Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

38 results

Page 1 of 2

  • 1 - Introduction

  • Edited by James Laidlaw, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics
    Published online:
    11 May 2023
    Print publication:
    25 May 2023, pp 1-32

  • Summary

    This chapter addresses the general character of the ‘ethical turn’ in anthropology and the variety of intellectual styles, reflected in the chapters in this volume, which it has come to include. That variety is such that only two propositions may be said to be generally shared: that the ethical dimension of human social life is non-trivial, and that the understanding of ‘morality’ that is dominant in contemporary Western societies is inadequate for describing and understanding it. In upholding the first of these positions, the anthropology of ethics has departed from those trends in recent anthropology characterized by Sherry Ortner as ‘dark anthropology’. In pursuit of the second, it has attempted to free itself from the imaginative straitjacket of what the philosopher Bernard Williams called the ‘Morality System’, so that it may reckon with the full range of forms of ethical thought, feeling, and practice in the ethnographic record. The chapter also gives a brief overview of the thematic parts of the volume, and the chapters.

  • 4 - Agonistic Pluralists

  • from Part I - Intellectual Sources and Disciplinary Engagements
  • Edited by James Laidlaw, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics
    Published online:
    11 May 2023
    Print publication:
    25 May 2023, pp 96-129

  • Summary

    This chapter compares and contrasts the thought of three philosophers – Bernard Williams, Charles Taylor, and Martha Nussbaum – who developed influential and idiosyncratic ways of reforming Anglo-American moral philosophy. Their positions substantially overlap inasmuch as they hold that the goods of human life are necessarily multiple and persistently in conflict, which has implications for the structure and content of ethical life everywhere. All three are of interest to anthropology because they hold that history, culture, social relations, and biographical experience make a difference to the goods and values that inform human life, and therefore that moral philosophy needs to be, to at least a very large degree, an empirical, descriptive, and comparative discipline. The different, sometimes even rival, ways in which they pursue that project offer anthropologists of ethics the chance to reflect on how and why they might develop an anthropology that would fulfil these authors’ different visions of moral philosophy.

The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics
  • Edited by James Laidlaw
  • Published online:
    11 May 2023
    Print publication:
    25 May 2023
  • The 'ethical turn' in anthropology has been one of the most vibrant fields in the discipline in the past quarter-century. It has fostered new dialogue between anthropology and philosophy, psychology, and theology and seen a wealth of theoretical innovation and influential ethnographic studies. This book brings together a global team of established and emerging leaders in the field and makes the results of this fast-growing body of diverse research available in one volume. Topics covered include: the philosophical and other intellectual sources of the ethical turn; inter-disciplinary dialogues; emerging conceptualizations of core aspects of ethical agency such as freedom, responsibility, and affect; and the diverse ways in which ethical thought and practice are institutionalized in social life, both intimate and institutional. Authoritative and cutting-edge, it is essential reading for researchers and students in anthropology, philosophy, psychology and theology, and will set the agenda for future research in the field.

Page 1 of 2