The Evolution of Ethics ― Human Sociality and the Emergence of Ethical Mindedness

The profound reinterpretation of human nature wrought by evolutionary theory deeply challenges standard approaches to ethics. In this ground-breaking book, Aristotelian and evolutionary understandings of human social nature are brought together to provide an integrative, psychological account of human ethics. Fowers explores seven domains of sociality—attachment, intersubjectivity, imitation, cooperation, social norms, group membership, and social hierarchy—moving on to identify and elaborate a set of natural human goods that are inherent in these social domains, such as friendship, justice, belonging, and social harmony. The book emphasizes the profound ways that human identity and action are immersed in an ongoing social world. These goods are the elements that comprise human flourishing, or living a good human life.

Blaine Fowers is Professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of Miami, USA. His scholarship centers on applying Aristotle's ethics to psychological theory, research, and practice. He studies goal pursuit, flourishing, and virtue. Fowers is a co-author of Re-envisioning Psychology and the author of Virtue and Psychology and Beyond the Myth of Marital Happiness.