Christopher R. Hallpike

The subject of this book is the history of moral thought. It's quite an unusual book in that it draws on anthropology, philosophy, history AND the history of philosophy to produce a coherent analysis. The author deserves credit for boldly going beyond his own field of specialization in social science. His philosophical acumen is certainly sufficient to complement the anthropological argument in many interesting ways. Sometimes he resorts a bit too much to direct citations and I think the argument loses focus a bit when it moves toward the early history of moral philosophy towards the end. But I still highly recommend this to anyone who wants to think about the evolution of ideas.… (mehr)

I'm glad this was the first book I read on social evolution. The author does a great job of explaining why the darwinian theory of variation and selection can not be applied directly to social phenomena. His discussions on the origin of the state and the core principles of chinese culture were also very interesting. In general his method of applying anthropological studies to arguments about social evolution is insightful and I therefore recommend this book to anyone interested in this aspect of evolutionary theory.… (mehr)