“It is because our culture is changing so fast, because it does not settle on everything that we need to go into these questions.”

— Mary Midgley

Introduction, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979).
Context: Other areas were being mapped by anthropologists, who seemed to have some interest in my problem, but who were inclined (at that time) to say that what human beings had in common was not in the end very important; that the key to all the mysteries did lie in culture. This seemed to me shallow. It is because our culture is changing so fast, because it does not settle on everything that we need to go into these questions.

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Mary Midgley 42

British philosopher and ethicist 1919–2018

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“It is because our culture is changing so fast, because it does not settle on everything that we need to go into these questions.”

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Mary Midgley 42

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