The Moral Sense

I normally wouldn't give a book that is this slow such a high rating. Some of the chapters are longer than they need to be. Despite that, Wilson's argument is so interesting that it is worth struggling through some rather difficult writing to try to understand it. Wilson is making a very conservativ......more

I first heard of Dr. Wilson after recently reading glowing obituaries in many respected publications. His teaching and publications have been influential to many better known authorities. As I am a psychiatrist working with emotionally disturbed adolescents, I felt I should know his work better. I h......more

It seems strange to me that anyone would doubt the existence of a moral sense. Do these doubters not have a moral sense? If they do have a moral sense then how can they doubt the existence of something they themselves have? If you do not have a moral sense yourself then this book gives objective evi......more

The theme of the book is that there are universal moral senses among human. Therefore, the notion that everything depends on the culture (culture relativism) is wrong. The book argues this point by looking at some basic components of moral, such as sympathy, fairness, self-control and duty. The auth......more

A well reasoned cautious book with a thesis that went against the intellectual grain but really shouldn’t. The moral sense is actually multiple senses: sympathy, fairness, self-control, and duty that encompass what various philosophers from Aristotle to Adam Smith counted as virtues. However modern......more