The ethical primate : humans, freedom, and morality / Mary Midgley.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 185-191) and index.

Part I – Introductory.-- 1. Inner Divisions .-- 2. Misguided Debates .-- Part II - The Reductive Enterprise .-- 3. Guiding Visions.-- 4. Hopes of Simplicity .-- 5. Crusades, Legitimate and Otherwise.-- 6. Convergent Explanations and their Uses.-- 7. Troubles of the Linear Pattern.-- 8. Fatalism and Predictability Part III - The Sources and Meaning of Morals.-- 9. Agency and Ethics.-- 10. Modern Myths .-- 11. The Strength of Individualism.-- 12. The Retreat from the Natural World .-- 13. How Far does Sociability Take Us? .-- 14. The Uses of Sympathy.-- Part IV - What Kind of Freedom? .-- 15. On Being Terrestrial .-- 16. What Beings are Free.-- 17. Minds Resist Streamlining.

In The Ethical Primate, Mary Midgley, 'one of the sharpest critical pens in the West' according to the Times Literary Supplement, addresses the fundamental question of human freedom. Scientists and philosophers have found it difficult to understand how each human-being can be a living part of the natural world and still be free. Midgley explores their responses to this seeming paradox and argues that our evolutionary origin explains both why and how human freedom and morality have come about.