Abstract

The ever-growing development of modern science and its understanding of nature have disjoined the domain of the natural from the domain of the normative, accordingly disjoining nature from nurture and making the concept of human nature resemble an oxymoron. Yet, what is really at stake in the long-running nature-nurture controversy is human nature and the question of whether human nature is nearer to nature or nurture is fundamentally misplaced. This chapter casts light on the notion of ‘second nature’, through which we aim to appreciate the sense in which human beings are natural animals in a normative environment.This chapter first sketches out the current framework of the nature-nurture debate that is dominated by natural-scientific investigations and then maps in a very broad outline the shifting conception of nature in Western thought, from which the modern sense of nature and accordingly what we call the natural sciences sprang. After providing a brief overview of attempts in philosophy of education to resist such a natural-scientific domination, the chapter attends to the Aristotelian concept of ‘second nature’, which has become widely known mainly through the work of the contemporary philosopher John McDowell, in order to recast the nature-nurture controversy from the perspective of what does or does not make us the beings that we are, in and in relation to the realm of the natural and the realm of the normative. Spelling out some tenable and untenable ‘educational implications’ of the notion of second nature, this chapter concludes with some thoughts on the justification and future development of the detailed analysis of the idea of second nature, which illuminates the linkage between nature, education and the human condition.