The Invention of Good and Evil by Hanno Sauer

AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR

'Blending insights from evolutionary biology, cognitive science and anthropology, Sauer has made a heroic effort to chart how morality has changed' Economist

'The best thing on morality I have ever read' Paul Bloom

'A brisk, engaging survey covering five million years of human history' Financial Times

The history of humankind is punctuated by a series of transformational leaps. Just as good and evil cannot exist without the other, each new configuration for how we live together - how we distinguish and enforce right from wrong - was accompanied by new sins.

Collaboration gives rise to division; culture requires exclusion; and justice demands punishment. The morality of early civilisations is markedly different from that in the dark ages or the enlightenment. As for the present day, did morality follow us here? Or did it lead the way?

Philosopher and professor of Ethics Hanno Sauer traces the path of our moral transformations from our earliest ancestors to this very moment and beyond.