The Invention of Good and Evil

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A World History of Morality

For almost five million years, humans have been locked in a relationship with morality, inventing and reinventing the concepts of 'Good' and 'Evil', and weaving them into our cities, laws and customs.

Morality is often associated with restraint and coercion; restriction and sacrifice; inquisition, confession and a guilty conscience. Joyless and claustrophobic, it is a device used to shames us into compliance. This impression is not entirely incorrect, but it is certainly incomplete.

Using our past as a basis for a new understanding of our future, Hanno Sauer traces humanity's fundamental moral transformations from our earliest ancestors through to the present day, when it seems we have never disagreed more over what it means to be good. Our current political disagreements may feel like the end of the world, but where will the evolution of morality take us next?