Steven Lukes is the sociologist who says moral diversity is vast and runs deep, and that this is no reason to stop judging. He made his name with Power: A Radical View, which argued that the most effective power never has to give an order: it shapes what you want in the first place. The book sparked a debate that is still running. Ever since, he has worked where philosophy meets anthropology, asking how humans went from dividing the world into “us” and “them” to imagining a shared humanity, and why we keep failing to live up to it. 

Lukes is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at New York University and a Fellow of the British Academy. He has also taught at Oxford, the European University Institute in Florence, the University of Siena and the London School of Economics.