Frans de Waal

Frans de Waal (1948–2024) was a Dutch-American primatologist and ethologist whose work on chimpanzee and bonobo social behavior reshaped debates on the evolutionary origins of morality. After doctoral training in biology at Utrecht (1977) and field research at Arnhem's Burgers' Zoo, he moved to the United States, eventually holding the C. H. Candler chair in primate behavior at Emory University and directing the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center.

Beginning with Chimpanzee Politics (1982), de Waal documented reconciliation, empathy, and proto-moral behaviors in primates. In Good Natured (1996) and Primates and Philosophers (2006) he argued for a 'bottom-up' or Humean account of morality grounded in evolved sentiments, opposing both Hobbesian 'veneer theory' and theistic claims that moral order requires divine grounding. The Bonobo and the Atheist (2013) extended this to religion, treating morality as prior to and independent of organized religion while criticizing the polemical tone of New Atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens for underestimating religion's social functions.

His work has been engaged by philosophers including Peter Singer, Christine Korsgaard, and Philip Kitcher, who contributed critical commentary to Primates and Philosophers. Critics charge de Waal with anthropomorphism and with conflating proto-moral capacities with full normative morality. He remained influential in evolutionary ethics, animal cognition, and naturalistic accounts of religion's origins.