Reflections on human nature

285 Pages·1961·5.471 MB·English

by  Lovejoy, Arthur Oncken

Reflections on Human Nature

Reflections
on Human Nature
ARTHUR 0. L0YEJ0Y
The Johns Hopkins Press: Baltimore
© 1961 by The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore 18, Md.
Distributed in Great Britain by Oxford University Press, London
Printed in the United States of America
by The Haddon Craftsmen, Inc.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 61-15700
This book has been brought to publication with the assistance of
a grant from The Ford Foundation
PREFACE
One of the potential uses of a preface is
to explain the title of a book; and at least one word in the
present title seems to need some explanation—the word “re­
flections.” The term does not explain whose reflections are
in question; but this happens to be a convenient ambiguity,
because part of the volume is an attempt at a historical ac­
count of the conceptions held—chiefly since the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries—of the desires which motivate
human behavior, and of the implications of these theories
for economics, politics, and ethics. But the book also con­
tains some observations and critical appraisals by the present
author on the same subject, and also some psychological
theorems which seem to him unfamiliar and of high im­
portance—namely, the distinction between terminal and ad­
jectival values and the peculiarly complex character of the
influence exercised by man’s self-consciousness upon his af­
fective and appetitive life. One of the lectures, the third, is
wholly devoted to this topic and it manifests itself also in
some of the lectures primarily historical in their theme.
The lectures were delivered originally on the Cooper
Foundation at Swarthmore College in 1941. I regret the
excessive time which because of various circumstances has
VI PREFACE
elapsed between their original deliverance and their present
appearance in print. Even after this long interval, the book
would hardly have reached publication without the aid of
Mr. Bernard R. Mathews, Jr., an advanced graduate student
in the department of philosophy at Johns Hopkins Univer­
sity, as research assistant, and his valuable suggestions and
discussions with the author.
Arthur 0. Lovejoy
Baltimore
July, 1961
CONTENTS
Preface v
Lecture 1 The Self-Appraisal of Man 1
Lecture II The Theory of Human Nature in the Ameri­
can Constitution and the Method of Counter­
poise 37
Lecture III The Desires of the Self-Conscious Animal
67
Lecture IV Approbativeness as the Universal, Distinctive,
and Dominant Passion of Man 129
Lecture V The “Love of Praise” as the Indispensable
Substitute for “Reason and Virtue” in Sev­
enteenth- and Eighteenth-Century Theories
of Human Nature 153
Lecture VI Approbativeness and “Pride” in Political and
Economic Thought 195
Lecture VII The Indictment of Pride 217
Lecture VIII Some Ethical Reflections 247
Index 265

Reflections on Human Nature
Lecture I Έ % S
THE SELF-APPRAISAL OF MAH