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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 June 2009
Reflection on the variety of forms of social life has long been a source of moral skepticism. The thought that there are many radically different social systems, each of which colors the way its members think about moral and political questions, has been thought by many moral philosophers to undermine confidence in our belief that our way of looking at-or even posing-these questions is the correct one. The fact of cultural variety is held to reduce, if not eliminate altogether, the possibility of moral criticism of the practices of other societies. This thought is not a recent one; it is implicit, for example, in an observation made in David Hume's “A Dialogue,” when he writes:
There are no manners so innocent or reasonable, but may be rendered odious or ridiculous, if measured by a standard, unknown to the persons; especially, if you employ a little art or eloquence, in aggravating some circumstances, and extenuating others, as best suits the purpose of your discourse.
1 Hume, David, “A Dialogue,”Google Scholar in Hume, , Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A., rev. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 This thought is raised directly by the philosopher McNaughton, David in his Moral Vision: An introduction to Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), p. 147.Google Scholar The most influential philosophical treatment of this topic in recent years is probably Mackie, John's Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978).Google Scholar
3 Hume, , “A Dialogue,” p. 330.Google Scholar
4 Ibid. Whether or not this reflects a thoroughgoing moral skepticism in Hume's thinking is, of course, another question. My own inclination is to accept David Norton's account of Hume as a common-sense moralist. See Norton, , David Hume: Common-Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982).Google Scholar
5 Taylor, Charles, Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition,” with commentary by Gutmann, Amy, Rockefeller, Steven C., Walzer, Michael, and Wolf, Susan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 72.Google Scholar
6 One of the most important recent works addressing this problem is Kymlicka, Will's Liberalism, Community, and Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).Google Scholar
7 On the development of Rawls's thought and the move away from universalism, see Arneson, Richard, “Introduction [to a Symposium on Rawlsian Theory of Justice: Recent Developments],” Ethics, vol. 99, no. 4 (07 1989), pp. 695–710.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 Some writers in the so-called “realist school” have also tried to defend this line over the last ten years or so. See, for example, Wiggins, David, “Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life,” in Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey, ed., Essays on Moral Realism (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988), pp. 127–65Google Scholar, where it is argued that the element of “invention” noncognitivists have identified in morality is something which can be accommodated by a realist moral theory.
9 Hume, , “A Dialogue,” pp. 333–34.Google Scholar
10 Parekh, Bhiku, “The Rushdie Affair: Research Agenda for Political Philosophy,” Political Studies, vol. 38, no. 4 (12 1990), pp. 695–709, at p. 696.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 Ibid., pp. 708–9.
12 Young, Iris Marion, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 157.Google Scholar
13 Kymlicka, , Liberalism, Community, and Culture, p. 170.Google Scholar
14 There is, of course, a considerable sociological and anthropological literature on culture. Some of this is discussed in Carrithers, Michael, Why Humans Have Cultures: Explaining Anthropology and Social Diversity (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).Google Scholar
15 Williams, Bernard, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana/Collins, 1985), p. 150.Google Scholar
16 Kymlicka, , Liberalism, Community, and Culture, p. 168.Google Scholar
17 Eliot, T. S., Notes towards the Definition of Culture (London: Faber, 1948), p. 41.Google Scholar
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., p. 120.
20 Ibid.. p. 62.
21 Ibid., p. 121.
22 See Mulgan, Richard, Maori, Pakeha, and Democracy (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 64.Google Scholar
23 Eliot, , Notes towards the Definition of Culture, pp. 120–21.Google Scholar
24 Ibid., p. 121.
25 For an anthropologist's view rejecting the possibility of cultural isolation, see Carrithers, , Why Humans Have Cultures, esp. ch. 2 and pp. 24 and 118.Google Scholar
26 Williams, , Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, p. 158.Google Scholar
27 McNaughton, , Moral Vision, pp. 152–54.Google Scholar
28 MacIntyre, Alasdair, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), p. 371.Google Scholar
29 Ibid., p. 374.
30 Ibid., p. 384.
31 Ibid., p. 385.
32 Ibid., p. 387.
33 Ibid., p. 393.
34 Ibid., p. 403.
35 Eliot, , Notes towards the Definition of Culture, pp. 122–23.Google Scholar
36 Nanji, Azim, “Islamic Ethics,” in Singer, Peter, ed., A Companion to Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), pp. 106–18, at p. 110.Google Scholar
37 MacIntyre, , Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, p. 380.Google Scholar
38 See Nanji, , “Islamic Ethics,” p. 109.Google Scholar See also, for example, the essays of the Muslim writer Chandra Muzaffar, “Female Attire: Morality and Reform,” and “Women, Religion, and Humanity,” in his Challenges and Choices in Malaysian Politics and Society (Penang: Aliran, 1989), pp. 392–412.Google Scholar
39 This was put to me by John Tomasi.
40 Smith, Adam, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1976), p. 48.Google Scholar
41 Ibid., p. 52.
42 Ibid., p. 531.
43 Ibid., p. 530.
44 Haakonssen, Knud, The Science of a Legislator: The Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
45 Smith, , Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 67.Google Scholar
46 Ibid., p. 212.
47 Haakonssen, , Science of a Legislator, p. 61.Google Scholar
48 Smith, , Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 310.Google Scholar
49 Haakonssen, , Science of a Legislator, p. 60.Google Scholar
50 Ibid., p. 61.
51 It is tempting to suggest that Smith might be categorized as a moral realist. My only reservation about doing so is the controversy which surrounds the term, but I am inclined to go along with Thomas Nagel, who writes:
Normative realism is the view that propositions about what gives us reasons for action can be true or false independently of how things appear to us, and that we can hope to discover the truth by transcending the appearances and subjecting them to critical assessment. What we aim to discover by this method is not a new aspect of the external world, called value, but rather just the truth about what we and others should do and want.
See Nagel, , The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 139.Google Scholar
52 This objection was put to me by John Tomasi.
53 This objection was put to me by Brian Beddie.
54 See, for example, the television series Millenium, hosted and narrated by Harvard anthropologist David Maybury-Lewis, which contrasts tribal societies-with their harmonious relations and profound wisdom about people and their place in the world-with modern societies, which are characterized by loneliness, greed, and environmental pillage. Less savory aspects of tribal societies are ignored; on this point, see Brunton, Ron, “Millenium: Getting Tribal Rites Wrong,” IPA Review, vol. 45, no. 4 (1992), pp. 51–52.Google Scholar
55 MacIntyre, , Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, p. 351.Google Scholar
56 Ibid., p. 332.
57 Smith, Michael, “Realism,”Google Scholar in Singer, , ed., A Companion to Ethics, pp. 399–410, at p. 408.Google Scholar
