ABSTRACT

Ethics in its broader sense is the study of how best to live. A long tradition in Western philosophy teaches that moral awareness and agency distinguish human beings from non-human animals. Evolutionary ethics takes a different point of departure. Humans are less emotional and irritable than apes and their behavior is noteworthy for its impulse control. Human representational abilities extend to the remote past, the distant future, and to merely possible states of affairs. Eighteenth-century theorists of the moral sentiments such as David Hume and Adam Smith as well as ancient and early modern materialists rejected divine command theories of ethics and discussed the social function of morality, but it was Darwin's Descent of Man of 1871 that set the present course of investigation. Emotion-based mechanisms that punish selfishness with exaggerated retaliation might be expected to evolve alongside altruism and cooperation.