This chapter explores humanity’s “hyper-cooperativity,” as described by new and longstanding research in evolutionary biology, and the way the biology illuminates work on human relationality and covenantality in the areas of theology and ontology. It appears in the 2024 book, Assembling […]
We are not naturally competitively aggressive and polarized; we are hyper-cooperative by evolution. Have a look at my chapter, “What Does Evolutionary Biology Tell Us about Relationality as a Basis for Economics and Politics?” in the new book, Assembling Futures: Economy, Ecology, Democracy, and Religion (2024), edited by Jennifer Quigley and Catherine Keller, Fordham University Press. Click here
Sacrifice amid Covenant: From Abuse to Gift in Mimesis and Sacrifice: Applying Girard’s Mimetic Theory Across the Disciplines 2019 (Bloomsbury Academic)
Click here for article > The Nature of Humanity & the Origins of Religion This article looks at the evolutionary biology evidence for human relationality and “hypercooperativity” that was the human modus vivendi until relatively recent agrarianism. It was published in […]
PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS AND BIOLOGICAL FINDINGS, PART II: PLAY, ART, RITUAL, AND RITUAL SACRIFICE by Marcia Pally Abstract. This Part II of a two-part article illustrates how research in evolutionary biology, anthropology, archeology, and psychology illuminates questions arising in philosophy—specifically questions […]
PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS AND BIOLOGICAL FINDINGS, PART I: HUMAN COOPERATIVITY, COMPETITION, AGGRESSION by Marcia Pally Abstract. This first part of a two-part article illustrates how research in evolutionary biology and psychology illuminates questions arising in philosophy—specifically questions about the origins of […]
Circling the Wagons or Opening the Circle For Dialog https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/dial.12614 By Marcia Pally, New York University, [email protected] Abstract: “To approach eudaimonia or human flourishing,” Darcia Narvaez writes, “one must have a concept of human nature, a realization of what constitutes […]
Our post-pandemic future: What basics should be its basis? By Marcia Pally Religion & Ethics, May 24, 2020 What is needed to effect a change in our socio-economic and environmental practices? By what principles should we proceed after the […]
More than a Resource: Covenant as a Basis for Societal Organization By Prof. Dr. Marcia Pally in: Religion and Democracy: Challenges and Resources in a Public Theological Perspective Torsten Meireis and Rolf Schieder (Eds., 2017), pp. 71-87 Introduction Of human thriving, […]
Recovering Relationality: From the ‘Selfish Gene’ to a ‘Hyper-Cooperative Species’ By Marcia Pally Religion and Ethics, 5 Apr 2016 In the summative speech of the film Margin Call, Jeremy Irons, playing the fictional head of a collapsing Lehman Brothers-type investment house, […]