Are We Born Moral?

Il nuovo fascicolo della NY Review of Books (Volume 54, Number 8, May 10, 2007) contiene il saggio di John Gray dal titolo Are We Born Moral?
L'autore commenta due recenti pubblicazioni inerenti lo studio delle basi naturali del senso morale negli esseri umani e nelle scimmie. I due libri commentati sono:Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong di Marc D. Hauser. Ecco, 458 pp., $27.95e Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved di Frans de Waal, a cura di Stephen Macedo e Josiah Ober. Princeton University Press, 209 pp., $22.95
Questo è il breve abstract:
According to a prominent tradition of Western thinking, morality is a thin overlay covering human savagery. Human beings are bestial by nature and ethical codes are curbs on their brutish instincts that enable them to live together in relative peace. Morality is a restraint on natural human behavior. At the same time it is believed to be uniquely human. Only humans possess the intellectual powers that are needed to repress natural impulses, and so only they can be moral.
Paolo Coccia