Traditional ethics has established itself as an independent disci pline by postulating a "good" independent of all particular desires. It has been assumed that this "good" was something beyond nature, and that man had the capacity to reach out for it by transcending his natural incli nations. In this article, the traditional picture of morality is confronted with modern evolutionary biology. It is shown that goal-directedness, choice, and social behavior can be accounted for in a naturalistic frame work. The purport of concepts like free will, good, and the meaning of life, however, changes dramatically. Specifically, our tendency to objectify values, to postulate an absolute good and an ultimate meaning of life, is unmasked as a strategy of mental territoriality which reveals us as typical participators in the struggle for existence.
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