The Geography of Morals: Varieties of Moral Possibility
Owen Flanagan
Abstract
We live increasingly in multicultural, multiethnic, cosmopolitan worlds. Depending on one’s perspective, these worlds are grand experiments in tolerant living in which prejudices break down, or they are fractured, wary, tense ethnic and religious cohousing projects, or they are melting pots where differences are thinned out and homogenized over time. The Geography of Morals argues that cross-cultural philosophy provides much needed resources for self and social improvement for those of us who live in WEIRD—Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic—precincts. The Geography of Morals explo ... More
We live increasingly in multicultural, multiethnic, cosmopolitan worlds. Depending on one’s perspective, these worlds are grand experiments in tolerant living in which prejudices break down, or they are fractured, wary, tense ethnic and religious cohousing projects, or they are melting pots where differences are thinned out and homogenized over time. The Geography of Morals argues that cross-cultural philosophy provides much needed resources for self and social improvement for those of us who live in WEIRD—Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic—precincts. The Geography of Morals explores the varieties of moral possibility revealed in other lived traditions, and argues that these different systems of value and virtue provide excellent opportunities and tools for self and social improvement. It argues against the dominant view in moral psychology, which says that morality is governed by the twin forces of evolutionarily ancient brain systems and the moral form of life one is born into. It argues that reason and imagination are powerful tools for moral self-cultivation and can override what the old brain systems says and what socialization tries to fix. The book creates a conversation between normative ethics, cultural anthropology, empirical moral psychology, and economic game theory for the sake of exploring prospects for socio-moral growth.
Keywords:
anthropology,
comparative philosophy,
cross-cultural philosophy,
economic game theory,
geography,
normative ethics,
psychology,
self-cultivation,
WEIRD people
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190212155 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190212155.001.0001 |
