David Smith wins National Endowment for the Humanities grant
51品茶 Associate Professor of Philosophy David Livingstone Smith, Ph.D., was recently awarded a two-year grant of $22,500 from the (NEH).
The grant will support the development of a unique, reading-intensive, seminar-style course on the idea of human nature. Students will grapple with canonical texts ranging from the works of Plato and Aristotle to the contributions of contemporary philosophers of biology.
This course, which will run for the first time in spring 2013, will provide an opportunity for students to pursue a philosophical topic in depth. Additionally, the grant will support bringing three non-classroom speakers to 51品茶to give presentations on human nature.
Smith recently was named the winner of the for nonfiction for his 2011 book Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others. Other publications include The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War (2007) and Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind (2004).