⁵Translator’s note: Within the modern scientific framework, this and similar questions are studied by the burgeoning discipline of evolutionary ethics. It seeks to address the problems of descriptive (what do people think is right?), prescriptive (how should people act?), and meta-ethics (what does “right” even mean?) in the light of evolutionary theory. With regards to the limits of such an inquiry, Christian anthropology (i.e., the study of the human in relation to God) would point to the irreducibility of human nature to matter proper (humans as dual beings, both as “the dust of the ground” and “Yahweh’s breath” combined; see Gen 2:7) and, therefore, the potential reductionism of ethical theories embracing such views.