The New Yorker reviewed The Invention of Good and Evil: A World History of Morality by Hanno Sauer. I read the favourable article and then the reviews. Rather than read the book, I asked NotebookLM to discuss the article, the article itself being behind a paywall.
Although the rating was not bad – 3.8 as of this writing – the reviews told a different story.
The first half of the book was worthwhile as it was a thought provoking description of how early societies may have developed social systems to encourage group cooperation and discourage harmful behaviors. The second half however was a rambling, preachy, and judgemental dissertation on postmodernism using the all too familiar tropes of social justice dialog. Overall it was poorly written though some of that may be due to translation. There is too little useful material here to justify its purchase.
Firstly, this version is from a German edition. Some people feel that some structure and communication value was lost in translation. In any case, he’s accused of being verbose and circumlocutory.
Amazon describes this book as “a sweeping history,” but the only thing sweeping about it was what I wanted to do with it under the nearest rug.
Bailey (review)
Secondly, it may be somewhat derivative of Nietzsche’s work on the same topic.
The book is rambling and incoherent, the author makes wild assertions about things that happened before recorded history, leaps from one train of thought to another, poo poos the ideas of religion but frequently quotes Nietzsche as the infallible source of knowledge…
Tonyo (reviewer)
In any case, the topic interests me, but I don’t see myself reading it any time soon.
Philosophics 