Theories of Human Nature

Joel J. Kupperman is Professor of Philosophy, University of Connecticut. Among his many publications are Six Myths about the Good Life: Thinking about What Has Value, Classic Asian Philosophy:?A Guide to the Essential Texts, and Human Nature: A Reader.

A very fine book on human nature, both what it is and what philosophers have thought about it--philosophers in an inclusive sense, from Plato and Aristotle to Mengzi and Xunzi, from Hume and Kant to Ibn al-Arabi to Marx and Rousseau and including many others. The writing is lively and accessible, the philosophy insightful, and the sense of human possibilities conveyed admirable. It will fit nicely into many different sorts of classes. --John Perry, Stanford University