Why Persons Matter: A Jewish Defense

Abstract

Anyone who has struggled to navigate the challenges that evolutionary and other natural sciences pose to a rich religious sense of the importance of human dignity will enjoy reading this book. Alan L. Mittleman gives the reader more than a robust understanding of the sciences; he also probes carefully their philosophical premises and makes a case for why a detailed engagement with Jewish sources in particular allows one to construct a reasonable and intellectually satisfying alternative to a purely naturalistic account based on the sciences. In the course of his investigation Mittleman deals skillfully with popular scientific motifs that were in the air half a century ago and that remain remarkably persistent today, such as the reductionist view, stemming from well-known writers like Desmond Morris, that humans are little more than naked apes; even at the height of Morris's popularity that view clashed with other philosophical perspectives that were equally prevalent and that stressed the existential alienation of human beings in the world.