The Moral Animal

Robert Wright (born in 1957) is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, a brilliant journalist, and the author of several scientific bestsellers, each of which has sparked heated discussions. His book «The Moral Animal», translated into 12 languages and recognized as one of the best books of 1994, instantly attracted attention and divided the reading audience into two irreconcilable camps.
Man is an animal endowed with reason, and this fact is hard to dispute. At the same time, it is generally believed that in a civilized society, the rational element prevails over the animal. But is this really the case? What constitutes human morality, which has undergone radical changes over many centuries? How are altruism and the struggle for survival, the sexual revolution, and Darwin's theory of evolution interconnected? Honor, conscience, friendship, nobility – are all these just words hiding behind bare instinct?
By analyzing these questions and cleverly using as an example the biography of Charles Darwin himself and his «On the Origin of Species» along with Frans de Waal's famous work «Chimpanzee Politics», Robert Wright arrives at some very intriguing conclusions.