Sam Bostaph wrote:
>----------------- HES POSTING -----------------
>I think this whole discussion would benefit with 
>a complete absence of  "anthropomorphizing."  In 
>THE DIFFERENCE OF MAN AND THE DIFFERENCE  IT 
>MAKES, Mortimer Adler pointed out quite a few 
>decades ago that the  human capacity for 
>conceptual thought is not shared with other 
>animals  and is the distinctive mark of a human 
>being.  All of the outer  manifestations of 
>animal behavior do not constitute a basis for 
>using  words that designate human acts for other animal acts.

There is, without reasonable doubt, a decisive 
break between man and the other animals. However, 
this difference exists within a continuity with 
the animals. I would recommend Alasdair 
MacIntyre's Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human 
Beings Need the Virtues. Even our differences 
have roots in the rest of the animal kingdom; 
even our rationality, even our spirituality, has 
a material base. Such a view, I believe, saves us 
from either an excessive idealism or an excessive empiricism.

In relation to the title, if MacIntyre is right 
that homo sapiens needs the virtues, then so does homo oeconomicus.


John C. M?daille