>On Sun, 27 Apr 1997, Andrew Wayne Austin wrote:
>
>> It seems logical to me
>> that what is natural and what is social should be distinguished...
>> The term "human nature" itself is, as of right now, an oxymoron. Since
>> everything that we know of thus far as "human" is social, human is not
>> natural.
If it were true that everything that is human is social and therefore not
natural (which I don't grant for a moment) then an oxymoron would be
exactly what the phrase "human nature" was.
The word Austin is looking for is "contradiction." Oxymoron is to
contradiction as synthesis to antithesis.
-dlj.