A gripping account of morality shows how we work out right from wrong

Animals, Robots, Gods
Webb Keane (Allen Lane)

No society we know of ever lived without morals. Roughly the same ethical ideas arise, again and again, over time and in different societies. Where do these notions of right and wrong come from? Might there be an ideal way to live?

In Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the moral imagination, anthropologist Webb Keane at the University of Michigan argues that morality doesn’t arise from universal principles but from the human imagination. For him, moral ideas are sparked in…