CÍMLAP
|
CONTENTS, PREFACE |
Contents
Publisher's preface
Preface
Introduction
Part one
Evolutionary saltation and contemporary biology, physics, philosophy and anthropology
Chapter one
Saltation and evolutionary biology
1. Basic Concepts of Evolutionary Biology
2. Man and Culture As Seen by Biologists
3. Man and Culture In Sociobiology
Chapter two
Evolutionary saltation: Views of scientists and philosophers on biology and
culture
1. Views of Contemporary Physicists
2. Views of Neuroscientists and Philosophers of Science
Chapter three
Evolutionary saltation: Views of social scientists on biology and culture
1. Steward's Multilinear Concept of Evolution
2. Sahlin's Specific and General Cultural Evolution
3. The Dual Inheritance Model of Boyd and Richerson
4. Chomsky's Innate Language Structures
5. Durham's Constrained Microevolution
Part two
Man: Being and transcendence
Chapter four
Being-in-the-world as existence
1. The Cosmos and the World: Multiple Realities
2. Man and His World
Chapter five
Being-in-the-world as transcendence
1. The Meaning and Consequences of Transcendence
2. Perception and Presence
3. Awareness and Consciousness
4. Intentionality and Free Will
5. Existential Perspectives and Limits of Being-in-the-world: Space, Time and
History
Chapter six
Transcendence and culture - Part one
1. The Meaning and Significance of Culture
2. Meaning-Creation and Understanding
3. Symbolism, Abstraction and Generalization
4. Myth and Ritual
5. Language-Creation and Language-Use
Chapter seven
Transcendence and culture - Part two
1. Patterns of Reasoning, or Rationality
2. Patterns of Reasoning, Truth and Reality
3. Patterns of Reasoning and Relativism
4. Patterns of Reasoning and Human Action
Chapter eight
Transcendence and community
1. Individual and Community
2. Community and Tradition
3. Community, Participation, and Solidarity
Chapter nine
Transcendence as ethical dimension
1. The Nature of Ethics and Morals
2. Ethics in Relation to the Community and the Individual
3. The Ethics of Freedom
Chapter ten
The ultimate transcendence: Human finitude
List of references
Index
About the author
Preface
I was intrigued, since my youth, by the mind-body problem and by the relationship between the biological and cultural components of human existence. Refusing all sorts of reductionisms, from the idealistic through the materialistic to the physicalist, my conviction became stronger and stronger with the years passing, that there must be a possibility to eliminate these one-sided, exclusive points of view and to formulate a holistic approach integrating both components of our lives. That explains my efforts to clarify this fundamental problem of philosophical anthropology.
To ponder this question was made even more necessary as I lived in different continents and in widely different civilizational worlds, making me to comprehend the inevitability of human pluralism (with, as its corollary, contextualism), and leading me to realize the extraordinary importance of cultural conditioning in the communities in which men live around the globe. The result of this reflection was, thus, a logical outcome of experiencing cultural pluralism during more than a quarter of a century; this experience convinced me that biological evolution alone could not explain the wonderful variety and extraordinary richness of human existence. I came to believe that there must be an intricate interdependence between the biological and cultural foundations of our lives, - a unique characteristic of man. I have, therefore, written this study to explain, from my particular perspective, the plurality of human worlds.
I would like to note that any and all references made in the text to persons as 'he', 'him', and the like, are a matter of convenience and should thus be understood as gender-neutral terms. All ideas expressed, all conclusions made in the reflections hereafter are my own, and I alone am responsible for them.
I dedicated this book to the country, Hungary, in which I was born, raised, and where I lived the first twenty-seven years of my life. Though I live since more than four decades abroad, I never lost a profound attachment to my roots, and remained for the whole of my life anchored in the culture in which I was brought up.
As always, I feel a profound gratitude towards my wife whose comprehension and help facilitated to carry out my research and to accomplish the writing of this book.