The Moral Sense

by James Q. Wilson

Overview

Virtue has acquired a bad name, says Wilson, but it is nevertheless what we are referring to when we discuss a person's character, such as whether someone is kind or loyal. Although we may disguise the language of morality as a language of personality, it is still, he says, "the language of virtue and vice. "

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781470890100
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	07/01/2013
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 5.80(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

James Quinn Wilson was an academic, political scientist, and an authority on public administration.

Editorial Reviews

In this age of self-gratification and widespread lawlessness, Wilson ( Thinking About Crime ) takes the unfashionable view that a moral sense is part of our basic nature, albeit one that competes with our narrowly defined self-interest. In this lucid, elegant, magisterial and controversial essay, the eminent social scientist, a public policy professor at UCLA, punctures the tenets of neo-Darwinian biologists, cultural relativists, Freudians, behaviorists and anthropologists. Social bonds, he argues, are not entirely a matter of convention or a tool to ensure perpetuation of the species. Instead, our moral faculties--sympathy, fairness, self-control, etc.--grow directly out of our mutual interdependence as social animals. Wilson believes that the moral sense is formed as the child's innate disposition interacts with earliest familial experiences. Self-restraints on appetites are built into the ``primitive'' limbic brain, he stresses. Perhaps his most controversial thesis is that men and women differ in their moral orientation, with men more inclined to emphasize justice and emotional control, while women stress sympathy, caring and cooperation. First serial to Commentary, Crisis, and Public Interest. (July)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The author, a political scientist, argues that human beings all share a ``moral sense'' rooted in human biology and evolution. Using data from anthropology, sociology, biology, and psychology, he argues that this ``sense'' does not consist of universal rules of conduct but rather of shared tendencies toward sympathy, fairness, self-control, and duty. While Wilson shows that these tendencies can be shaped--or distorted--by cultural forces, they are strong enough to counter the postmodern tendency toward complete cultural relativism. The masterful synthesis of data from many disciplines (plus the fact that excerpts from this title are serialized in several leading current affairs journals like Commentary , Public Interest , and American Enterprise ) make this an essential title for any academic or public library serving an intellectural clientele.-- Mary Ann Hughes, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman

Library Journal