AGAINST GOODNESS
What if the problem is not that we fail to become good, but that we are too committed to believing we already are?
Across politics, culture and everyday life, moral certainty shapes how many of us see ourselves and judge others. It reassures us that we are on the ‘right side’. But history shows that some of the greatest harms ever committed are by people utterly convinced of their own virtue.
Our impulse to divide the world into heroes and villains can distort public debate, justify cruelty and flatten complexity. What happens when the pursuit of moral purity displaces the difficult work of understanding one another?
What if our deepest moral convictions do not always make us wiser, kinder or more humane?
This session is made possible with the support of the Goethe Institute.
Jesse Bering [USA]
Jesse Bering is a science writer, research psychologist, and head of the Science Communication program at the University of Otago in New Zealand. He is the author of The Belief Instinct: Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? And Other Reflections on Being Human, Perv, and A Very Human Ending. His writing has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Discover, The Guardian, The New Republic, The New York Times, Playboy, Scientific American, The Telegraph, Slate, Vice, and other outlets. He currently writes a weekly column for the French magazine Le Point. His latest book is The Incredible Afterlives of Dr. Stevenson: One Scientist’s Epic Quest for Evidence of Reincarnation, Apparitions, Poltergeists, and Other Matters of the Soul.
Joanna Bourke [UK]
Joanna Bourke is Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, a Fellow of the British Academy, and OBE. She writes on violence, pain, the emotions, and what it means to be human. She is the prize-winning author of eighteen books, as well as over 120 articles in academic journals. In 2026, she published Five Evil Women with Reaktion Books. Her books have been translated into Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Portuguese, Czech, Turkish, Korean and Greek.
Hanno Sauer [NDL/GER]
Hanno Sauer is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, specialising in ethics and political philosophy. His book The Invention of Good and Evil: A World History of Morality has been translated into 20 languages and was listed as one of the best books of 2024 by The New Yorker, The Economist, and others. His most recent book, Klasse: Die Entstehung von Oben und Unten (German) is about social class and status.
Sisonke Msimang
Sisonke Msimang is a South African-Australian writer, activist and political analyst based in Perth, whose focus is on race, gender and politics. She is the author of two books, Always Another Country: A memoir of exile and home, and The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela. She has published widely including in the New York Times, Al Jazeera and The Guardian.
We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation - the custodians of the country on which we meet - and acknowledge their Elders, past and present.
The views and opinions expressed by the Festival participants are not necessarily the views of The Ethics Centre and our partners.