Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature

Philosophers have traditionally concentrated on the qualities that make human beings different from other species. In Beast and Man Mary Midgley, one of our foremost intellectuals, stresses continuities. What makes people tick? Largely, she asserts, the same things as animals. She tells us humans are rather more like other animals than we previously allowed ourselves to believe, and reminds us just how primitive we are in comparison to the sophistication of many animals. A veritable classic for our age, Beast and Man has helped change the way we think about ourselves and the world in which we live.

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LibraryThing member KevinCK

While it has been a while since I read Beast and Man, I remember the book and its arguments fondly. Midgley's premise is to find a middle ground between two extremes: between biological reductionism and the "blank slate" view of sociologists. We have natures because we are animals, but to say that

we are "just" animals ignores how malleable we are compared to most animals. Just as behavoristic psychology ignores that we have a mind, so does evolutionary psychology (for different reasons).

Midgley's writing is crisp and forceful and the book is a real pleasure to read. The only criticism I have is that she is very quick to misunderstand authors, especially when discussing Richard Dawkins' selfish gene model, where she attributes Dawkins as saying that humans are somewhow automatons and zombies who do all for the sake of their genes. (This is a very un-nuanced reading of Dawkins and Midgley has been rightly taken to taks for this in a famous interlocution with Dawkins.)

Midgley's, though, is a voice that is needed. If you like this book, I would also reccomend her Evolution as a Religion and Science and Poetry. She is a critic of science who, unlike many postmodernists etc., does not wish to "throw the baby out with the bathwater.' Disabuse science of its excesses only.

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