WONDER AND TRUST. Rearticulating the Ethical Structure of “Human Nature” through a Transcendental Philosophy of Childhood
WONDER AND TRUST. Rearticulating the Ethical Structure of “Human Nature” through a Transcendental Philosophy of Childhood

Summary/Abstract: This essay reconsiders the concept of human nature by criticizing theoretical attempts to capture the essence of human nature in a metaphysical theory. Against such attempts, an ethically responsible account of human existence may be formulated in terms of the concepts of wonder and trust. Answers to the existentially most significant questions troubling humankind, such as the problem of why there is something rather than nothing, should not, then, be sought in an explanatory manner; on the contrary, such questions show the need for an ethically serious engagement with the basic human attitudes of wonder and trust, to be illuminated in terms of a “philosophy of childhood”.

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