Beyond Self-Interest

Portada
Jane J. Mansbridge
University of Chicago Press, 1990 M04 15 - 402 páginas
A dramatic transformation has begun in the way scholars think about human nature. Political scientists, psychologists, economists, and evolutionary biologists are beginning to reject the view that human affairs are shaped almost exclusively by self-interest—a view that came to dominate social science in the last three decades.

In Beyond Self-Interest, leading social scientists argue for a view of individuals behavior and social organization that takes into account the powerful motivations of duty, love, and malevolence. Economists who go beyond "economic man," psychologists who go beyond stimulus-response, evolutionary biologists who go beyond the "selfish gene," and political scientists who go beyond the quest for power come together in this provocative and important manifesto.

The essays trace, from the ancient Greeks to the present, the use of self-interest to explain political life. They investigate the differences between self-interest and the motivations of duty and love, showing how these motivations affect behavior in "prisoners' dilemma" interactions. They generate evolutionary models that explain how altruistic motivations escape extinction.

They suggest ways to model within one individual the separate motivations of public spirit and self-interest, investigate public spirit and self-interest, investigate public spirit in citizen and legislative behavior, and demonstrate that the view of democracy in existing Constitutional interpretations is not based on self-interest. They advance both human evil and mothering as alternatives to self-interest, this last in a penetrating feminist critique of the "contract" model of human interaction.

Dentro del libro

Contenido

Part II Dimensions of the Problem
23
Part III An Ecological Niche for Altruism
69
Part IV Citizens
145
Part V Legislators
181
Part VI Constitutional Interpretation
207
Part VII International Relations
225
Part VIII Modeling
237
Part IX Alternatives to SelfInterest Malevolent and Benevolent
265
Notes
305
Reference List
349
List of Contribute
382
Index
386
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Acerca del autor (1990)

Jane Mansbridge is the Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and the editor of Beyond Self-Interest. Aldon Morris is a professor of sociology at Northwestern University and coeditor, with Carol Mueller, of Frontiers in Social Movement Theory.

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