ABSTRACT
This chapter represents a step towards a basically Australianist project in which Westermarck's work on the natural history of marriage and morals is taken as a convenient starting point for evaluating the contribution made to these subjects by evolutionary biology during the twentieth century. He confines himself at this stage to speculations on the origins of morality, since to begin highlighting a difference between human and non-human species that in the case of reproduction is perhaps less critical. Westermarck locates the beginnings of morality in the 'retributive emotions', using 'retributive' inclusively to designate positive as well as negative reciprocity. Westermarck's argument contains a difficulty he left unresolved. If morals are conventions, to locate them in individual advantage and disadvantage begs the question of their origin. In de Waal's view, the orthodox sociobiological approach to morality is curious convergence of religious, psychoanalytic and evolutionary thinking which pits morality against nature and in doing so puts it beyond a naturalistic explanation.
