Essays cover historical, sociological, psychological and anthropological approaches, ethics and politics, and the policy implications of the real and perceived differences between the sexes

This work offers a "symposium" on the nature of human sexual difference drawing on Plato's masterpiece: having explored the observed phenomena of sexual difference, four stories are told of the origins, essence, and ends of the human male and female. First, the evolutionists, and then Simone de Beauvoir, and Judith Butler present their accounts. Next, a fourth (and unique vision for our age) is added: the thought of Thomas Aquinas is placed in dialogue with the evolutionists, Beauvoir, and Butler, thereby introducing into contemporary discourse a voice that is both ancient and new. The work seeks to trace each protagonist's account to its fonts, so providing a perspective from which various streams of thought might be understood both in their divergence and common origins. It thus hopes to offer a common language and an interpretive key in a realm where confusion and misunderstanding too often reign.

People have always been xenophobic, but an explicit philosophical and scientific view of human racial difference only began to emerge during the modern period. Why and how did this happen? Surveying a range of philosophical and natural-scientific texts, dating from the Spanish Renaissance to the German Enlightenment, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference charts the evolution of the modern concept of race and shows that natural philosophy, particularly efforts to taxonomize and to order nature, played a crucial role. Smith demonstrates how the denial of moral equality between Europeans and non-Europeans resulted from converging philosophical and scientific developments, including a declining belief in human nature's universality and the rise of biological classification. The racial typing of human beings grew from the need to understand humanity within an all-encompassing system of nature, alongside plants, minerals, primates, and other animals. While racial difference as seen through science did not arise in order to justify the enslavement of people, it became a rationalization and buttress for the practices of trans-Atlantic slavery. From the work of François Bernier to G. W. Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, and others, Smith delves into philosophy's part in the legacy and damages of modern racism. With a broad narrative stretching over two centuries, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference takes a critical historical look at how the racial categories that we divide ourselves into came into being.

Unprecedented advances in genetics and biotechnology have brought profound new insights into human biological variation. These present challenges and opportunities for understanding the origins of human nature, the nature of difference, and the social practices these sustain. This provides an opportunity for cooperation between the biological and s

Socrates was wise, because he knew that he did not know anything; this has long been the prevailing wisdom of the Socratic-Platonic tradition. In Plato's Middle Period—spanning dialogues such as Phaedo, Symposium, Republic, and Phaedrus—Socrates consistently claims to have knowledge in one area: the erotic. This book argues that the underlining of erotic matters —in what it refers to as Plato's Erotic Period—marks the most significant and dramatic moment in Plato's career. Plato's attention to the erotic in this period calls for a fundamental reassessment of many of the most important Platonic ideas: his complicated quarrel with poetry, his dubious doctrine of forms, his alleged hostility to the body and embodiment. In the Erotic Period, Plato's views are much richer, and infinitely more complex, than the many caricatures of his thought allow.

Bhutan is unique amongst the small group of nations in the Himalayas. It is peaceful and democratic. Above all, it emphasizes happiness that is not necessarily associated with possession of material goods. It protects the environment by eschewing mass tourism that could trample its fragile land. Bhutan is also known for creating the world's one and only Index of Happiness as a measure of wellbeing for its people, which it prefers over the more materialistic and widely used index of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In 1990, the Bhutanese government invited Western scientists to conduct research in one of Bhutan's most remote villages. Bhutan is a country where spirituality is everywhere, where the logic of the animist/Buddhist religion ordains that life is experienced entirely in the present and where human gender is conceived of as part and parcel of the cosmos. The people of Bhutan identify this experience explicitly as “sustainability.”