The author takes you on a journey through moral philosophy and evolutionary psychology to make sense of what we see as values today. He makes a lot of sense for the most part, and opens an exciting path to rarionalising contemporary socio-political processes and the values they rely on.

The book is near perfect except the end in which he does not spend as much detailed work on motivating his ideas and counterarguments. But nevertheless I found many moments totally enlightening in their candid views, I think this is a must read book. ( )

I made it to page 200 before my revulsion at the emerging narrative became so intense I couldn't finish. Bogus experimental technique, errors of fact (John Stuart Mill did not justify slavery), treating institutional racism, misogyny and patriarchy as valid "moral" positions just got to be too much. Think Social Darwinism mixed with moral relativism. The "Dark Enlightenment" folks would love this - a virtual blueprint for justifying fascism. Two stars only for the writing which was decent enough and recommended from a know your enemy perspective. ( )

I wasn't particularly looking forward to reading this for book club, but it actually turned out to be fascinating. The author's experiments and explanations about how people develop their morality systems and why we can view the world in such different ways made a lot of sense. I especially liked his suggestions for how to communicate more effectively with people who think differently than you do. ( )

This was pretty entertaining and interesting. It is about morale psychology and trying to determine why we believe what we believe. There are some very entertaining study results (some of them pretty humorous) that the author uses as evidence in a debate between emotion/intuition vs reasoning. Later, there is a discussion about Moral Foundations - the basic moral principles we all rate and how they map to our political leanings. There is also a discussion of how our ancestors' anthropology/evolution may be influencing our morality today which also had some interesting points.

It's not overly technical and he has some good metaphors for explaining his theories. ( )

interesting first three parts that go into current understanding of the physical and evolutionary basis of human psychology. Really frustrating through this part whenever the author reveals, consciously or not, just how much of a liberal he is. The final part gets to the point, and says that a political atmosphere in which there are both liberals and conservatives is good, almost necessary, as long as they can and do respect and talk across party lines. liberals look at how to improve society, often mostly for those who have no voice or are marginalised, while conservatives remind us not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. ( )