History is filled with moral doctrines; doctrines that tell us where we are, what to do, and the kind of future we’re striving for. These moral systems differ significantly around the world, and oftentimes in spectacular ways. In the 20th century, many Western intellectuals took these differences as proof that morality was always a social construct used to maintain power and authority by an oppressive elite. After all, if what is considered ‘moral’ in one culture is absolutely ‘immoral’ in another, what hope was there for an objective morality?
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt set out to answer this question by assembling decades of his and others’ pain-staking research. By grounding our knowledge of morality in the evolutionary history of mankind, he ultimately sets out a new theory of morality, one that is intuitively, intellectually, and empirically robust.