OUR STORE IS CLOSED ON ANZAC DAY: THURSDAY 25 APRIL

Close Notification

Your cart does not contain any items

Beyond Human Nature

How Culture and Experience Shape Our Lives

Jesse J Prinz

$26.99

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

QTY:

English
Penguin
27 February 2013
In this provocative, revelatory tour de force, Jesse Prinz reveals how the cultures we live in - not biology - determine our lives. He examines all aspects of our behaviour, looking at everything from our intellects and emotions, to love and sex, morality and even madness. This book seeks to go beyond traditional debates of nature and nurture. He is not interested in finding universal laws but, rather, in understanding, explaining and celebrating our differences. Why do people raised in Western countries tend to see the trees before the forest, while people from the Far East see the forest before the trees? Why, in South East Asia, is there a common form of mental illness, unheard of in the West, in which people go into a trancelike state after being startled? Compared to Northerners, why are people in the American South more than twice as likely to kill someone over an argument? And, above all, just how malleable are we? Prinz shows that the vast diversity of our behaviour is not engrained. He picks up where biological explanations leave off. He tells us the human story.

By:  
Imprint:   Penguin
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 198mm,  Width: 129mm,  Spine: 23mm
Weight:   303g
ISBN:   9780141019345
ISBN 10:   0141019344
Pages:   250
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  ELT Advanced ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Jesse J. Prinz is currently a Distinguished Professor of philosophy at the City University of New York and an Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he taught until January 2009. He works primarily in the philosophy of psychology and has produced books and articles on emotion, moral psychology, aesthetics and consciousness.

Reviews for Beyond Human Nature: How Culture and Experience Shape Our Lives

Compelling ... urgent and persuasive ... This bracing book leads the charge against the idea that genetics explains all -- James McConnachie * Sunday Times * A fine, balanced, enormously learned and informative blast on the trumpet of common sense and humane understanding. -- Simon Blackburn * New Statesman * The nature versus nurture tussle has been running for centuries, and into this fervid arena steps Jesse J. Prinz ... he explores the origins of knowledge, language, thought and emotion and argues that there is not one human nature, but many -- Carl Wilkinson * Financial Times * Jesse Prinz wants to call a halt to the century of the gene ... in a backlash against the tyranny of DNA -- Nick Miller * Sydney Morning Herald * Compelling arguments that cover a vast range of human behaviours ... [easy] to read ... We are not prisoners of our genes. The societies we have created by following careful rules of engagement largely leave us free to act as we see fit, for good - and bad -- Robin McKie * Guardian *


See Also