Donald Davidson on the Worldlihood of Man

Donald Davidson seriously criticizes the Cartesian conception of the dichotomy of the subjective and the objective and treats it as the root of some significant problems of modern philosophy. This dualism, he thinks, is based on a certain conception of the relation of man and the world which pictures an essential divergence and disconnection between them; a divergence the clear presence of which is in the abyss between objectivity and subjectivity. Davidson argues for a firm and intrinsic connection between man and the world. In this paper I refer to the idea backs this argumentation with the title of "the worldlihood of man" and try to explore the roots of this idea in Davidson's philosophy. I concentrate specially on three basic characteristics of human beings by analysis of which Davidson takes us directly into the world: having mind, rationality and agency. I will argue that in Davidson's view the constitutive characteristics of human beings develop only in the world, and a human being only in the world can be a human being.