The Moral Landscape

Now in paperback, the bestselling The Moral Landscape is a “thrilling, audacious book, you feel the ground shifting beneath your feet. Reason has never had a more passionate advocate” (Ian McEwan).

In his explosive new book, Sam Harris, the author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, tears down the wall between scientific facts and human values, urging us to think about morality in terms of human and animal well-being, and to see the experiences of conscious creatures as peaks and valleys on a “moral landscape.”

Bringing a fresh perspective to age-old questions of right and wrong, and good and evil, Harris demonstrates that we already know enough about the human brain and its relationship to events in the world to say that there are right and wrong answers to the most pressing questions of human life. Because such answers exist, moral relativism is simply false—and comes at increasing cost to humanity. Nor do the Religious fundamentalists have it right. Just as there is no Christian physics or Muslim algebra, there can be no Christian or Muslim morality.

Using his expertise in philosophy and neuroscience, along with his experience on the front lines of our “culture wars,” Harris delivers a game-changing book about the future of science and about the real basis of human cooperation.