Happy Readers Book Club: The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt

f you would like to join the book club, please email George Glansdorop at this email address:

g.m.glansdorp@gmail.com

In March we will be discussing The Righteous Mind (2012) by Jonathan Haidt, which The New York Times Book Review called a “landmark contribution to humanity’s understanding of itself”.

Here is the publisher’s synopsis:

Drawing on his twenty-five years of groundbreaking research on moral psychology, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt shows how moral judgments arise not from reason but from gut feelings.

He shows why liberals, conservatives, and libertarians have such different intuitions about right and wrong, and he shows why each side is actually right about many of its central concerns.

In this subtle yet accessible book, Haidt gives you the key to understanding the miracle of human cooperation, as well as the curse of our eternal divisions and conflicts.

If you’re ready to trade in anger for understanding, read The Righteous Mind.

Jonathan Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

He obtained his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, and then taught at the University of Virginia for 16 years.

He is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, and the co-editor of Flourishing: Positive Psychology and the Life Well-Lived. He lives in New York City.