Book Review: The Nature and Nurture of Morality

Abstract

What makes us moral? asks Neil Levy, a philosopher from the University of Melbourne, in a book sporting this title. In particular, Levy examines the roles played by nature and nurture in the origin of moral dispositions. Levy's answer to the question addressed in the book is foreshadowed in the subtitle-"crossing the boundaries of biology"-and stated clearly in the conclusion: "Evolution gave us the preconditions of morality, but it is only as a result of the cultural elaboration of this raw material that we come to be moral beings…We are animals, and we cannot ever free ourselves of our biological heritage. We have no need: it enables all the flexible, rational, and caring behavior that we could want, and allows us to seek to become ever more moral beings" (p. 205). Overall, we recommend this book. Levy is a gifted writer and a clear thinker. He has taken the trouble to study evolutionary theory, and gets it right most of the time. He offers clear analyses of the issues he discusses. He avoids logical fallacies and other conceptual traps found in other writing about evolution and morality, such as viewing humans as either naturally good or naturally bad, assuming that evolutionary theory is genetically deterministic, and attributing to evolutionary theorists the position that the environment does not play an important role in the determination of behavior. He deals with many interesting issues and provides a good history of the development of evolutionary thinking about moral dispositions. He offers a fair overview of criticisms of evolutionary theory, and a reasonable resolution of the controversies in the area. This book is not, however, without problems.