On Human Nature Quotes

“Lo que resulta inaceptable en la filosofía política que hoy se oferta es su incapacidad por reconocer que la mayor parte de lo que somos y debemos nos ha sido dado sin nuestro consentimiento”
― Roger Scruton, On Human Nature

“The personal eludes biology in just the way that the face in the picture eludes the theory of pigments. The personal is not an addition to the biological: it emerges from it, in something like the way the face emerges from the colored patches on a canvas.”
― Roger Scruton, On Human Nature

“The term persona comes to us from the Roman and Etruscan theater, where it denoted the mask worn by the actor and therefore the character whom the actor portrayed. The term was borrowed by Roman law to describe any entity that has judiciable rights and duties, including corporate entities and other more abstract constructions. It was borrowed again by early Christian theologians in order to explain the doctrine of the Trinity, by distinguishing the three persons of God. Discussions of the Trinity led to the view that personhood belongs to the essence of whatever possesses it, and the sixth-century philosopher Boethius took this as his cue in defining the essential nature of the human being. For Boethius the human person is “an individual substance of a rational nature.”19 That definition was adopted by Aquinas and remained in place until the Enlightenment, when two great philosophers—Locke and Kant—saw fit to reexamine the whole idea and untangle its many strands. According to Boethius’s”
― Roger Scruton, On Human Nature

“Then there are the fully intentional pleasures, which, although in some way tied up with sensory or perceptual experience, are modes of exploration of the world. Aesthetic pleasures are like this. Aesthetic pleasures are contemplative - they involve studying an object OUTSIDE of the self, to which one is GIVING something (namely, attention and all that flows from it), and not TAKING, as in the pleasure that comes from drugs and drinks. Hence such pleasures are not addictive - there is no pathway to reward that can be short-circuited here, and a serotonin injection is not a cheap way of obtaining the experience of PARISFAL or THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.”
― Roger Scruton, On Human Nature