Prologue Darwinian Dilemmas Survival of the Unfittest Biologicizing Morality Calvinist Sociobiology A Broader View The Invisible Grasping Organ Ethology and Ethics Photo Essay: Closeness Sympathy Warm Blood in Cold Waters Special Treatment of the Handicapped Responses to Injury and Death Having Broad Nails The Social Mirror Lying and Aping Apes Simian Sympathy A World without Compassion Photo Essay: Cognition and Empathy Rank and Order A Sense of Social Regularity The Monkey's Behind Guilt and Shame Unruly Youngsters The Blushing Primate Two Genders, Two Moralities? Umbilical versus Confrontational Bonds Primus inter Pares Quid pro Quo The Less-than-Golden Rule Mobile Meals At the Circle's Center A Concept of Giving Testing for Reciprocity From Revenge to Justice Photo Essay: Help from a Friend Getting Along The Social Cage The Relational Model Peacemaking Rope Walking Baboon Testimony Draining the Behavioral Sink Community Concern Photo Essay: War and Peace Conclusion What Does It Take to Be Moral? Floating Pyramids A Hole in the Head Notes Bibliography Acknowledgments Index
Frans B. M. de Waal was Charles Howard Candler Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Emory University and former director of the Living Links Center for the Advanced Study of Ape and Human Evolution at the Emory National Primate Research Center.
Evolutionary continuities have been sought in intelligence,
language, tool making--anywhere but in morality. Now a respected
ethologist, Frans de Waal, tackles the problem from a novel
angle...Good Natured is no touchy-feely celebration of animal
innocence, but a hardheaded study by a specialist in primate
behavior with a wealth of observational experience. Mr. de Waal, a
research scientist at the Yerkes Regional Primate Center at Emory
University, presents his rich data in an accessible prose lit with
flashes of wry humor and beautifully illustrated with his own vivid
photographs...Far from being half ape, half angel, torn between a
moral sense that strives upward and an eons-old bestial viciousness
that drags us down, [we are portrayed by de Waal] as inheritors of
a basically moral view of life that has evolved over countless
millenniums--not through some fictitious social contract between
self-sufficient individuals, but through the inevitable
give-and-take of communal living...Anyone who cares about humans or
their future will profit from this excellent book, which sheds at
least as much light on our own lives as it does on those of other
creatures.
*New York Times Book Review*
So lucid is de Waal's manner of setting things forth that each time
he finishes drawing an aspect of animal morality, your first
response is to wonder why you hadn't noticed it around the house,
if not at a primate research center, a remote island, or the
zoo...[His] startling contributions to the way the general reader,
or general citizen, has of thinking seriously about "humans and
other animals" might be permanent.
*Village Voice Literary Supplement*
A sparkling master work...de Waal...is perhaps the most literate,
entertaining, and soulful of the cognitive ethologists...In Good
Natured, [he] takes his humanizing project a step further,
employing the rich lexicon of human moral concepts as figures of
speech to depict and lend meaning to the behavior of nonhuman
animals...[A] provocative, endearing, and brilliantly written
book.
*Los Angeles Times*
Modern Darwinian evolutionary theory is based on individual
reproduction, on 'selfish' genes that have been selected at the
expense of others that might act for the greater good. How then
could survival of the fittest lead to empathy?...This profound
paradox has led some scholars in the past to assume that the
emergence of morals must be a transcendent process beyond the
bounds of scientific explanation. Frans de Waal, one of the world's
best-known primatologists, has set out to prove that assumption
wrong. On the final page of his startling new book, he asserts that
"we seem to be reaching a point at which science can wrest morality
from the hands of philosophers." How the author...came to this
conclusion makes for compelling reading.
*Scientific American*
In [this] original and engaging new book...de Waal makes a strong
case that the four ingredients of morality--empathy/sympathy,
sharing or reciprocity, justice/rules and
peacemaking/reconciliation--are very much evident in other
mammals...The book employs a solid core of statistical evidence to
bolster his case, but what makes his argument so compelling is the
richness of detail...De Waal is an original thinker and writes with
such a light hand that the reader can take a stimulating ride
through his imaginative philosophical discourse...This work
is...penetrating and profound.
*Boston Globe*
De Waal [questions]...whether the roots of human morality can be
found in the behaviour of other species. He is more or less ideally
placed to answer that question, after years of perceptive research
on captive chimpanzees, bonobos and monkeys...As de Waal fans will
already know, chimpanzees and other primates come alive as
individuals under his expert gaze...Sympathy, attachment, social
norms, punishment, a sense of justice, reciprocation, peacemaking
and community concern--all are writ large in chimpanzee society.
Good Natured makes the point with the help of a profusion of
gripping examples.
*BBC Wildlife*
As a book of ideas...this is excellent and on the whole I am
inclined to believe de Waal's case for the antecedents of our own
morality in other species, Perhaps most interestingly, however, is
that the domain hitherto of philosophers is now being contested by
evolutionary biologists. Not only does this tighten up the terms of
the debate (as did ape language research for linguistics), but
ironically it injects a special kind of humanism that recognises
the origins of our moral failings as well as our successes.
*Times Higher Education Supplement*
[A] well-written, provocative book.
*Science*
A large and entertaining collection of anecdotes about animal
behaviour. These are used to bolster the proposition that mental
processes governing complex forms of human behaviour, such as
sympathy and empathy with others, must have their homologues in the
animal kingdom...[This book] is extremely well written and very
entertaining.
*Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology*
[Good Natured] is a tour de force and a landmark in the growing
field of cognitive ethology....[It] is an example of the very best
in popular science writing. De Waal skilfully weaves together
anecdotes, theories and data to create a text that is
thought-provoking and a pleasure to read.
*New Scientist (UK)*
Evolutionary continuities have been sought in intelligence,
language, tool making--anywhere but in morality. Now a respected
ethologist, Frans de Waal, tackles the problem from a novel
angle...Good Natured is no touchy-feely celebration of
animal innocence, but a hardheaded study by a specialist in primate
behavior with a wealth of observational experience. Mr. de Waal, a
research scientist at the Yerkes Regional Primate Center at Emory
University, presents his rich data in an accessible prose lit with
flashes of wry humor and beautifully illustrated with his own vivid
photographs...Far from being half ape, half angel, torn between a
moral sense that strives upward and an eons-old bestial viciousness
that drags us down, [we are portrayed by de Waal] as inheritors of
a basically moral view of life that has evolved over countless
millenniums--not through some fictitious social contract between
self-sufficient individuals, but through the inevitable
give-and-take of communal living...Anyone who cares about humans or
their future will profit from this excellent book, which sheds at
least as much light on our own lives as it does on those of other
creatures. -- Derek Bickerton * New York Times Book Review *
So lucid is de Waal's manner of setting things forth that each time
he finishes drawing an aspect of animal morality, your first
response is to wonder why you hadn't noticed it around the house,
if not at a primate research center, a remote island, or the
zoo...[His] startling contributions to the way the general reader,
or general citizen, has of thinking seriously about "humans and
other animals" might be permanent. -- Vicki Hearne * Village Voice
Literary Supplement *
A sparkling master work...de Waal...is perhaps the most literate,
entertaining, and soulful of the cognitive ethologists...In Good
Natured, [he] takes his humanizing project a step further,
employing the rich lexicon of human moral concepts as figures of
speech to depict and lend meaning to the behavior of nonhuman
animals...[A] provocative, endearing, and brilliantly written book.
-- Richard A. Shweder * Los Angeles Times *
Modern Darwinian evolutionary theory is based on individual
reproduction, on 'selfish' genes that have been selected at the
expense of others that might act for the greater good. How then
could survival of the fittest lead to empathy?...This profound
paradox has led some scholars in the past to assume that the
emergence of morals must be a transcendent process beyond the
bounds of scientific explanation. Frans de Waal, one of the world's
best-known primatologists, has set out to prove that assumption
wrong. On the final page of his startling new book, he asserts that
"we seem to be reaching a point at which science can wrest morality
from the hands of philosophers." How the author...came to this
conclusion makes for compelling reading. -- William C. McGrew *
Scientific American *
In [this] original and engaging new book...de Waal makes a strong
case that the four ingredients of morality--empathy/sympathy,
sharing or reciprocity, justice/rules and
peacemaking/reconciliation--are very much evident in other
mammals...The book employs a solid core of statistical evidence to
bolster his case, but what makes his argument so compelling is the
richness of detail...De Waal is an original thinker and writes with
such a light hand that the reader can take a stimulating ride
through his imaginative philosophical discourse...This work
is...penetrating and profound. -- Vicki Croke * Boston Globe *
De Waal [questions]...whether the roots of human morality can be
found in the behaviour of other species. He is more or less ideally
placed to answer that question, after years of perceptive research
on captive chimpanzees, bonobos and monkeys...As de Waal fans will
already know, chimpanzees and other primates come alive as
individuals under his expert gaze...Sympathy, attachment, social
norms, punishment, a sense of justice, reciprocation, peacemaking
and community concern--all are writ large in chimpanzee society.
Good Natured makes the point with the help of a profusion of
gripping examples. -- Stephen Young * BBC Wildlife *
As a book of ideas...this is excellent and on the whole I am
inclined to believe de Waal's case for the antecedents of our own
morality in other species, Perhaps most interestingly, however, is
that the domain hitherto of philosophers is now being contested by
evolutionary biologists. Not only does this tighten up the terms of
the debate (as did ape language research for linguistics), but
ironically it injects a special kind of humanism that recognises
the origins of our moral failings as well as our successes. --
Thomas Sambrook * Times Higher Education Supplement *
[A] well-written, provocative book. -- Charles T. Snowdon * Science
*
A large and entertaining collection of anecdotes about animal
behaviour. These are used to bolster the proposition that mental
processes governing complex forms of human behaviour, such as
sympathy and empathy with others, must have their homologues in the
animal kingdom...[This book] is extremely well written and very
entertaining. -- Alan Dixson * Quarterly Journal of Experimental
Psychology *
[Good Natured] is a tour de force and a landmark in
the growing field of cognitive ethology....[It] is an example of
the very best in popular science writing. De Waal skilfully weaves
together anecdotes, theories and data to create a text that is
thought-provoking and a pleasure to read. -- Gail Vines * New
Scientist (UK) *
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