This book takes the disturbing yet necessary subject of cruelty as an opportunity to interrogate humanity without pretense. It experiments with how we understand this mercurial aspect of our lives, by which we are simultaneously defiled, denied, and yet defined as human.

Structured in three main interlocking conversations, the book engages the reader in dialogues that explore intrapersonal and psychological aspects of human development and flourishing, focusing on many that are often thought not to be morally relevant but are, in fact, critical to our experience and comprehension of our conflicted moral selves, e.g., timing, attitude, perceptual capacities, neurodivergence, intuition, ensemble improvisation, story-telling, presentness, self-awareness, authenticity, and psychological dependence on certainty.

Building on the author’s previously published work, this book re-orients the discussion towards more practical questions of a humanistic nature. It is an exercise in unconventional experimental philosophy, challenging orthodox paradigms and interweaving diverse sources such as philosophy, psychology, pedagogy, ethology, literature, animation, magic, music, and comedy. It demands introspection and dialogue, and maps transformative relationships between practice, experience, and theory.

Cruelty and Conversations about Us is essential reading for all scholars, researchers and advanced students of moral philosophy and philosophy of the self. It is also ideal for everyone who has to contend with cruelty and is curious about what the intersection of humanity and inhumanity reveals about us.

Maggie Schein received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought. She is the author of Cruelty - A Book about Us (2023), also published by Palgrave Macmillan. She is also the author of other diverse texts, including Lost Cantos of The Ouroboros Caves (2015) and The Endurance of Love (2018). Dr Schein is a former research director for Harvard's Humanities and Liberal Arts Assessment Lab.