Frans de Waal, Good Natured

de Waal takes a look at aspects of human morality that can be found in the animal kingdom. The book contains a large number of interesting moral vignettes starring various animals; in this post I'll just write up a very broad outline of the "big questions."

There can be little doubt that in many species the strong can annihilate the weak. In a world of mutual dependency, however, such a move would not be very smart. The real problem is not why aggression is tempered -- it needs to be -- but how cooperation and competition coexist. How do individuals strike a balance between serving their own interests and operating as a team? How are conflicts resolved without damage to social ties?

Sympathy

[T]he question at the heart of this chapter is not so much whether any creatures other than ourselves can feel sympathy based on empathy (too much an all-or-nothing phenomenon), but which elements of human sympathy are recognizable in other animals.

[Sympathy] is easily aroused but quickly forgotten; when remembered but not acted upon, its failure to produce action is easily rationalized. We are softened by the sight of a hungry child, but hardened by the sight of thousands. (John Q Wilson in The Moral Sense.)

Rank and Order

According to socioecologists, who look at the natural environment to explain social dispositions, the optimal condition for evolution of egalitarianism is dependency on cooperation combined with the option to leave the group... The reverse, of course, is equally true.

In short, the dismantling of despotic hierarchies in the course of hominoid evolution brought an emphasis on leadership rather than dominance, and made the privileges of high status contingent upon services to the community.

Quid Pro Quo

Early human evolution, before the advent of agriculture, must have been marked by a gradual loosening of the hierarchy. Food sharing was a milestone in this development: it both marked the reduced significance of social dominance and provided a launching pad for further leveling. In a straightforward rank order, in which dominants take food from subordinates, the food flow is unidirectional. In a sharing system, food flows in all directions, including downward. The result is the relatively equitable distribution of resources that our sense of justice and fairness requires.

Getting Along

Community concern can be defined, then, as the stake each individual has in promoting those characteristics of the community or group that increase the benefits derived from living in it by that individual and its kin... The higher a species' level of social awareness, the more completely its members realize how events around them ricochet through the community until they land at their own doorstep... Conscious community concern is at the heart of human morality.