The Quest of A Moral Compass - Kenan Malik

"In this remarkable and ground-breaking book, Kenan Malik explores the history of moral thought as it has developed over three millennia, from Homer's Greece to Mao's China, from ancient India to modern America. It tells the stories of the great philosophers, and breathes life into their ideas, while also challenging many of our most cherished moral beliefs. Engaging and provocative, The Quest for a Moral Compass confronts some of humanity's deepest questions. Where do values come from? Is God necessary for moral guidance? Are there absolute moral truths? It also brings morality down to earth, showing how, throughout history, social needs and political desires have shaped moral thinking. It is a history of the world told through the history of moral thought, and a history of moral thought that casts new light on global history."

This is a finely crafted history of ethical and moral philosophy that nicely describes the great philosophers but with a welcome eye to the philosophies of civilizations other than the Western. I would have, however, liked to have read more about the morals from Africa and South American traditions, especially on the more ancient side of things.

Yet despite the necessary brevity he manages to both summarise and analyse the views of history's most renowned thinkers on the subject with clarity and insight. Malik also does a wonderful job of making the basic tenants of the major philosophers understandable through stories and examples.I shall be reading this book again, several times probably.

In the end, he concludes there is no escape from the Euthyphro Dilemma, as formulated by Socrates and recorded by Plato. The dilemma is that good is either good because it is determined as such by some external judge, like a god or a society, in which case it is arbitrary; or it is intrinsically good, in which case it stands on its own objective merits, which we cannot define.

Malik himself thinks that morality is constructed by humans and that our belief in our capacities to carry out that task has been severely undermined by the horrors of the twentieth century and a decline in engagement in collective thinking and discourse. 

I highly recommend this, particularly if you haven't read much western philosophy, because it's accessible in a way that so much philosophy isn't, and it's broad in its scope, in a way that other histories of philosophy that I have read are not. A brilliant spring board into the world of philosophy and into further, more in depth reading. 

Age Rating 15+. An intellectual book with lots of academic jargon.