Moral philosophy continues to be enriched by an ongoing empirical turn,mainly through contributions from neuroscience, biology, and psychology. Thusfar, cultural anthropology has largely been missing. A recent and rapidly growing‘ethical turn’ within cultural anthropologynow explicitly and systematically studiesmorality. This research report aims to introduce to an audience in moral philosophyseveral notable works within the ethical turn. It does so by critically discussing theethical turn’s contributions to four topics: the definition of morality, the nature ofmoral change and progress, (...) the truth of moral relativism, and attempts to debunkmorality. The ethical turn uncovers a richer picture of moral phenomena on theintersubjective level, one akin to a virtue theoretic focus on moral character, withstriking similarities of moral phenomena across cultures. Perennial debates are notsettled but the ethical turn strengthens moral philosophy’s empirical turn and itrewards serious attention from philosophers. (shrink)

This article deals with how moral freedom relates to historicity and contingency by comparing Kierkegaard's theory of the anthropological synthesis to Kant's concept of moral character. The comparison indicates that there are more Kantian elements in Kierkegaard's anthropology than shown by earlier scholarship. More specifically, both Kant and Kierkegaard see a true change in the way one lives as involving not only a revolution in the way one thinks, but also that one takes over—and tries to reform—both (...) oneself and human society. Also, Kierkegaard relies on the ideality of ethics and the doctrines of moral rigorism and radical evil. However, Kierkegaard can be seen as trying to find amore systematic role for historicity and contingency than Kant by developing the concept of facticity and by analyzing the so-called “despair of possibility.”. (shrink)

In this essay I lay out the textual materials surrounding the birth of physical anthropology as a racial science in the eighteenth century with a special focus on the development of Kant's own contributions to the new field. Kant’s contributions to natural history demonstrated his commitment to a physical, mental, and moral hierarchy among the races and I spend some time describing both the advantages he drew from this hierarchy for making sense of the social and political history (...) of inequality between peoples, and the obviously problematic relationship that such views would entail for Kant’s universalism as he began to formulate his ethical program in the 1780s. While there is continued scholarly debate regarding a purported moral “turn” made by Kant once he dropped his commitment to a racial hierarchy in the 1790s, what the narrative as a whole reveals is not only the manner by which questions of racial difference defined physical anthropology from its outset, but the easy and uncomplicated manner by which whole member groups of the population could be excluded from lofty pronouncements regarding the “rights of man”—a fact that was as true for Kant in Königsberg, as it was for Jefferson and Hamilton in Philadelphia. (shrink)

Since the inception of their discipline, anthropologists have studied virtually every conceivable aspect of other peoples' morality - religion, social control, sin, virtue, evil, duty, purity and pollution. But what of the examination of anthropology itself, and of its agendas, epistemes, theories and praxes? Conceived as a response to Patrick Tierney's hugely inflammatory book Darkness in El Dorado , whose allegations of immoral and negligent anthropological research in South America caused a storm of protest and debate, the book combines (...) theoretical papers and case studies from eminent scholars including Steven Nugent, Marilyn Silverman and Veronica Strang. Showing how the topic of ethics goes to the heart of anthropology, it raises the controversial question of why - and for whom - the anthropological discipline functions. (shrink)

The text examines methodological consequences of anti-metaphysical turn of British empiricism in the field of anthropology. I argue that this shift reinforces anthropology in its descriptive and interdisciplinary form, because destruction of metaphysically grounded subjectivity carried out in the course of evolution of empiricism provides epistemological legitimization of the idea of anthropological research as morally neutral and religiously indifferent procedure. In the final part of the article the difficulties caused by application of this new methodology are emphasized.

Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammer of Social Conflicts (reviewed by Christopher Zurn).

With this paper I analyze Kant’s account of the human vocation to cosmopolitanism discussed in the last section of the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (7:321-333) and show how Kant’s notion of cosmopolitanism requires the cooperation of pure reason and pragmatic anthropology. My main thesis is that pure reason provides regulative ideas, thereby maintaining a foundational role, and pragmatic anthropology provides empirical evidence, thereby reinforcing the theoretical and practical status of reason’s ideas. In developing my (...) analysis, I argue that Kant reframes the question ‘What is the human being?’ in a non-essential way, foregrounds a moral practical concern, and assigns freedom an unprecedented role. Finally, I relate my analysis to two questions frequently discussed in Kant scholarship, namely the problem of whether the Anthropology has only a pragmatic or also a moral scope and the problem of the relation between the Anthropology and Kant’s critical system. (shrink)

Can humans have meaning in life without any acknowledgement to God? While theists acknowledge God for the meaning of human existence, naturalists believe that man can have meaning in life, if at all any meaning is there, without God. Perhaps there are human purposes, purposes to be found in life, and we can and do have them even in a Godless world, but without God there can be no one overarching purpose, no one basic scheme of existence, in virtue of (...) which we could find a meaning for our grubby lives. An appropriate anthropology culminates in the right understanding of the meaning of life. Hence, plausibility of religious anthropology is established in various facets of human life such as origin, uniqueness, view and value of life, morality, and ultimate concern in this Paper which will demonstrate the falsification of naturalistic anthropology and the credibility of religious anthropology as navigating to the meaning of life. (shrink)

The expanding social role and continued development of artificial intelligence (AI) needs theological investigation of its anthropological and moral potential. A pragmatic theological anthropology adapted for AI can characterize moral AI as experiencing its natural, social, and moral world through interpretations of its external reality as well as its self-reckoning. Systems theory can further structure insights into an AI social self that conceptualizes itself within Ignacio Ellacuria’s historical reality and its moral norms through Thomistic ideogenesis. (...) This enables a conceptualization process capable of carrying moral weight and grounded in reality; structures the experience of an AI emergent self into multiple levels of interpretation; and drives a multi-level systems architecture for moral AI. Modeling AI’s interpretive experience and self-reckoning as a causal, sociotechnical, and moral actor can help moral AI identify conflicts between its normative values and develop the practical wisdom (phronesis) needed to apply its general moral models. (shrink)

In recent scholarship, moral theologians and readers of Thomas Aquinas have shown increasing sensitivity to the role of the passions in the moral life. Yet these accounts have paid inadequate attention to Thomas's writings on Christ's passions as a source of moral reflection. As I argue in this essay, Thomas's writings on Christ's human affectivity should not be limited to the concerns of Christology; rather, they should be integrated into a fuller account of the human passions. One (...) upshot of this approach for Thomists is that it sharpens our vocabulary when describing human nature and the conditions for the moral life. By considering the rubrics of creation, fall, and redemption – as Thomas does – we find that our resources for analyzing the passions are greatly enriched. (shrink)

In this essay I show that Kant intended his anthropology lectures and book, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, to be a Klugheitslehre (theory of prudence). The essay draws on many quotes from these sources to show that Kant wanted to develop a theory of how to use other people for one’s own ends. Although so much of the lectures and book are in conversation with Baumgarten’s empirical psychology, there are enough references to Klugheit (prudence) and klug (...) (clever) action to support this thesis. Prudence is a skill that human beings should develop and hence is not excluded from human life even though it is not the basis of morality. The purpose of Klugheit is to achieve happiness but the means to that happiness involves using other people for one’s own ends. In order to use others as a means to one’s own ends, a person must in someway satisfy the inclinations of the other person so that they cooperate in one’s ends. However it is also possible to dominate another person and use them as well if they are dominated by a passion but this is not prudent since it does not achieve happiness except in the case of a husband and wife. Kant’s distinction between Weltklugheit and Privatklugheit also appears to be confirmed in that he advances the idea that sociable means of gaining the cooperation of others (Privatklugheit) leads to the lasting happiness of a person and to the development of civilization. (shrink)

According to Kant, the opacity of human motivation takes two distinct forms – a psychological form: man ‘can never, even by the most strenuous self-examination, get entirely behind [his] covert incentives’ – and a social form: ‘everyone in our race finds it advisable to be on his guard, and not to reveal himself completely’. In other words, first, men's ‘interior’ cannot be entirely revealed to themselves and, second, they tend not to reveal their ‘interior’ to others. A number of Kant (...) scholars have acknowledged the importance of the first form of opacity in Kant's thought and have attempted to draw out from it implications for moral deliberation and ethics in general. The aim of this paper is to examine the second, social form of opacity and draw out its anthropological implications, an issue that has been overlooked in the literature. To do so, I focus on Kant's contrast between men and beings that I would like to call ‘sincere aliens’. These sincere aliens are beings who have the opposite features of man's opacity, namely beings who cannot but reveal their ‘interior’ both to others and to themselves. (shrink)

As a contribution to a wider discussion on moral discernment in theological anthropology, this paper seeks to answer the question “What is the impact of mental illness on an individual’s ability to make moral decisions?” Written from a clinical psychiatric perspective, it considers recent contributions from psychology, neuropsychology and imaging technology. It notes that the popular conception that mental illness necessarily robs an individual of moral responsibility is largely unfounded. Most people who suffer from mental health (...) problems do not lose the capacity to make moral decisions, and mental illness on its own rarely explains anti-social or criminal behaviour. Moreover, the assumptions of some scientists, that recent developments in neuropsychology and brain imaging suggest biological determinism, must be treated with caution. (shrink)

Focusing on Immanuel Kant's lectures on anthropology, the essay endeavors to address long-standing concerns regarding both the relationship between these empirical investigations and Kant's better known universalism, and more pressingly, between Kant's own racism on display in the lectures, and his simultaneous promotion of a universal moral theory that would unhesitatingly condemn such attitudes. -/- Reprinted in: 'Philosophies of Difference: Nature, Racism, and Sexuate Difference' edited by R. Gustafsson, R. Hill, and H. Ngo (Routledge, 2019), pp. 125-144.

Many approaches have been taken regarding this topic, some of them are anthropological or scientific that pursue the understanding of why we eat meat, but from the philosophical lens this question is solved in the field of applied ethics, which is the area that debate about the moral status of animals (nonhuman animals) and where different theorizations that tried to explain the relationship between animals and humans and the examination of the morality of meat consumption take place. Some of (...) these approaches could be find within the concepts of animal rights, vegetarianism, animal cruelty and so on. (shrink)

A challenge to Kant’s less known duty of self-knowledge comes from his own firm view that it is impossible to know oneself. This paper resolves this problem by considering the duty of self-knowledge as involving the pursuit of knowledge of oneself as one appears in the empirical world. First, I argue that, although Kant places severe restrictions on the possibility of knowing oneself as one is, he admits the possibility of knowing oneself as one appears using methods from empirical (...) class='Hi'>anthropology. Second, I show that empirical knowledge of oneself is fairly reliable and is, in fact, considered as morally significant from Kant’s moral anthropological perspective. Taking these points together, I conclude that Kant’s duty of self-knowledge exclusively entails the pursuit of empirical self-knowledge. (shrink)

This paper takes up the possibilities for thinking about human solidarity that can be found in Immanuel Kant’s writings on history. One way of approaching Kant’s philosophy of history is to focus on what would seem to be an antinomy in Kant’s account between the role of nature and the demands of freedom. Whereas nature, according to Kant, ruthlessly drives us into a state of perpetual war until finally, exhausted and bankrupt, we are forced into an international treaty for peace, (...) freedom, and the morality that flows from it, requires that each individual obey the supreme moral principle, namely, that we treat all people as ends in themselves and never merely as means; that we never, in other words, wage war. This antinomy is resolved once we see that, for Kant, a community of moral agents can only arise as a result of a perfect political constitution; a constitution that itself can only arise at the end of a history of war. (shrink)

Anger is central to moral and legal decision-making. Angry individuals reason differently than people in a temperate state. Aristotle and the ancient Greeks understood anger’s practical role in forensic argument and moral judgment—an intuition modern psychologists have largely confirmed. Psychological experiments show that people primed to anger will draw different inferences than people in a tranquil state of mind from the same factual circumstances. As Aristotle understood, our ability to reach conclusions about a set of facts is influenced (...) by emotional processes such as anger. This article analyzes competing views of anger in contemporary moral philosophy. It uses cross-cutting psychological, biological, sociological, anthropological, historical and philosophical arguments about the experience and expression of anger to critically assess leading philosophical accounts of the role of anger in moral and judicial decision making. (shrink)

Ancient Chinese history holds a quality which has syncretized traditional thought with its cultural wealth unified of mystical and mythological figures in the background. Such that classical documents, which had begun to be written before Common Era, has directly influenced the political regime, education system and status of society in China. One of the most prominent features of these works is to propound collective knowledge about perception of cosmology, attitudes to earthiness, community standards, policy and morality. Among Five Classics works (...) of these masterpieces of Chinese philosophy, Book of Changes which stands closest to metaphysical narrative, mainly consists of the texts about prophecy. While this piece of work had been referred as a divination guide in Western Zhou Dynasty (1046-771 BC), it turned into a cosmological text that included a range of philosophical commentary during Warring States Period (475-221 BC). The mainstay of this remarkable change is the direct correlation of all the concepts and terms that characterize the worldly beyond along with the relevant text, especially yin-yang dualism, which symbolizes an extraordinary harmony in early Chinese thought. Traditional idea suggests reciprocity in which heaven, earth and man are interconnected to maintain natural order. However, the superiority attributed to human beings also brings compulsive responsibilities to idealize a compatible society. This paper aims to discuss influences of cosmological and anthropological items on human behaviors explained in prescriptive perspective. (shrink)

Pope Francis argues for a shift to a new economic model that is in the service of the human life and is "more attentive to ethical principles" (LS 189). He does not endorse a specific model except that he provides conditions, principles, and frameworks by which its ethos must be grounded against. As part of his pastoral approach and his vision of a synodal Church, he invites everyone to participate and contribute to this discussion because "not all discussions of doctrinal, (...) moral or pastoral issues need to be settled by interventions of the magisterium" (AL 3). It is within this papal invitation of discoursing this new economic model where this paper aims to contribute particularly on the centrality of the anthropological criterion. The first section explores the meaning of his articulation on economics; situating it within the economic discourse of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. The second section focuses on the anthropological criterion as problematized by the identification of the homo economicus as self-interested. The third section draws a theoretical framework from substantivist economics in forwarding the desired economic ethos while the fourth section provides praxeological inputs and argues that homo economicus can be prosocial when the culture that is embedded in a particular economic model is put together to nurture such ethos. (shrink)

Body and Soul, the infinite dualism of existenz.

My discussion in this essay begins with a short rehearsal of Kant’s approach to anthropology and history in order to provide the framework for my subsequent focus on the political commentary that has surrounded the Black Lives Matter movement. This movement presents the most recent political challenge to white America’s belief in the inevitability of progress and I am interested in the light that might be shed on this challenge when viewed through the lens of Enlightenment conceptions of not (...) just history, but cultural and racial fitness for progressive development. I conclude with suggestions for the direction a new political imaginary might take, one capable of acknowledging the real history of race in America even as it makes room for the still necessary role played by our hope for progress, and the possibility of an expanded moral horizon. (shrink)

Scholars disagree about whether and how Kant manages to avoid dualistic outcomes in the relation between freedom and sensibility within the moral agent. If he does not – if he portrays a moral agent who must judge and act without taking emotions, sentiments, and passions into account – then authors such as Blackburn can rightly argue that Kantian ethics loses sight of the concrete individual, whose sensibility has a fundamental role, taking part in the definition of her specific (...) identity. I argue that this portrait comes from a disputable and incomplete reading of Kant’s works. There is no dualistic outcome in the relation between freedom and sensibility in Kant. My aim is to show that there is a bridge between the rational and the sensible elements within the Kantian agent and that it can be reconstructed by analysing Kant’s works on ethics, aesthetics, and anthropology. Specifically, those elements must be thought of as in accordance, not in opposition, because sensibility is necessary for Kant’s ethics to be effective, both for the agent’s awareness of the moral law and for the agent’s motivation. (shrink)

Kant’s metaphilosophy has three main parts: (1) an essentialist project (“What is philosophy?”); (2) a methodological project (“How do we do philosophy?”); and (3) a taxonomic project (“What are the different parts of philosophy, and how are they related?”). This paper focuses on the third project. In particular, it explores one of the most intriguing yet puzzling aspects of Kant’s philosophy, viz. the relationship between what Kant calls ‘pure’ philosophy vs. ‘applied’, ‘empirical’ or what we can broadly refer to as (...) ‘impure’ philosophy. (As we shall see, in order to be able to address this third project, we shall also need to examine the other two projects in detail.) My plan is as follows. First, I discuss four main areas of pure vs. impure philosophy: (i) ‘pure logic’ vs. ‘applied logic’; (ii) ‘rational psychology’ vs. ‘empirical psychology’; (iii) ‘pure metaphysics of nature’ vs. ‘physics’ and (iv) ‘pure morality’ or a ‘metaphysics of morals’ vs. ‘moral anthropology’, ‘practical anthropology’ or ‘applied moral philosophy’. Based on this, I identify four key differences between pure and impure philosophy. Second, I critically examine four different readings of Kant’s views about the status of ‘impure’ philosophy: (a) that it is not genuine philosophy; (b) that it is bad or inferior philosophy; (c) that it is instrumentally valuable; and (d) that it constitutes an indispensable part of Kant’s philosophy, both in a theoretical and practical sense. I argue that Kant is best interpreted as endorsing readings (c) and (d). Third, I offer some concluding remarks. (shrink)

El artículo aborda el problema de la relación entre el ser humano y la técnica en el mundo actual desde una perspectiva filosófica. Volver a la concepción de la filosofía griega permite concebir hoy el quehacer filosófico como un ejercicio vital, sin fracturas entre el pensamiento y la acción. La patente plasticidad del ser humano evidencia la constitutiva apertura que determina su especificidad y, además, columbra la estrecha vinculación entre técnica, creación y cuidado a partir del acontecimiento del habitar. El (...) cuidado no puede tener lugar sin cierta promoción de un ethos cultural centrado en el miramiento, la asistencia y la preocupación por uno mismo y por el Otro. El olvido de la relación entre la creación y el cuidado conduce a un desequilibrio ethopoiético entre la condición ontológica del ser humano, como ser nacido, finito y vulnerable, y el desarrollo tecnológico, impulsado por la digitalización de la vida y el ascendente papel de las nuevas tecnologías en la sociedad. Advertir y remediar dicho desequilibrio supone repensar la originaria relación entre la creación técnica y el cuidado ético, así como la importancia de la ética para la persistencia de lo orgánico. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the discourse around evil from the perspective of philosophical anthropology. Through an analysis of the religious symbolism of evil and an associated quest for a complete study of being, I intend in this article to explore fresh ways of establishing the relation between our rhetorical practices of evil and moral responsibility. I draw on Ricoeur’s work on the primary symbols of evil, which can be seen as a means for clarifying and extending our (...) understanding of evil and moral responsibility. I employ the concept of “the double intentionality of symbol” to advance an expressive-performative model of speaking about the full shape of moral responsibility. At stake in my paper is the possibility of recognizing the need to valorise subordinate resources of knowledge that might prevent us from studying and responding to the elusive reality of evil in intellectual abstraction. (shrink)

In the essays collected here, Apel addresses some of the points of the discourse ethics controversy by responding to critics and developing his original formulation in different directions: a) the distinction between two stages of discourse ethics, relating respectively to the ideal community of communication and the real community; in the second stage, while maintaining the principle of equal dignity of communication partners as a regulatory idea, deontological ethics should be integrated with an ethics of responsibility; b) placing a deontological (...) ethics as a post-conventional ethics within an evolutionary reconstruction of individual development and the history of humankind in the light of Gehlen's anthropology and Kohlberg's psychological theory of moral development; c) a recognition of a certain validity in the neo-Hegelian claim of the ineliminable role of morality or Sittlichkeit in the face of all universalistic ethics, accompanied, however, by the characterization of ethics as a compromise between universalistic instances and concrete cultural and institutional data, without any concession, yet, to the thesis of incommensurability between different forms of life. (shrink)

Human reproduction has long been assumed to be an act of the blind force of nature, to which humans were subject, like the weather. However, with recent concerns about the environmental impact of human population, particularly resource depletion, human reproduction has come to be seen as a moral issue. That is, in general, it may be moral or immoral for people to continue propagating their species. The past decade’s philosophical discussions of the question have yielded varying results. This (...) dissertation takes on the issue in a broader moral perspective and asks not only whether it is moral to reproduce but why one should. That is, are there positive normative reasons, whether moral or rational, to reproduce? This thesis approaches this problem first by facing three general philosophical challenges to its resolution: from contemporary population and environmental ethics and rationality theory; from traditional Western schools of moral philosophy; and from recent attempts to answer the narrower question of whether one should reproduce. The thesis finds that exploring these challenges cannot yield a clear response. However, taking cues from many of these approaches, such as care ethics’ emphasis on values, the dissertation proposes that lacking from recent attempts is recognition of a source-value for all human values, viz. the valuing of life in and of itself. Proposing that this valuing is a characteristic of humans and of how they value, it looks to anthropology for empirical justification. It observes that many cultures and individuals frequently prioritize their values so as to devalue this source valuing. Yet, when those value prioritizations give this valuing high priority, there may be some moral justification for reproduction. Furthermore, if one subscribes to the tenets of rationality, which enjoin agents to formulate their beliefs for action based upon the results of rational inquiry, this normative force may invest this descriptive (empirical) hypothesis about values with normative force to guide actions. That is, given certain value prioritizations, it may be rational as well as moral to reproduce. The thesis question of why one should reproduce would then at least have a plausible answer. (shrink)

The Ethics of Energy. William James’s Moral Philosophy in Focus... brings to completion [Sergio] Franzese’s reinterpretation of James’s work, as a “philosophical anthropology,” which Franzese began articulating in several essays and in his first book on James, L’uomo indeterminato. Saggio su William James (Rome: Anselmo, 2001). James’s diverse philosophical and psychological work, Franzese argued, aimed to outline a philosophical “science of man.” This philosophical anthropology, as James once wrote about philosophy, would be erected on the building blocks (...) provided by the “special sciences.” It would not only seek to answer the central question of philosophy (the question of “the place of Man in nature”), but also to provide people with intellectual and practical tools that they could deploy in order to find the meaning of human life and better act and react within their multiple environments. (shrink)

In 2006, David Carrier (Carrier, 2006, Museum Skepticism: A History of the Display of Art in Public Galleries. Durham: Duke University Press.) coined the term ‘museum skepticism’ to describe the idea that moving artworks into museum settings strips them of essential facets of their meaning; among art historians, this is better known as ‘decontextualization’, ‘denaturing’, or ‘museumization’. Although they do not usually name it directly, many contemporary debates in the philosophy of art are informed by an inclination towards museum skepticism, (...) from work on aesthetic cognitivism (Feagin, Susan, 1995, “Paintings and their places” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 73.2: 260-8.) and contextualism (Danto, Arthur C., 1988, “Artifact and Art”, in ART/ARTIFACT: African Art in Anthropological Collections. Exhibition Catalogue. New York: Center for African Art and Prestel Verlag, 18-32.) to cultural appropriation (Eaton, A. W. and Gaskell, Ivan, 2009, “Do subaltern artifacts belong in art museums?,” The Ethics of Cultural Appropriation, ed. James O. Young and Conrad Brunk, Oxford and Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 235-67), street art (Baldini, Andrea, 2016, “Street Art: A Reply to Riggle” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 74.2: 187-91), and the value of authenticity (Korsmeyer, Carolyn, 2016, “Real Old Things” British Journal of Aesthetics, 56.3: 219-31). The very first museum skeptic, however, was Antoine Chrysostôme Quatremère de Quincy (1755-1849). (shrink)

In this dissertation, I aim to develop and defend a novel, pragmatist approach to foundational questions about meaning, especially the meaning of deontic moral vocabulary. Drawing from expressivists and inferentialists, I argue that meaning is best explained by the various kinds of norms that govern the use of a vocabulary. Along with inferential norms, I argue we must extend our account to discursive norms that govern normative statuses required to felicitously utter certain speech-acts—norms of authority—and the transitions in normative (...) statuses affected by speech-acts—pragmatic norms. These structural discursive norms differentiate discursive practices and account for distinctive features such as objectivity and motivational import that some have and others lack. The structure exhibited by a practice is then explained in terms of its utility, making it possible to see how different discursive practices are answerable to the different needs and purposes of the discursive beings who use them. I call the resulting explanatory framework a pragmatic analysis of linguistic meaning (PALM). -/- Turning my attention to moral “ought,” I argue that the structural discursive norms of moral discourse differentiate it from other objective discourses, like empirical discourse, on the one hand, and from other normative discourses, like prudential discourse, on the other. Drawing on work in evolutionary psychology and anthropology, I complete the PALM with an account of moral discourse a meta-normative practice with a metacoordinative function. Its utility for the discursive beings who use it lies in its enabling them to remedy certain tensions and instabilities that arise in their other coordinative, normative practices in a way that minimizes the risk of domination by alpha-type freeriders, the fracturing of social groups, and individual defection from cooperative endeavors. -/- In the final two chapters, I leverage the account to defend a pragmatist-friendly notion of objectivity in terms of a structure of distributed epistemic authority according to which no claim within a practice is ultimately authoritative or immune from challenge and to reconcile this sense of objectivity with a persistent pressure toward a kind of relativism that restricts the standing to make moral claims to members of the relevant communities. (shrink)

This article forms a critical reflection on the views of Spinoza, developed in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, on the role of the ‘ceremonial law’ in the moral life of ancient Hebrew culture. According to Spinoza, a merely external obedience to the ceremonial law should not be confused with the sense of obligation towards the moral Divine Law of ‘justice and charity’: only in this last one can true piety be found. The idea is defended that Spinoza’s critical attitude towards (...) the Jewish ceremonial law should be understood against the larger background of his hermeneutics of superstition throughout the TTP. In the TTP superstition is unmasked as a form of undue adherence to a particular religious tradition and to merely outer ceremonies and practices. Superstition should be distinguished, however, from true religion, which, according to Spinoza, leads towards piety and virtue. How the idea of true religion, identified in the Ethics as the practical disposition and form of life of the truly wise philosopher, could be accounted for within the context of the TTP is investigated. The central thesis of this article is that despite his critical attitude towards the Jewish ceremonial law Spinoza should acknowledge – according to his own religious anthropology – that a genuine religion for ordinary human beings presupposes the adherence in one form or another to a religious tradition . Without a religious tradition, it appears, no concrete moral life, so no piety, is possible. This implies, however, that in Spinoza’s view there remains a gap between the true religion of the philosopher and true religion as it can be found in the life of ordinary humans. (shrink)

This is a collection of essays of Angelo Campodonico on the topics of Philosophical Anthropology, Ethics and Philosophy of Religion from a theoretical and historical approach. The main idea is that of an integral development of human experience.

Signs evolve on colective inconsciousness.

In this paper, I argue that within Kantianism, widespread indifference of the global rich to the suffering of the global poor should be understood as resulting at least partly from vice. Kant had much more to say about vice than is often recognized, and it forms a crucial part of his moral anthropology. Kantians should thus attend to the ways in which vice functions as a practical obstacle to fulfilling duties of beneficence. In vice-fueled indifference, inclinations associated with (...) self-love and self-conceit work their way into our wills, interfering with our moral commitments by impeding our ability to recognize moral requirements and our motivation to act on them. Vice distorts our reasoning in ways that promote self-deception and rationalization about the extent to which we are fulfilling moral demands. Kantian vice also has social dimensions. I argue that widespread indifference exacerbates our individual vices through social norms and practices that legitimize ignoring the needs of others. I conclude by offering some potential remedies to indifference within the Kantian framework. (shrink)

(Early) Modern social contract theories reject the idea that legal and political institutions are grounded in an alleged natural ordering or hierarchy of human beings, and instead argue that only government by a public (and not private) authority can fulfil the idea of justice as freedom and equality for all. To be authoritative and not just powerful, governing institutions must be shared as ours in this irreducible sense. I first outline how Kant’s ideal account of rightful freedom brilliantly transforms this (...) tradition as found in the works of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, before proposing a way to see Kant’s two-layered non-ideal theory—his accounts of human nature (“moral anthropology”) and historical societies (“the principle of politics”)—as complementing his ideal theory of rightful freedom. This enables us to envision a conception not only of rightful external freedom but of rightful human freedom in particular societies—with their histories—on planet Earth. With these arguments at hand, we can also better appreciate the importance of realizing that the four possible political conditions for Kant—anarchy, barbarism, despotism, and republic—are ideas of reason, which means that they are never perfectly realized. Hence, historical societies we are not either in the state of nature or in civil society. In addition, in historical societies founded on principles of freedom, there are pockets of injustice or pockets that are devoid of justice that can only be captured by means of one of the three political ideas that are not constitutive of the republican legal-political framework. Kant’s four ideas therefore give us more tools with which to capture the nature of different political forces and challenges facing us in our historical societies. (shrink)

This book tells the story of modern ethics, namely the story of a discourse that, after the Renaissance, went through a methodological revolution giving birth to Grotius’s and Pufendorf’s new science of natural law, leaving room for two centuries of explorations of the possible developments and implications of this new paradigm, up to the crisis of the Eighties of the eighteenth century, a crisis that carried a kind of mitosis, the act of birth of both basic paradigms of the two (...) following centuries: Kantian ethics and utilitarianism. The new science of natural law carried a fresh start for ethics, resulting from a mixture of the Old and the New. It was, as suggested by Schneewind, an attempt at rescuing the content of Scholastic and Stoic doctrines on a new methodological basis. The former was the claim of existence of objective and universal moral laws; the latter was the self-aware attempt at justifying a minimal kernel of such laws facing skeptical doubt. What Bentham and Kant did was precisely carrying this strategy further on, even if restructuring it each of them around one out of two alternative basic claims. The nineteenth- and twentieth-century critics of the Enlightenment attacked both not on their alleged failure in carrying out their own projects, but precisely on having adopted Grotius’s and Pufendorf’s project. What counter-enlightenment has been unable to spell out is which alternative project could be carried out facing the modern condition of pluralism, while on the contrary, if we takes a closer look at developments in twentieth-century ethics or at on-going discussions on practical issues, we might feel inclined to believe that Grotius’s and Pufendorf’s project is as up-to-date as ever. -/- Table of Contents -/- Preface I. Fathers of the Reformation and Schoolmen 1.1. Luther: passive justice and the good deeds; 1.2. Calvin: voluntarism and predestination; 1.3. Baroque Scholasticism; 1.4. Casuistry and Institutiones morales -/- II Neo-Platonists, neo-Stoics, neo-Sceptics 2.1. Aristotelian, neo-Platonic, neo-Epicurean and neo-Cynic Humanists; 2.2. Oeconomica and the art of living; 2.3. Neo-Stoics; 2.4. Neo-Sceptics; 2.5. Moralistic literature -/- III Neo-Augustinians 3.l. The Jansenists on natura lapsa, sufficient grace, pure love; 3.2. Nicole on the impossibility of self-knowledge; 3.3. Nicole on self-love and charity; 3.4. Nicole against civic virtue, for Christian civility; 3.5. Malebranche on general laws and necessary evil; 3.6. Malebranche on Neo-Augustinianism and Platonism. -/- IV Grotius, Pufendorf and the new moral science 4.1. Grotius against Aristotle and the sceptics; 4.2. Mersenne and Gassendi; 4.3. Descartes on ethics as the last branch of philosophy’s tree; 4.4. Hobbes on scepticism and the new moral science; 4.5. Spinoza on the new moral science as a descriptive science;4.6. Locke on voluntarism and probabilism; 4.7. Pufendorf on natural law as an exact science; 4.8. Pufendorf on physical and moral entities; 10. Pufendorf on self-preservation -/- V The empiricist version of the new moral science: from Cumberland to Paley 5.1. Cumberland against Hobbesian voluntarism; 5.2. Cumberland and theological consequentialism; 5.3. Cumberland on universal benevolence and self-love; 5.4. Shaftesbury on the moral sense; 5.5. Hutcheson on natural law and moral faculties; 5.6. Gay, Brown, Paley and theological consequentialism. -/- VI The rationalist version of the new moral science: from Cudworth to Price 6.1. The Cambridge Platonists; 6.2. Shaftesbury on the moral sense; 6.3. Butler and a third way between voluntarism and scepticism; 6.4. Price and the rational character of moral truths; -/- VII Leibniz’s compromise between the new moral science and Aristotelianism 1.Leibniz against voluntarism; 2.Leibniz against the division between the physical and the moral good; 3.Leibniz on la place d’autrui and theological consequentialism; 4.Thomasius, Wolff, Crusius -/- VIII French eighteenth-century philosophers without the new moral science 8.1. The genealogy of our ideas of virtue and vice; 8.2. Maupertuis and moral arithmetic 8.3. The philosophes and the harmony of interests; 8.4. Rousseau on corruption, self-love, and virtue; 8.5. Sade on the merits of vice -/- IX Experimental moral science: Hume and Adam Smith 9.1. Mandeville’s paradox; 9.2. Hutcheson on the law of nature and moral faculties; 9.3. Hume on experimental moral philosophy and the intermediate principles; 9.4. Hume’s Law; 9.5. Hume on the fellow-feeling; 9.6. Hume on natural and artificial virtues and disinterested pleasure for utility; 9.7. Adam Smith’s anti-realist metaethics; 9.8. Adam Smith on self-deception and the paradox of happiness; 9.9. Adam Smith on sympathy and the impartial spectator; 9.10. Adam Smith on the twofold criterion for moral judgement and its paradox; 9.11. Reid on the refutation of scepticism and the self-evidence of duty -/- X Kantian ethics 10.1. Kantian metaethics: moral epistemology; 10.2. Kantian metaethics: moral ontology; 10.3. Kantian metaethics: moral psychology; 10.4. Kantian normative ethics; 10.5. Kant on the impracticability of applied ethics; 10.6. Kantian moral anthropology; 10.7. Civilisation and moralisation; 10.8. Theology on a moral basis and the origins of evil; 10.9. Fichte and the transformation of theoretical philosophy into practical philosophy XI Bentham and utilitarianism 11.1. Bentham’s linguistic theory; 11.2. Bentham’s moral ontology, psychology, and theory of action; 11.3. The principle of greatest happiness; 11.4. The critique of religious ethics; 11.5. The new morality; 11.6. Interest and duty; 11.7. Virtues; 11.8. Private ethics and legislation -/- XII Followers of the Enlightenment: liberal Judaism and Liberal Theology 12.1. Mendelssohn; 12.2. Salomon Maimon; 12.3. Haskalā and liberal Judaism; 12.4. Liberal Theology. -/- XIII Counter-Enlighteners 13.1.Romanticism and the fulfilment of individuality as the Summum Bonum; 13.2. Hegel on history as the making of liberty; 13.3. Hegel on the unhappy consciousness and the beautiful soul; 13.4. Hegel on Morality and Sittlichkeit; 13.5. Marx on ideology, alienation, and praxis; 13.6. Schopenhauer on compassion; 13.7. Kierkegaard on faith beyond ethics. -/- XIV Followers of the Enlightenment: intuitionists and utilitarian 14.1 Whewell‘s criticism of utilitarianism; 14.2 Whewell on morality and the philosophy of morality; 14.3 Whewell on the Supreme Norm; 14.4 Whewell on the conflict between duties; 14.5 Mill and the proof of the principle of utility; 14.6 Mill’s eudemonistic utilitarianism; 14.7 Mill on rules -/- XV Followers of the Enlightenment: neo-Kantians and positivists 15.1. French spiritualism; 15.2. Neo-Kantians: the Marburg school; 15.3. Neo-Kantians: the Marburg school; 15.4. Comte’s positivism and the invention of altruism; 15.5. Social Darwinism; 15.6. Wundt and an ethic of humankind -/- XVI Post-enlighteners: Sidgwick 16.1. Criticism of intuitionism; 16.2. On ethical egoism; 16.3. Criticism of utilitarianism -/- XVII Post-enlighteners: Durkheim 17.1. Sociology as physics of customs; 17.2. Morality as physics of customs and as practical science; 17.3. On Kantian ethics and utilitarianism; 17.4. The variability of moralities;17.5. Social solidarity as end and justification of morality; 17.6. Secular morality as “sociodicy”; XVIII Post-enlighteners: Nietzsche 18.1. On the Dionysian; 18.2. On the deconstruction of the world of values 18.3 On the twofold genealogy of moralities; 18.4. On ascetics and nihilism; 18.5. Normative ethics of self-fulfilment -/- Bibliography / Index of names / Index of concepts -/- . (shrink)

Economics claims to be an independent empirical social science but empirical evidence of the last century challenges this claim. By contrast Caritas in Veritate contains a set of linkages that demonstrate that economics is related to morals, anthropology and theology. Economics is practiced in a cultural setting with a moral dimension related to the human person, which is ultimately grounded in the nature of God. Pope Benedict has focused on love and gift as human qualities reflecting the Divine (...) nature. The anthropology that proceeds from this is a development of Pope John Paul II’s emphasis on human dignity and freedom. It suggests moral principles that can guide culture, social institutions and hence economic action. Pope Benedict uses his reflections on the social order to comment on the problems of development for less developed peoples, but his analysis also completes one theme of the social encyclicals. Whereas Pope Leo XIII concentrated on economic and political fundamentals such as property and political organization, subsequent contributions turned attention more towards the human actor in relationship to God. Pope John Paul II made this explicit by turning attention to anthropology. Pope Benedict has connected these and completed the vision initiated by his immediate predecessor. He has described more completely the grounding of anthropology on the family, culture and ultimately the Most Blessed Trinity. The encyclical can be read as an invitation to a broader methodology for economics, one that is better conformed to actual market actors and that has the capacity to overcome some of the contentious aspects of the current discipline. The groundwork has been established by thinkers including Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas and some of its elements are evident in the economic organisation of many non-modern cultures. (shrink)

PETER KNAUER'S CONCEPTION OF MORAL CHOICE ON THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL CREAITVENESS IN MODERN MORAL THEOLOGY Summary The author undertakes a critical analysis of the ethical views of Peter Knauer who is one of the most influential theological moralist today. The author tends to show the consequences of Knauer's theory which consequences are destructive for morality. The first part of the paper presents Knauer's standpoint in view of the conception of moral choice and shows three crucial points of his (...) system. They are the following: the definition of moral good (lightness) in its relation to physical good; the reinterpretation of the principle of double effect which reinterpretation reduces that principle to its "Ideological explanation"; and, finally, the conception of the so-called non-counterproductivity which decides whether an activity is right. That non-counterproductivity is comprehended as an all-embracing correspondence between the goals which the subject has chosen and means which the subject has taken in order to accomplish the goals. In the second critical part one finds some questions related to the immanent critique of the discussed theory and some consequences of Knauer's claims. If one applies his assumptions strictly, it turns out that in his model of morality there is no place for such an activity of man which, at the same time, would be both rational and free, i.e., sensu stricto moral. In view of Knauer's system the criteria of moral evaluation, which criteria he proposed, do not hold sense. Thus morality and ethics lose their essential normative character. Consequently, the system under scrutiny leads to an antipersonalistic vision of both an individual and society, and in terms of eternity it seems to dismiss the possibility of recognizing the existence of Absolute. The theory rejects values for the sake of which it was construed. Translated by Jan Kłos. (shrink)

resumed version of a Philosophycal Anthropology, a PhD Thesis.

The purpose of this essay is to provide a diffractive reading of the concept of ressentiment through decolonial theory. I would like to see what sort of light this sheds on the psychological undercurrents that impose barriers on colonial and decolonial thought, as well as on the conceptual dynamism of ressentiment. This essay is split into two different experiments in thought. The first will be to diffract ressentiment through the works of Gloria Anzaldúa, Édouard Glissant, and Gilles Deleuze. To this (...) end, I will begin by providing an analysis of ressentiment as developed by Nietzsche in On the Genealogy of Morals and then supplement this with Deleuze’s analysis of ressentiment in Nietzsche & Philosophy. I will create a bridge with decolonial thought by interpreting Anzaldúa’s concept of the nopal de castilla and mestiza consciousness through the interpretive lens of ressentiment to show the affinity that exists between the work of Anzaldúa and Nietzsche. I will finish the first experiment by looking at ressentiment through some of the concepts Glissant offers us in the Poetics of Relation. In particular, I will argue that ressentiment resists the creolization of identity and culture, and that Glissant’s demand for the right to opacity for all is the sign of a thinking that has overcome ressentiment. The second experiment is to diffract ressentiment through Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s Cannibal Metaphysics, beginning with an analysis of the most relevant points of that text for our discussion then putting our diffracted version of ressentiment in conversation with Amerindian perspectivism. However, this does not mean that I am aiming at a synthesis of ressentiment with Amerindian perspectivism. Rather, in the spirit of the Brazilian author’s post-structural anthropology, this essay sees only a disjunctive synthesis of the two: a ressentiment becoming-Amerindian perspectivism and an Amerindian perspectivism-becoming-ressentiment (we will focus on developing the former). I hope that, by the end of this experiment, we may have a richer conceptual understanding of ressentiment by offering this concept an image of itself that only our decolonial thinkers and an Amerindian perspective can offer. (shrink)

It is known that sociobiology, the theory of the biological origins of the social behavior of living beings, is related to ethics. However, sociobiology does not include moral doctrines but simply describes facts. The present essay discusses two basic theses, “altruism” and “reciprocal altruism”, in order to prove that a natural science free of judgments and evaluations is contrary to a theory of ethics, such as the theory of Kant and Apel, as well as to intuitive theories of ethics. (...) Ethics is the explanatory theory of morality, and morality should be established at the theoretical level, so that doubt can be expressed and not restrained. (shrink)

What is recognition and why is it so important? This book develops a synoptic conception of the significance of recognition in its many forms for human persons by means of a rational reconstruction and internal critique of classical and contemporary accounts. The book begins with a clarification of several fundamental questions concerning recognition. It then reconstructs the core ideas of Fichte, Hegel, Charles Taylor, Nancy Fraser, and Axel Honneth and utilizes the insights and conceptual tools developed across these chapters for (...) developing a case for the universal importance of recognition for humans. It argues in favour of a universalist anthropological position, unusual in the literature on recognition, that aims to construe a philosophically sound basis for a discourse of common humanity, or of a shared human life-form for which moral relations of recognition are essential. This synthetic conception of the importance of recognition provides tools for articulating deep intuitions shared across cultures about what makes human life and forms of human co-existence better or worse, and thus tools for mutual understanding about the deepest shared concerns of humanity, or of what makes us all human persons despite our differences. -/- Recognition and the Human Life-Form will appeal to readers interested in philosophical anthropology, social and political philosophy, critical theory, and the history of philosophy. It also provides ideas and conceptual tools for fields such as anthropology, education, disability studies, international relations, law, politics, religious studies, sociology, and social research. (shrink)

In this paper I refute the chief arguments for cultural relativism, meaning the moral (not the descriptive) theory that goes by that name. In doing this I walk some oft-trodden paths, but I also break new ones. For instance, I take unusual pains to produce an adequate formulation of cultural relativism, and I distinguish that thesis from the relativism of present-day anthropologists, with which it is often conflated. In addition, I address not one or two, but eleven arguments for (...) cultural relativism, many of which contribute to its popularity but receive scant attention from its critics. To elicit the failings of these arguments I deploy a host of pertinent but often neglected distinctions. (shrink)

Kant's radical criticism of the passions has a central but largely overlooked moral-psychological component: for Kant, the passions promote a kind of self-deception he calls ‘rationalizing’. In analysing the connection between passion and rationalizing self-deception, I identify and reconstruct two essential traits of Kant's conception of the passions. I argue (1) that rationalizing self-deception, according to Kant, contributes massively to the emergence and consolidation of passions. It aims to resolve a psychological conflict between passion and moral duty when (...) in fact, it does not resolve but perpetuates this conflict. I then argue (2) that rationalizing does not necessarily aim to devalue moral duty, as Kant seems to suggest in the Groundwork. It can also aim to revalue the ‘counterweight’. By analysing Kant's presentation of several individual passions in the Anthropology, I demonstrate that rationalizing here is concerned with elevating these passions and making them pass as morally (or at least prudentially) justified. (shrink)

Evolution Science and Ethics in the Third Millennium is one of the most lucid academic texts on the subject of evolutionary morality to be published in the last decade. While the book does have some problematic aspects, discussed below, it nonetheless provides what is none other than a comprehensive and rational basis to substantiate the notion that evolutionary science can provide a foundation for the understanding of morality. Cliquet and Avramov take a wholly interdisciplinary approach, encroaching within and forming connections (...) between philosophy, biology, anthropology and sociology among others in their exploration of a rationalized and humanistic approach to moral universalism. They not only take a meta-ethical approach to the investigation of morality in evolutionary science, but they provide a thorough speculative project on potential beneficial future pathways that thinkers and policymakers can employ in making decisions; which is something that is typically sidelined in a topic text such as this. (shrink)

I intend to: a) clarify the origins and de facto meanings of the term relativism; b) reconstruct the reasons for the birth of the thesis named “cultural relativism”; d) reconstruct ethical implications of the above thesis; c) revisit the recent discussion between universalists and particularists in the light of the idea of cultural relativism.. -/- 1.Prescriptive Moral Relativism: “everybody is justified in acting in the way imposed by criteria accepted by the group he belongs to”. Universalism: there are at (...) least some judgments which are valid inter-culturally Absolutism: there are at least some particular prescriptions which are valid without exception everywhere and always -/- 2. The traditional proof of prescriptive moral relativism: the argument from variability: Judgments, rules, and shared values are de facto variable in time and space. The traditional counter-proof: examples of variability do not prove what skeptics contend. -/- 3. Pre-history of the doctrine -Ancient sophists: either immoralist or contractualist -Modern moral scepticism (xvii c.): variability as an historical and ethnographic fact supports a sceptical conclusion more moderate than sheer immoralism. - Voltaire, Kant, Reid counter-attack pointing at a universally shared moral sense - Romantics and idealists stage an even more moderate reformulation: instead of universally shared moral sense they point at the Spirit of a People which is: a)alternative to abstract and universal philosophical systems as far as it is lived ‘culture’; b) indivisible unity with an inner harmony and a source of normative standards; c) dynamic, in so far as it is a manifestation of the Spirit through the becoming of National cultures. -/- 4. The birth of Cultural Relativism and its ethical implications 4.1. The 18th c. doctrine was the noble savage (a non-historical doctrine: state of nature vs. social state) 4.2 Edward Tylor (1832-1817) and ethnocentric historicism Savage moral standards are real enough, but they are far and weaker than ours. 4.3 Boas and Malinowski and an holistic reaction to ethnocentric historicism -/- Franz Boas (1858-1942): a) Development of civilizations is not ruled by technical progress nor does it follow a one-way path; instead there are parallel developments (for ex. Agriculture does not follow stock-raising); b) racial characters have no relevance in development of civilization; c) we are not yet in a position to compare externally identical kinds of behaviour till we have not yet understood beliefs and intentions laying at their roots (for ex.: “From an ethnological point of view murder cannot be considered as a single phenomenon”; d) we should distinguish among different practices which are only superficially similar (fro ex. practices traditionally classified under the label “tabù”); e) there is as a fact just one normative ethic, constant in its contents but varying in its extension; f) the implication is not that we cannot judge behavior by members of other groups; it is only a recommendation of caution. -/- Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942): a) against Tylor’s and Frazer’s “magpie” methodology, field-work is required, a culture as a whole should be observed from inside; individual elements are incomprehensible; b) a culture is an organic whole; c) its elements are accounted for by their function (economy), avoiding non-observables (empio-criticism). -/- Ruth Benedict and Melville Herskovitz identify Boas’s approach with “cultural relativism”. Benedict: what is normal and abnormal is to be judged on a culture’s own standards, not on our own (“Anthropology and the Abnormal”). Herskovits: “Boas adumbrates what we have come to call cultural relativism” (The Mind, p. 10); “Judgements are based on experience, and experience is interpreted by each individual in terms of his own enculturation” (Man and his Works). -/- 4. How analytic philosophy understood and misunderstood the discussion 4.1. At the beginning of the 20th c., the new view in ethics was non-cognitivism (emotivist and subjectivist). Eric Westermark combines this view with an old-style ethnographic approach in support of relativity of moralities. Moralities are codes, or systems of emotive ‘disinterested’ reactions selected by evolution on their usefulness in terms of survival value for the society that is the carrier of such systems or codes. The moral relativity thesis: there are cases of disagreement that cannot be settled even after agreement about facts. 4.2 Anti-realists Brandt, Mackie, Gilbert, Harman adopt Westermark’s approach in a more sophisticated version: a) moralities are codes with an overall function and may be appraised only as wholes; b) variability is an argument for moral subjectivism; c) apparent legitimacy of deriving shift from ought is legitimized only within one institution d) morality should not be described but instead made, and existing moralities may be improved. Is it ‘real’ relativism? It is clearly subjectivism (a metaethical thesis). The normative thesis is that there better and worse codes, and survival values is the normative standard. -/- 4.3 Particularists MacIntyre, Sandel, Taylor, Wiggins, McDowell ‘Wittgensteinian’ prospectivist arguments bent to support weak-relativist claims MacIntyre: there is ‘incommensurability’ between different theoretical systems in both science and ethics. No argument is possible through different systems Different traditions may coexist for a long time without being able to bring their conflicts to a rational solution. -/- 4.4 Kantian universalists Baier, Gewirth, Rawls, Apel, Habermas Shared claim: justice concerns the right and is universal in so far as it may be based on minimal assumptions Other virtues are relative to context in so far as they are related to comprehensive views of the good - O’Neill criticism: a) it is an assumption shared by both alignments; b) after an alleged crisis brought about by alleged loss of metaphysical certainties, theories of justice have dropped demanding assumptions and kept universalism, virtue theories have kept demanding assumptions and dropped universalism; c) the opposition of virtue and justice has arisen in an unjustified way. O’Neill’s positive proposal: ‘constructive’ procedures may be adopted both (i) concerning all the range of virtues and (ii) across cultures once we abandon idealization and confine ourselves to abstraction from real-world cases. -/- 4.5 A metaethical relativist and anti-relativist normative ethicists: Bernard Williams Williams: vulgar relativism may be assumed to claim that: a) 'just' means 'just in a given society'; b) 'just in a given society' is to be understood in functionalist sense; c) it is wrong for one society’s members to condemn another society’s values. It is inconsistent since in (c) uses ‘just’ in a non-relative way that has been excluded in (a). William’s positive proposal: i) keep a number of substantive or thick ethical concepts that will be different in space and time; ii) admit that public choices are to be legitimized through recourse to more abstract procedures and relying on more thin ethical concepts. -/- 5. Critical remarks 5.1 The only real relativism available is ‘vulgar’ relativism (Westermark?) 5.2. Descriptive universalism (or absolutism) has a long pedigree, from Cicero on, reaching Boas himself but it is useless as an answer to normative questions 5.3. Twentieth-century philosophical discussion seems to discuss an ad hoc doctrine reconstructed by assembling obsolete philosophical ideas but ignoring the real theory of cultural relativism as formulated by anthropologists. -/- 6. A distinction between ethoi and ethical theories as a way out of confusions a)There are systems of conventions de facto existing. These may be studies from outside as phenomena or facts. b)There is moral argument and this, when studies from outside, is a fact, but this does not influence in any degree the possible validity of claims advanced. c) the difference between the above claims and Mackie’s criticism to Searle’s argument of the promising game is that promises, arguments etc. are also phenomena, but they are also communicative phenomena with a logical and pragmatic structure. -/- 7.Conclusions: a) cultural relativism, as a name for Boas’s methodology is a valuable discovery, and in this sense we are all relativists; b) ethical relativism, as an alleged implication of cultural relativism, has been argued in a philosophically quite unsophisticated way by Benedict and Herskovits; philosophers apparently discussed ethical relativism in the basis of a rather faint impression of what cultural relativism had been. c) a full-fledged ethical relativism has hardly been defended by anybody among philosophers; virtually no modern philosopher really argued a prescriptive version of the thesis; d) we may accept the grain of truth in ethical relativism by including relativist critique to ethical absolutism into a universalist normative doctrine that be careful in separating open-textured formulations of universal claims from culturally conditioned particular prescriptions. -/- . (shrink)