The Invention of Good and Evil

In this ambitious volume Hanno Sauer integrates the findings of cutting-edge interdisciplinary research into a sweeping synthetic narrative of human evolution -- a history with morality at its core. He explains how, starting 5 million years ago, adaptive pressures created the need for human cooperation and over time were the source of our notions of right and wrong. Sauer then moves forward in time, showing how this evolutionary inheritance shaped human society, and ultimately how modern societies, and our current social tensions, are the result of this deep history--while at the same time arguing that this history shows that humans share fundamental moral values across time and cultures.

Hanno Sauer is a philosopher and writer who teaches ethics at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. He has written numerous academic articles and monographs and has given talks in various countries in Europe and North America. Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Award for Outstanding Early Career Researchers (2020), European Research Commission Starting Grant (2019). The Invention of Good and Evil: A World History of Morality was shortlisted for the German Non-Fiction Award (2023), the Tractatus Prize for the best philosophical essay 2023, and became a DER SPIEGEL Bestseller. It is currently being translated into 16 languages and will appear in more than 20 countries.