"The book is salutary, both in its commitment to philosophy's making a contribution to wide public debate
and in the sensible and humane views it espouses. The voice of a well-known respected public intellectual standing
up for a view that harmonizes humanism and science, morality and evolution, is well worth having on record. Moreover,
the book is witty and unsentimental, with occasional scattered treasures to be found."
--The Philosophical Review, Susan Wolf, Johns Hopkins University
"Clearly and gracefully written, it should prove very interesting and accessible to a wide audience."
--Choice
Routledge Web Site, June, 2002
Summary
In The Ethical Primate, renowned philosopher Mary Midgley tackles important questions about human freedom and
morality. Scientists and philosophers have found it difficult to understand how each human being can be both a
living part of the natural world and, at the same time, a genuinely free agent. Midgley explores their responses
to this seeming paradox and argues that our evolutionary origin, properly understood, explains why human freedom
and morality have come about.
Table of Contents
Part I - Introductory
1. Inner Divisions
2. Misguided Debates
Part II - The Reductive Enterprise
3. Guiding Visions
4. Hopes of Simplicity
5. Crusades, Legitimate and Otherwise
6. Convergent Explanations and their Uses
7. Troubles of the Linear Pattern
8. Fatalism and Predictability
Part III - The Sources and Meaning of Morals
9. Agency and Ethics
10. Modern Myths
11. The Strength of Individualism
12. The Retreat from the Natural World
13. How Far does Sociability Take Us?
14. The Uses of Sympathy
Part IV - What Kind of Freedom?
15. On Being Terrestrial
16. What Beings are Free
17. Minds Resist Streamlining
