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Explaining Moral Variety*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2009

Chandran Kukathas
Chandran Kukathas
Affiliation:
Politics, University College, University of New South Wales
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Extract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , Winter 1994 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1994

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References

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

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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

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11 Ibid., pp. 708–9.

12 Young, Iris Marion, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 157.Google Scholar

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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

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30 Ibid., p. 384.

31 Ibid., p. 385.

32 Ibid., p. 387.

33 Ibid., p. 393.

34 Ibid., p. 403.

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39 This was put to me by John Tomasi.

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41 Ibid., p. 52.

42 Ibid., p. 531.

43 Ibid., p. 530.

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46 Ibid., p. 212.

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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