Morality in a Nutshell

Morality has a biological foundation in our origins as a social species. In other words, we evolved to have a moral mind. The details of ethical behavior is worked out in the moral spontaneous order as we learn to live with people and learn to rationalize our drives and, in rationalizing, think them through and adjust using moral reasoning. This allows us to expand our moral universe and live together with more and more people. Moral philosophers act as eminent critics of the spontaneous order, but they necessarily come much after the fact. They mostly theorize about what has already happened, and provide critiques of it, but they are not the origins of moral thinking -- let alone behavior.

That's the moral universe in a nutshell.