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The Stoics propose a cosmopolitan theory, but not in a modern sense of the term: their cosmic city is the cosmos. The Stoic theory is also not well described as impartialist or universalist; it calls for a certain kind of affiliation with all human beings. It is argued that the evidence does not speak in favor of seeing a marked development within early Stoicism: it does not seem that, while Zeno conceives of a city of sages, Chrysippus comes to compare the cosmos with a city, thus creating the notion of a cosmic city. Rather, it seems that early Stoic political philosophy is, throughout, concerned with a complex mix of two ideas—that the cosmos is the common home of all human beings, and thus like a city, and that, in order to truly live by the law of this cosmic city and thus be its citizen, one must be wise. These ideas are deeply connected with Stoic thought about affiliation (oikeiôsis): we should view everyone as belonging to us, thus understanding something which is the case (all human beings do belong to us as fellow‐inhabitants of the world); but only through gaining a full understanding of what this means (i.e., by becoming wise) can we achieve a full integration into the cosmos.

In PA IV.10 Aristotle explains the upright posture of human beings with reference to physiological factors that determine the abilities to think and behave intelligently. A detailed interpretation of Aristotle's explanation is supplied by drawing on his physiological theory and contrasting it with Plato‗s explanation of human posture in the Timaeus. In the crucial passage Aristotle seems to couple ‘thinking’ with the rational capacity of the soul and ‘intelligence’ with the common sense. It is argued that the phrase ‘common sense’ is best taken with reference to the sensory capacity of the soul, that is the capacity of the soul which comprises perception and imagination. This capacity exhausts the cognitive repertoire of non-rational animals, and it accounts for their intelligent behaviour. In the next two chapters it will be argued that Aristotle uses the phrase koine aisthesis two more times in the same way, as a proper name for the sensory capacity of the soul, both times in the context of complex non-rational cognitive activities.

The preceding chapter distinguished three features of the frame of mind individuals must acquire in order to assume the standpoint of reason. This chapter determines what role amour-propre might play in making it possible for human beings to adopt such a standpoint. It shows that amour-propre plays a crucial role in bringing about each of these features of rational agency. More precisely: amour-propre is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition of the formation of human beings into rational subjects.

This book offers answers to some of the fundamental questions regarding how our visions of humans shape our theories of social action and institutions. It ultimately presumes that the animals called human beings share an identifiable and peculiar set of capacities and proclivities that distinguishes them significantly from other animals on this planet. Despite the vast differences in humanity between cultures and across history, no matter how differently people narrate their lives and histories, there remains an underlying structure of human personhood that helps to order human culture, history, and narration. A second theme that emerges is that too much recent theorizing about culture and action in sociology has been very unhelpfully beset by overreactions against real but correctable flaws and over simplifications in previous theories.

This chapter argues that human agency is free agency. It is freedom, or dominium over one's own actions, which makes a human being different from all other animals; and it is the foundation of the world of the moral, the juridical, and the political, which are all continuous with one another and from which animals—and a fortiori all other natural agents—are excluded. However, during the sixteenth century, the idea that human beings are essentially and ineradicably free to control their own actions came under severe pressure from new and irreconcilable theological differences over the freedom of the human will—differences that therefore implicitly pressured the primary threshold of political space.

This chapter discusses the role played by the European Union in the fight against trafficking in persons; the two legislative acts specifically dealing with this phenomenon — the Council Framework Decision 2002/629/JHA and the Council Directive 2004/81/EC — are analysed to point out that they did not have victims' human rights as their ultimate goal. In spite of that, the European Conference on Preventing and Combating Trafficking in Human Beings held in 2002 paved the way for a radical change of the EU policy in the field of trafficking in persons. The chapter continues by looking at both the recent European Commission Communication and the Council Action Plan on trafficking in persons which adopted a human rights centred approach. However, this new EU trend has yet to be confirmed by the adoption of legislation on victims' protection. It argues that action in the field of trafficking in human organs and tissues is urgently needed.

This introductory chapter discusses the main argument of the book, namely that Plato does indeed wish to distinguish between human beings and persons. However, Plato's account of persons is not usefully detachable from his metaphysics and from his epistemology. Human beings or embodied persons are situated within a hierarchical metaphysics by Plato. For Plato, embodied persons are the only sorts of images that can reflexively recognize their own relatively inferior states as images and strive to transform themselves into their own ideal. An overview of the chapters included in this volume is presented.

This chapter reviews the action of the Council of Europe in the field of trafficking in persons. The European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR) adopted by the Council of Europe in 1950 does not explicitly mention trafficking in persons, although its Article 4 does deal with slavery, servitude, and forced labour. Therefore, as recently demonstrated in Siliadin v France, the protection of trafficking victims can be achieved through the implementation of this ECHR provision. Furthermore, the recent adoption of the European Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings can be considered as a major step in the fight against the phenomenon, and there is no doubt that this instrument is the most advanced international convention dealing with this phenomenon. The chapter concludes by analysing the activities of the Council of Europe in the field of trafficking in human organs and tissues.

This lecture presents the text of the speech about reason and identity delivered by the author at the 2008 Isaiah Berlin Lecture held at the British Academy. It discusses the style and content of Sir Isaiah Berlin's thought and explores the complex relation between the closely connected ideas of reason and identity. The lecture explains that reason and identity are both constitutive features of human life in the sense that human beings cannot be defined and understood without reference to either.

This chapter suggests that Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory will continue to dominate future studies of human behavior. Despite criticisms on the Darwinian Imperative and the problems in placing human beings within the evolutionary process, it is undeniable that biology plays a major role in understanding human nature. Biology can help clarify the continuity between human and animal experience and determine whether consciousness and awareness exist in animals.

The chapter opens by introducing the concept of creation and explaining the various ways in which human beings create, or in the future will create, human beings and particular types of human beings: through ordinary reproduction, deliberate self-transformation (“self-creation”), selection of embryos, decisions to abort or continue a pregnancy, genetic therapy or enhancement, and the bringing about of future generations. It proceeds by noting how the book differs from existing literature on the topics addressed. Most of the chapter is devoted to an overview of the other chapters’ main arguments.

Our list of mental features is the same as the Cartesian list, and rather different from, say, the Aristotelian list of psychological powers. The present proposal is not committed to dualism about mind and body, but it does imply a certain duality about our nature: there is something in our nature that we share with the rest of the created world, and there is something that is distinctively human. The latter aspect is described here by saying that we are persons. The suggestion is that a person is a creature who has the kind of mind we have. Here lies the significance of the Cartesian conception of the mind: it offers us a list of mental phenomena which is put together on a principled basis; and it is the possession of these attributes that provides the criteria for personhood.

This chapter looks more closely at Aristotle's position on function, essence, and nature. Here Aristotle explains what he means by attributing a function to human beings, and on what grounds he attributes it to them. Aristotle's claims about function do not simply say that we have natural tendencies. He also attributes to human beings a nature that is not simply the sum of all natural tendencies. To speak of a thing's nature and of what is in accord with its nature is to select among the natural tendencies, since they may not all accord with the nature of the whole. Aristotle's conception of nature connects a thing's nature with its essence, and with the kind that it belongs to. This account of the Function Argument attributes a naturalist position to Aristotle. He argues for his account of the human good from premises about the nature of human beings as rational animals.

Chapter 1 begins by considering what are my own most certain and most fundamental beliefs, and suggests that they are the most reasonable starting points for addressing questions concerning free will. Like Descartes, I ask what if anything I can be absolutely certain about; but unlike Descartes, I find that I cannot be certain about my own existence, but only that conscious experiences occur. As I explain, this is partly because of the need for a language with which to express and communicate beliefs of any complexity, and thus the dependence of complex beliefs on prior beliefs about language and language use; and this in turn requires prior beliefs about language-users and a world in which language is used.

‘Naturalism’ can perhaps be understood as the project of explaining all aspects of human life, thought, and action on the basis of what can be found to be so in observable nature. There seems nothing essentially problematic in such an enterprise. But in Hume's hands it reveals that human beings immediately perceive at best only something that falls far short of the world of enduring objects, causal connections, thinking and experiencing persons, and good and bad states of affairs that all human beings believe in. Given those ‘sceptical’ conclusions, explaining how human beings come to have any such beliefs seems to require explaining how what is so in the austere independent world combines with what is true of human beings to produce the richer conception of a world that they all accept. This chapter describes how acceptance of those ‘sceptical’ conclusions restricts what a Humean ‘naturalist’ can appeal to in explaining those ways of thinking in a way that leaves the would-be naturalism forever dissatisfying.