Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2009
Summary
If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle (1839/1936:781)This book is about suffering, healing, and evolved human nature. It is about the mundane suffering that is wrought by our very nature, and why knowledge of this nature is our best hope for healing the suffering that it so often brings. The shape of my argument is this: (1) what our nature is, (2) why it is this way, and (3) why knowledge of why it is this way has therapeutic implications. I believe that my overall argument follows logically from my most basic assumption, which is that human beings have a nature. There are two reason why I am happy with this assumption. First, I believe that we are part of nature, part of life. Therefore, because evolutionary theory is our only scientific theory of life, for me, literally everything about life is ultimately explainable in terms of evolutionary theory or terms compatible therewith. Second, not only do I believe that human nature is a fact of nature, I also believe that value exists as a fact of nature and that knowledge of the value that is in life, including ourselves, would constitute an extremely valuable set of facts. Indeed, since the continuation of our species (our descendants) may depend on knowing and accepting our nature, I cannot imagine any more valuable set of facts.
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- Death, Hope and SexSteps to an Evolutionary Ecology of Mind and Morality, pp. ix - xiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999