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Laura Aguilar's Nature Self Portraits treat the human body as another feature in landscapes. In the series, Aguilar positions herself in the center of her photographs, nude, often with her back to the camera. The curve of her back echoes the rocks, her black hair in the wind recalls the thin fingers of desert trees. The photographs are at once playful and beautiful, peaceful and provocative. This photo essay includes work from Aguilar's series, plus a similar work by California photographer Judy Dater, which influenced Aguilar.

Kurzvortrag eines längeren Aufsatzes des Autors zu den Fortschritten der modernen Biologie und der Tatsache, daß die menschliche Natur zunehmend in den Bereich des Machbaren und Rekonstruierbaren gerät. Diskutiert werden (1) die "Tendenz zur Moralisierung" der menschlichen Natur, die darin besteht, die "Natürlichkeit" des Menschen als gesellschaftliche Norm festzuschreiben; (2) die soziologische Bedeutung dieses Versuches und (3) die Erfolgsaussichten einer solchen Zuflucht bei der Natur. Sie werden als prekär eingeschätzt, da die Forderung nach "Natürlichkeit" des Menschen nicht den Status einer normativen Selbstverständlichkeit hat und weil für die Definition der menschlichen Natur die Naturwissenschaft zuständig ist. Er kommt zu dem Fazit: "Es muß damit gerechnet werden, daß es uns mit der Natürlichkeit des Menschen gehen wird wie mit der Natürlichkeit der Umwelt." (psz)

Why did President John F. Kennedy choose a strategy of confrontation during the Cuban missile crisis even though his secretary of defense stated that the presence of missiles in Cuba made no difference? Why did large numbers of Iraqi troops surrender during the Gulf War even though they had been ordered to fight and were capable of doing so? Why did Hitler declare war on the United States knowing full well the power of that country?War and Human Nature argues that new findings about the way humans are shaped by their inherited biology may help provide answers to such questions.

In this short book, acclaimed writer and philosopher Roger Scruton presents an original and radical defense of human uniqueness. Confronting the views of evolutionary psychologists, utilitarian moralists, and philosophical materialists such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, Scruton argues that human beings cannot be understood simply as biological objects. We are not only human animals; we are also persons, in essential relation with other persons, and bound to them by obligations and rights. Our world is a shared world, exhibiting freedom, value, and accountability, and to understand it we must address other people face to face and I to I. Scruton develops and defends his account of human nature by ranging widely across intellectual history, from Plato and Averroes to Darwin and Wittgenstein. The book begins with Kant's suggestion that we are distinguished by our ability to say "I"--by our sense of ourselves as the centers of self-conscious reflection. This fact is manifested in our emotions, interests, and relations. It is the foundation of the moral sense, as well as of the aesthetic and religious conceptions through which we shape the human world and endow it with meaning. And it lies outside the scope of modern materialist philosophy, even though it is a natural and not a supernatural fact. Ultimately, Scruton offers a new way of understanding how self-consciousness affects the question of how we should live. The result is a rich view of human nature that challenges some of today's most fashionable ideas about our species