The Cultural Animal: Human Nature, Meaning, and Social Life

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The Cultural Animal: Human Nature, Meaning, and Social Life

4.06 of 5 stars 4.06 · rating details · 16 ratings · 2 reviews

What makes us human? Why do people think, feel and act as they do? What is the essence of human nature? What is the basic relationship between the individual and society? These questions have fascinated both great thinkers and ordinary humans for centuries. Now, at last, there is a solid basis for answering them, in the form of accumulated efforts and studies by thousands...more

Hardcover, 466 pages

Published February 1st 2005 by Oxford University Press, USA (first published January 1st 2005)

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Aug 06, 2008 Cormac rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: anthropology

Baumeister is a perceptive psychologist (see his work on "Evil"). However, when he turns anthropologist - and in particular evolutionary anthropologist - his perceptions fail him.
Really, it is his terms of reference that fail. "Culture", in normal parlance, denotes a sum of factors (customs, works of art, inventions, technology, etc.) that characterize the mode of living of a particular society or group of people. Baumeister, however, understands it as a system of behavior which enables a spec...more Baumeister is a perceptive psychologist (see his work on "Evil"). However, when he turns anthropologist - and in particular evolutionary anthropologist - his perceptions fail him.
Really, it is his terms of reference that fail. "Culture", in normal parlance, denotes a sum of factors (customs, works of art, inventions, technology, etc.) that characterize the mode of living of a particular society or group of people. Baumeister, however, understands it as a system of behavior which enables a species to survive. His thesis then becomes simple: man, being more predisposed to culture in this sense, has progressed more than the other animals.
Culture, for most people, stems from rational activity. From the title of his book, one might think that Baumeister agrees (The Cultural Animal = The Rational Animal); but no. On the contrary, for him cultural and rational would not seem to be connected at all. He rather avoids referring to reason or intellect as a distinguishing feature of man. "Meaning" is his key word ("Ultimately, one of the biggest differences between social and cultural animals is in the power of meaning to cause behavior": 391). "Meaning" is a major reference term in his Index, with many more references than "Intellect". ("Emotions" is another major reference heading. "Thought" has only one reference - referred precisely to Emotions). Nowhere does he tackle the questions of how one can invoke "meaning" without positing intelligence, or how intelligence itself can be an evolutionary product.
Morality and self-control appear simply as inevitable evolutionary developments, culturally (in his sense) induced restraints, to make an acceptable social order and the growth of the species possible (348ss). He attributes phenomena such as guilt and virtue more to culture than to nature (147); and relates guilt only to actions that hurt others. The point of reference is always social; the notion of a man violating the imperatives of his personal nature does not enter. ("Conscience" has no entry in the Index. It appears only as social conscience).
Truth scarcely interests him (it has only one ref. in the Index). Thinking is in order to get things done, or to serve in social life; that is also the function of moral reasoning (237-240).
Basically he holds that "culture" conditions nature more than the other way round. But culture remains subject to variable conditions. Ultimately this amounts to a denial of any common human nature. On such a viewpoint it is in fact impossible to develop any science of anthropology, any proper study of "man".
A positive point is that he, unlike most psychologists, rejects determinism and believes in a (at least relative) free will (298-306).(less)

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May 07, 2013 Muhammed Al-Bishri marked it as to-read

"The central idea is that Asians think more holistically, seeing how everything fits together, whereas Westerners think more analytically, focusing on particular entities in isolation."

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May 10, 2013 Shyam Sundar marked it as to-read

Shelves: psychology, sociology, political-philosophy

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Shelves: psychology, social-psychology, evolution, evolutionary-psychology

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About Roy F. Baumeister

Dr. Roy F. Baumeister is Social Psychology Area Director and Francis Eppes Eminent Scholar at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. He is a social psychologist who is known for his work on the self, social rejection, belongingness, sexuality, self-control, self-esteem, self-defeating behaviors, motivation, and aggression. And enduring theme of his work is "why people do stupid things."...more

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