To know the nature of any phenomenon or practice, it is often a good idea to learn about how it might have emerged or might have been constructed. The Birth of Ethics offers an account of how morality might have emerged, without any planning, in a society with language but without any properly ethical concepts or practices. The conjectural history that it documents serves a philosophical purpose, for it directs us the role that morality plays in human lifeand the nature of morality that enables it to play that role.

• Editor's Introduction: The View from Erewhon Kinch Hoekstra


• Introduction: The Guiding Ideas


• Chapter 1. Reconstructing Morality


• Chapter 2. Ground Zero


• Chapter 3. Committing to Others


• Chapter 4. Committing with Others


• Chapter 5. Discovering Desirability


• Chapter 6. Discovering Responsibility


• Chapter 7. Morality Reconstructed


• Conclusion: The Claims in Summary


• Michael Tomasello and Philip Pettit: An Exchange Michael Tomasello and Philip Pettit


• Commentary on Philip Pettit's The Birth of Ethics Michael Tomasello


• Reply to Michael Tomasello's Commentary Philip Pettit


• References


• Index

Philip Pettit is Laurence Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and Human Values at Princeton University. He is also Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University.
Kinch Hoekstra is Chancellor's Professor of Political Science and Law at University of California, Berkeley.