Reviewing "The Moral Landscape" by Sam Harris
Russell Blackford
2011-01-14 00:00:00
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In recent years, Sam Harris has become a leading figure in the rational scrutiny of religions and religious cultures, earning himself a place as a prominent "New Atheist," along with Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens.

To the extent that the New Atheism is a genuine social movement, Harris deserves much of the credit for it. In 2004, he made a dramatic breakthrough when The End of Faith was published by W.W. Norton. This was a fiercely anti-religious book, targeted especially at Islam, and emphasizing that religious ideas actually matter because religious adherents are motivated one way or the other to act in accordance with the teachings they accept. The breakthrough was in convincing a major trade publisher to pick up a book like this, and then support it aggressively. Other large publishers followed suit with high-profile critiques of religion by Dawkins and others.

Book CoverIn The Moral Landscape, Harris pushes his agenda a step further, examining the nature of morality from a secular viewpoint and offering prescriptions for change. In particular, he contests the moral credentials of religion, argues against popular understandings of free will, and savages moral relativism. He presents an eloquent, passionate, but scholarly defense of his particular take on the phenomenon of morality; he defends moral realism and a consequentialist approach to moral thinking.

Harris argues that science can give us the information we need to critique moral systems and develop public policy. If he has his way, much of our moral thinking in the liberal democracies of the West will change quite radically; in particular, we will reject the detached and quietest attitude taken by many Western intellectuals to traditional moral systems. The Moral Landscape is an ambitious work that will gladden the hearts, and strengthen the spines, of many secular thinkers.

I enjoyed this book, and I recommend it highly. Though it contains much technical material, from neuroscience as well as philosophy, Harris makes it all accessible. He has an enviable gift for vivid phrasing and clear exposition of difficult concepts, and he undoubtedly has much to teach us. Almost anyone could benefit from reading The Moral Landscape. In that sense, I need go no further. Is this book worth obtaining and reading? Emphatically yes.

That said, I have serious reservations. Having now read the book three times, I find that most of the interesting things I could say would be explanations of my concerns and disagreements. Part of the problem, no doubt, is that I would have written a rather different book if I'd tackled the same subject, and of course there is often a temptation for a reviewer to dismiss a book simply for not being what he or she would have written. I'm very conscious of that temptation, and I have no wish to be dismissive, so allow me to emphasize that nothing which follows detracts from The Moral Landscape's obvious strengths or those of its author.

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