Designed as a study guide, this outline distills the essence of Rudolf Steiner's The Philosophy of Freedom, summarizing each chapter's main ideas into concentrated forms. Each section is presented with a single leading thought to facilitate individual reflection, making complex philosophical concepts more accessible for readers.
To explain religious behavior is a daunting task. One very recent attempt is to explain religious behaviors and religion within an evolutionary framework. In this volume leading experts from various disciplines analyze religion and religiosity as phenomena in a Darwinian world. Is religiosity adaptive? Are religious people more fertile? Do we have cognitive predispositions to be religious? Are children natural believers? These questions are answered in this fascinating array of contributions from the field of evolutionary studies of religion.
Converging evidence from disciplines including sociobiology, evolutionary psychology and human biology forces us to adopt a new idea of what it means to be a human. As cherished concepts such as free will, naïve realism, humans as creation's crowning glory fall and our moral roots in ape group dynamics become clearer, we have to take leave of many concepts that have been central to defining our humanness. What emerges is a new human, the homo novus, a human being without illusions. Leading authors from many different fields explore these issues by addressing a range of illusions and providing evidence for the need, despite considerable reluctance, to relinquish some of our most cherished ideas about ourselves.
To understand why we humans are as we are, it is necessary to look at the essential building blocks that comprise our nature. The foundations of this structure are our evolutionary origins as primates and our social roots. Upon these rest features such as our emotions, language and aesthetic preferences, with our self-perceptions, self-deceptions and thirst for knowledge right at the top. The unifying force holding these blocks together is evolutionary theory. Evolution provides a deeper understanding of human nature and, in particular, of the common roots of these different perspectives. To build a reliable and coherent model of man, leading authors from fields as diverse as primatology, anthropology, neurobiology and philosophy have joined forces to present essays each describing their own expert perspective. Together they provide a convincing and complete picture of our own human nature.