Hanno Sauer is a professor of ethics at the University of Utrecht and lives in Düsseldorf. His book, written for a general audience and well crafted, presents an engaging structure and traces the development of humanity from five million years ago to the present.
He frequently refers to “morality,” but rarely specifies what is good or evil, nor does he define morality itself, which he interprets from a biological evolutionary perspective. He dismisses religion, considering it a source of evident falsehoods.
He argues that moral evolution is based on three capacities: cooperation, punishment, and learning. He supports his thesis with evolutionary psychology, drawing on examples from ancient cultures and ideas such as mutation, selection, utilitarianism, and cumulative cultural evolution.
Throughout the book, he criticizes Christianity and the traditional family, defends new lifestyles, and presents the human being as just another part of nature.
In his historical analysis, he claims that early societies were more egalitarian and that agriculture introduced hierarchy and inequality. He views the last 5,000 years as a period of oppression that fostered the emergence of religions and norms to justify it, although he fails to establish a clear foundation for the equality he advocates. He also argues that gender roles are not natural but functional.
With modernity, he sees the emergence of attempts to define a just society and the rise of individual autonomy. He links the origins of individualism to the Catholic Church’s family program, which he believes weakened kinship ties and promoted new forms of social organization.
This process led to the decline of Church authority, the rise of Protestantism, the emergence of the scientific method, and the replacement of natural law by legalism. New moral structures tied to the economy and to scientific-technical civilization emerged.
In the twentieth century, he defends a universalist morality in which norms are conventional and every individual deserves respect. Broad cooperation, social influence, and conformity, he argues, make moral transformation possible.
Recent decades, in his view, show moral progress through situational ethics, the banality of evil, and “us versus them” dynamics. He emphasizes values such as equality, inclusion, and freedom, linked to economic security.
In the present, he analyzes phenomena such as wokeness, identity politics, and cancel culture, considering them expressions of contemporary morality and drivers of moral progress, though somewhat immature.
He concludes that this process may lead to a community guided by reason. Although he offers valuable insights, his attempt to build a common ethics leaves key questions unresolved.