexities of human nature, society, and wisdom accumulated over time, contending that gradual change and adjustment is far better than immediate upheaval.
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