The Invention of Good and Evil

Where do our values come from? What is the origin of right and wrong, good and bad? In this talk, Hanno Sauer sketches the main moral transformations of humanity over the course of its history. Cooperation, punishment, community, identity, inequality, oppression and individualism are the main building blocks of our normative structure. If we want to understand the present, we need to understand where they come from.

Hanno Sauer is author of the book Moral. Die Erfindung von Gut und Böse, which was published in 2023. He is affiliated to the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Utrecht University.