Why We Hate, Michael Ruse
Why We Hate, Michael Ruse
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Why We Hate
Understanding the Roots of Human Conflict

Author: Michael Ruse

Narrator: Mike Cooper

Unabridged: 6 hr 54 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/25/2022


Synopsis

An insightful and probing exploration of the contradiction between humans' enormous capacity for hatred and their evolutionary development as a social species

Why We Hate tackles a pressing issue of both longstanding interest and fresh relevance: why a social species like Homo sapiens should nevertheless be so hateful to itself. We go to war and are prejudiced against our fellow human beings. We discriminate on the basis of nationality, class, race, sexual orientation, religion, and gender. Why are humans at once so social and so hateful to each other? In this book, Michael Ruse looks at scientific understandings of human hatred, particularly Darwinian evolutionary theory.

Combining rigorous argument with an engaging and accessible style, Ruse makes frequent use of historical examples, examining the history of two World Wars, and the US offensive against Iraq. He also gives many pertinent and up-to-date examples of prejudice, including the significance of Brexit and the systemic racism that lead to the Black Lives Matter movement. Ruse pays special attention to egregious cases of hatred, such as the treatment of Jews by the Third Reich, and to pressing contemporary issues, including the status of women. Ruse concludes with constructive suggestions for ways in which we might reconcile the contradictory aspects of our nature.

About Michael Ruse

Michael Ruse, born (in 1940) in England, taught philosophy for thirty-five years at the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada, and then for twenty years at Florida State University. He is an expert on the history and philosophy of evolutionary biology and has written or edited over sixty books. He is particularly interested in the relationship between science and religion, and was a witness for the ACLU in 1981 in its successful attempt to overturn a law mandating the compulsory teaching of Creationism in Arkansas. He has been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship (USA) and a Killam fellowship (Canada). A fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, he has been a Gifford Lecturer and is the recipient of four honorary degrees.


Reviews

The author attempts to understand why we hate but oddly does not seem to exhibit enough philosophical self-analysis to identify his own biases and prejudices. He finds fault with our tribal evolutionary past, when we moved ten thousand years ago from being hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists--a shi......more

Goodreads review by Morf

Certainly not easy reading, but essential in getting even the slightest understanding of why we as humans seem so determined to undermine our own best interests and creations.......more