Beschreibung:
Our culture entertains a schizophrenic attitude towards human nature, vacillating between egoism and wholeness, seeing human nature not as self-interested but as herd-like. Guldmann argues that this schism reflects two diverging conceptions of human agency and that the attempt to locate human nature somewhere along a continuum between egoism and altruism presupposes a misleading picture of what it is to be a human being.
Contents: Introduction; The presumption of egoism; The ambiguity of egoism; Egoism's unofficial opposition; Egoism and heroism; A phenomenology of heroism; Heroism and human encounter; Heroism and individuality; Bibliography; Index.