Wickedness by Midgley Mary; Midgley Mary;

Author:Midgley, Mary; Midgley, Mary;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-03-30T16:00:00+00:00

To know what is useful for a dog, one must study dog nature…. Applying this to man, he that would criticize all human acts, movements, relations etc. by the principle of utility, must first deal with human nature in general, and then with human nature modified in each historical epoch.6

Moreover, of course, if the individuals were really taken to be mere passive dough, the notion of the historical forces which would be needed to do the moulding is liable to become a wild and superstitious one, an example of the fatalistic thinking I mentioned earlier. Historical enquiry about natureless beings themselves would become impossible. Only by personifying the historical forces and conceiving them as purposive demons shaping the future do theorists get the impression that they can understand what natureless beings would do in an unfamiliar situation—or what they did do in the past.

Hume, pointing out the need for a notion of human nature, describes very well the sceptical predicament which we should be in without it:

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