Human Nature: The Categorial Framework

What distinguishes humanity from the rest of animate nature? What grounds the distinctive powers of human beings? What are the forms of explanation proper to the understanding of the exercise of these powers in action? Human beings have both a mind and a body – but what is a mind? What is it to have a body? How is a person’s mind related to their body? And what is a person?

This major new study, by one of the most penetrating and persistent critics of philosophical and scientific orthodoxy, returns to Aristotle in order to examine the salient categories in terms of which we think about ourselves and our nature. An overview of the concepts of substance, causation, power and agency provides the background for an investigation into teleology, rationality and explanations of behaviour in terms of reasons. This is the stage-set for the analysis of the concepts of mind, self, body and person.

This essay in philosophical anthropology ranges widely over themes in metaphysics, philosophy of mind and of action, and philosophy of biology, blending powerful philosophical analysis with a masterful grasp of the history of philosophical reflection on the topics in question.