The Invention of Good and Evil: A World History of Morality [Hardcover]

In this ambitious volume Hanno Sauer integrates the findings of cutting-edge interdisciplinary research into a sweeping synthetic narrative of human evolution -- a history with morality at its core. He explains how, starting 5 million years ago, adaptive pressures created the need for human cooperation and over time were the source of our notions of right and wrong. Sauer then moves forward in time, showing how this evolutionary inheritance shaped human society, and ultimately how modern societies, and our current social tensions, are the result of this deep history--while at the same time arguing that this history shows that humans share fundamental moral values across time and cultures.In this sweeping new history of humanity, told through the prism of our ever-changing moral norms and values, Hanno Sauer shows how modern society is just the latest step in the long evolution of good and evil and everything in between.What makes us moral beings? How do we decide what is good and what is evil? And has it always been that way? Hanno Sauer's sweeping new history of humanity, covering five million years of our universal moral values, comes at a crucial moment of crisis for those values, and helps to explain how they arose -- and why we need them.We humans were born to cooperate, but everywhere we find ourselves in conflict. The way we live together has changed fundamentally in recent decades: global mobility, demographic upheaval, migration movements, and digital networking, have all called the moral foundations of human communities into question. Modern societies are in crisis: a shared universal morality seems to be a thing of the past. Hanno Sauer explains why this appearance is deceptive: in fact, there are universal values that all people share. If we understand the origin of our morality, we can understand its future too.With philosophical expertise and empirical data, Sauer explains how processes of biological, cultural, social, and historical el3-