Our culture entertains a schizophrenic attitude towards human nature. On the one hand, egoism is held to be our most powerful motive, playing a crucial cultural role by explaining the appeal of capitalism and providing a foundation for individualism. By contrast much of the continental intellectual tradition speaks of wholeness and alienation, seeing human nature not as self-interested but as herd-like. Guldmann argues that this schism reflects two diverging conceptions of human agency, and that the attempt to locate human nature somewhere along a continuum between egoism and altruism...