The Bonobo and the Atheist
The Bonobo and the Atheist by Frans de Waal
Reviewed by L. Bennett
The author of this book, Frans De Waal, was a Dutch primatologist at Emory University when he penned this book; he died in 2024. His long-standing interest in the cognitive abilities of primates led him to ponder some of our basic assumptions about the uniqueness of humans. In this book he explored whether morality was unique to humans and if it was an outgrowth of religious beliefs or something else. His presentation frequently circles back to the works of Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, particularly the painting The Garden of Earthly Delights, which for De Waal symbolically illustrates the dilemmas he found.
As you might guess, this book is no ordinary trip up and down the family tree of man and ape. It certainly has biology as he shared observations he and colleagues made among reptiles and mammals. It has some psychology as he explored motives and interpretations of behaviors. He looked into religious explanations. And along the way he returned to Bosch's painting as an explanatory tool, so in that sense the book was a bit of art history. De Waal concluded that morality is not unique to humans, but the mental and physical journeys he made to reach that end is the joy of this philosophical approach to a behavior important for our survival.
