# The Righteous Mind  Author:: Jonathan Haidt  ## AI-Generated Summary None ## Highlights > I study moral psychology, and I’m going to make the case that morality is the extraordinary human capacity that made civilization possible. ([Location 60](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0052FF7YM&location=60)) > I chose the title The Righteous Mind to convey the sense that human nature is not just intrinsically moral, it’s also intrinsically moralistic, critical, and judgmental. ([Location 72](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0052FF7YM&location=72)) > Part I is about the first principle: Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. ([Location 93](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0052FF7YM&location=93)) > The central metaphor of these four chapters is that the mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant. The rider is our conscious reasoning—the stream of words and images of which we are fully aware. The elephant is the other 99 percent of mental processes—the ones that occur outside of awareness but that actually govern most of our behavior. ([Location 100](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0052FF7YM&location=100)) > Part II is about the second principle of moral psychology, which is that there’s more to morality than harm and fairness. The central metaphor of these four chapters is that the righteous mind is like a tongue with six taste receptors. ([Location 108](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0052FF7YM&location=108)) > Part III is about the third principle: Morality binds and blinds. The central metaphor of these four chapters is that human beings are 90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee. ([Location 114](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0052FF7YM&location=114)) ### PART I Intuitions Come First, Strategic Reasoning Second #### ONE Where Does Morality Come From? > In this book I’ll use the word rationalist to describe anyone who believes that reasoning is the most important and reliable way to obtain moral knowledge. ([Location 231](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0052FF7YM&location=231)) > When you put individuals first, before society, then any rule or social practice that limits personal freedom can be questioned. If it doesn’t protect somebody from harm, then it can’t be morally justified. It’s just a social convention. ([Location 416](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0052FF7YM&location=416)) > These subjects were reasoning. They were working quite hard at reasoning. But it was not reasoning in search of truth; it was reasoning in support of their emotional reactions. ([Location 540](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0052FF7YM&location=540)) > In the rest of this book I’ll try to explain how morality can be innate (as a set of evolved intuitions) and learned (as children learn to apply those intuitions within a particular culture). We’re born to be righteous, but we have to learn what, exactly, people like us should be righteous about. ([Location 565](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0052FF7YM&location=565)) #### TWO The Intuitive Dog and Its Rational Tail > Western philosophy has been worshipping reason and distrusting the passions for thousands of years.4 There’s a direct line running from Plato through Immanuel Kant to Lawrence Kohlberg. I’ll refer to this worshipful attitude throughout this book as the rationalist delusion. I call it a delusion because when a group of people make something sacred, the members of the cult lose the ability to think clearly about it. Morality binds and blinds. ([Location 594](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0052FF7YM&location=594)) > Yet the result of the separation was not the liberation of reason from the thrall of the passions. It was the shocking revelation that reasoning requires the passions. Jefferson’s model fits better: when one co-emperor is knocked out and the other tries to rule the empire by himself, he’s not up to the task. If Jefferson’s model were correct, however, then Damasio’s patients should still have fared well in the half of life that was always ruled by the head. Yet the collapse of decision making, even in purely analytic and organizational tasks, was pervasive. The head can’t even do head stuff without the heart. So Hume’s model fit these cases best: when the master (passions) drops dead, the servant (reasoning) has neither the ability nor the desire to keep the estate running. Everything goes to ruin. ([Location 697](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0052FF7YM&location=697)) > Margolis proposed that there are two very different kinds of cognitive processes at work when we make judgments and solve problems: “seeing-that” and “reasoning-why.” ([Location 834](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0052FF7YM&location=834)) > Emotions are not dumb. Damasio’s patients made terrible decisions because they were deprived of emotional input into their decision making. Emotions are a kind of information processing. ([Location 875](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0052FF7YM&location=875))