Against Nature

Lorraine Daston (Max Planck Institute for History of Science)

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English

Massachusetts Inst of Tec
21 May 2019

Philosophy; Popular philosophy; Bio-ethics

Series: Untimely Meditations

"A pithy work of philosophical anthropology that explores why humans find moral orders in natural orders.

Why have human beings, in many different cultures and epochs, looked to nature as a source of norms for human behavior? From ancient India and ancient Greece, medieval France and Enlightenment America, up to the latest controversies over gay marriage and cloning, natural orders have been enlisted to illustrate and buttress moral orders. Revolutionaries and reactionaries alike have appealed to nature to shore up their causes. No amount of philosophical argument or political critique deters the persistent and pervasive temptation to conflate the ""is"" of natural orders with the ""ought"" of moral orders. In this short, pithy work ofphilosophical anthropology, Lorraine Daston asks why we continually seek moral orders in natural orders, despite so much good counsel to the contrary. She outlines three specific forms of natural order in the Western philosophical tradition-specific natures, local natures, and universal natural laws-and describes how each of these three natural orders has been used to define and oppose a distinctive form of the unnatural. She argues that each of these forms of the unnatural triggers equally distinctive emotions- horror, terror, and wonder.

Daston proposes that human reason practiced in human bodies should command the attention of philosophers, who have traditionally yearned for a transcendent reason, valid for all species, all epochs, even all planets."

By: Lorraine Daston (Max Planck Institute for History of Science)
Imprint: Massachusetts Inst of Tec
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 178mm, Width: 114mm, Spine: 6mm
ISBN: 9780262537339
ISBN 10: 0262537338
Series: Untimely Meditations
Pages: 96
Publication Date: 21 May 2019
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Lorraine Daston is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and Visiting Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. She is the coauthor (with Katharine Park) of Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 and (with Peter Galison) Objectivity and the editor of Things that Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science, all three published by Zone Books.