Abstract

Science and philosophy have discovered quite a lot about humans. The emergence and development of biology, psychology, anthropology, and cognate fields has substantially increased our knowledge about who we are and where we come from. The first half of this book provides an overview of key cutting-edge topics, from evolutionary psychology to contemporary critiques of essentialism, from genetic determinism to innateness. Nevertheless, these discoveries fall short of a full-blown theory of human nature. Why? Perhaps there is nothing there to discover in the first place. Human nature, from this standpoint, is a myth and it is high time we dispose of it. This conclusion is misguided. The assumption of a shared human nature underlies some of the most pressing socio-political issues of our time. These are the subject matter of the second half of this book. From races to sex and gender, from medical therapy to disability, from biotechnological enhancement to transhumanism, all these hot debates - surveyed here in an accessible, concise, yet detailed fashion - presuppose a robust account of human nature that, however, science and philosophy are unable to provide. How do we get out of this conundrum? This study concludes that human nature is an epistemological indicator, a concept that sets out the agenda for much social, political, and normative discourse. Nevertheless, science cannot adequately capture it without thereby dissolving it.