Using philosophical and scientific work to engage the perennial question of human nature This book takes a look at the formation, and edges, of states: their breakdowns and attempts to repair them, and their encounters with non-state peoples. It draws upon anthropology, political philosophy, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, child developmental psychology, and other fields to look at states as projects of constructing "bodies politic," where the civic and the somatic intersect. John Protevi asserts that humans are predisposed to "prosociality," or being emotionally invested in social partners and patterns. With readings from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and James C. Scott; a critique of the assumption of widespread pre-state warfare as a selection pressure for the evolution of human prosociality and altruism; and an examination of the different "economies of violence" of state and non-state societies, Edges of the State sketches a notion of prosocial human nature and its attendant normative maxims. Forerunners: Ideas First Short books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead
John Protevi Reihenfolge der Bücher
John Protevi beschäftigt sich mit der dynamischen Wechselwirkung zwischen der Theorie dynamischer Systeme, den kognitiven, Lebens- und Erdwissenschaften sowie der zeitgenössischen französischen Philosophie. Seine Arbeit untersucht die komplexen Schnittpunkte dieser Bereiche und erforscht, wie wir diese komplexen Systeme verstehen und beschreiben können. Er konzentriert sich auf die Verbindung von wissenschaftlichem Denken mit tiefgründiger philosophischer Forschung und bietet einzigartige Perspektiven auf die Vernetzung unserer Welt.



- 2019
- 2013
A deep exploration of the many possibilities inherent in linking Gilles Deleuze's philosophy to contemporary science, this book demonstrates how Deleuze's ontology of the virtual, intensive and actual can enhance our understanding of important issues in cognitive science, biology and geography.
- 2009
Political Affect investigates the relationship between the social and the somatic: how our bodies, minds, and social settings are intricately linked. Bringing together concepts from science, philosophy, and politics, he develops a perspective he calls political physiology to indicate that subjectivity is socially conditioned and sometimes bypassed in favor of a connection of the social and the somatic, as with the politically triggered emotions of rage and panic.