A little too breathless here, both Lawler and Arnhart. If you guys want to use Heidegger as leverage against the reductionist sciences, ok, but he was not a dualist. He certainly does NOT think there is something like a 'mind' that transcends a body. Augustine's view of heroism contrasts with Heidegger's sense of the (moral) heroism of Dasein's authentic projection. Heidegger gets his fear-of-death stuff from Kierkegaard, not from the 'timor castus'of Augustine; he is interested in the latter only to destroy the nascent neo-platonist ontology he finds therein.

Well isn't Arnhart a bigger supporter of Americanism as Heiddeger understood it than Dr. Lawler?

In other words Arnhart and the biologists are most excellent at papering over the question of Being.

Perhaps they are too excellent, and perhaps the biologist+new institutionalist/behavioralist+chicago school law+economics+sociology is the trajectory of the future.

I actually expect that Obama will nominate a brilliant lawyer out of this general school who is more generally commited to tracing out the conclusions derived from biology and economics in respect to actual human behavior/nature/governing law.

Dr. Arnhart as far as I can tell from reading him is actually very good, and he isn't saying that Darwin can explain it all. But I do think that Darwin and the Chicago school+New Institutionalist+behavioralist economics can come close, as close as is possible, and maybe too close for comfort.

This is some robust political economy...but it is important to remmember that John Maynard Keynes enjoyed Shakespiere, discussed literature with the likes of the Bloosmberry Group, and wrote an interesting essay no one reads called On Persuasion.

On some level Darwinism began to be awakened by Malthus, and according to Keynes political economy would have done better had it owed more to Malthus than Ricardo.

In any case a haphazard study of economic history has lead me to recognize the different connotations and interpretations various thinkers place on historical figures...a desire to eliminate this confusion by itself explains the triumph of the more mathmatically rigorous models...if you try to hold Arhart to a view of a philosophical thinker that only a proffesional specialist in that field holds, might he not retaliate within his field of biology?

In other words is the question what Aristotle "really" means or what Darwin thought he meant?

In the Historical Sketch that Darwin lays out in the beginning of the Origin of the Species he comments on Aristotles notion that: "the rain does not fall in order to make the corn grow, any more than it falls to spoil the farmer's corn when threshed out of doors..." Aristotle then goes on to discuss teeth..."So what hinders the different parts of the body having this merely accidental relation in nature? as teeth, for example, grow by necessity, the front ones sharp, adapted for dividing, and the grinders flat, and serviceable for masticating the food; since they were not made for the sake of this, but it was the result of an accident." Aristotle continues on and according to Darwin the conclusion is: "We here see the principle of natural selection shadowed forth, but how little Aristotle comprehended this principle, is shown by his remarks on the formation of the teeth."

Of course an different interpretation is that Aristotle was already aware both that Darwinian Larry was right and that human beings a la Dr. Lawler are naturally resistant to feeling themselves swallowed by science.

In other words his remarks on the formation of teeth were restrained by a concern to preserve a priveledged status for human beings...when it came to humans and himself, he had a natural sympathy that sought first "So what hinders the different parts of the body having this merely accidental relation in nature?"

Of course this restraint on Science(historical accuracy) for the sake of humanity(artistic truth) was liable to perversion...but even when I am reading the driest of economic history I see its return, and if I think you pay closer attention to the works of David Hume you really see it in play...So I am not sure exactly why Darwinian Larry comes out against the is/ought distinction as put foward by David Hume.

Nevertheless, I really enjoy reading Dr. Arnhart's work.