The Birth of Ethics

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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. Pettit 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 life and the nature of morality that enables it to play that role. --From publisher description