Review by Choice Review
The interface between philosophy and anthropology has long been cultivated. For example, since the 1950s it has been explored by philosopher David Bidney analyzing the history of anthropological theory, Colin Turnbull deploying ethnography to philosophize about the human condition, and anthropologist Donald Brown identifying cross-cultural universals as human nature. Here this interface is probed further by Michael Jackson (world religions, Harvard Divinity School), who pursued extensive ethnography in Sierra Leone and Queensland. Cultural anthropology usually focuses on the immanent, the concrete, and diversity, whereas philosophy focuses on the transcendent, the abstract, and the universal. Jackson argues that if both anthropology and philosophy attended more to the commonalities of human experience, they might generate insights beyond the common historical and cultural divides that could be obstructive. Thus, he attempts to reinvent philosophical anthropology (although it is not clear to this reviewer why it needs reinventing rather than just further development). Jackson probes such matters in chapters considering analogy and polarity, identity and difference, relations and relata, life and death, ourselves and others, belief and experience, persons and types, being and thought, fate and freewill, center and periphery, and, finally, ecologies of mind. He grounds philosophical anthropology in everyday rather than elite concerns. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. --Leslie E. Sponsel, University of Hawai'i
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
