Moral Philosophy and the ‘Ethical Turn’ in Anthropology

Abstract

Moral philosophy continues to be enriched by an ongoing empirical turn, mainly through contributions from neuroscience, biology, and psychology. Thus far, cultural anthropology has largely been missing. A recent and rapidly growing 'ethical turn' within cultural anthropology now explicitly and systematically studies morality. This research report aims to introduce to an audience in moral philosophy several notable works within the ethical turn. It does so by critically discussing the ethical turn's contributions to four topics: the definition of morality, the nature of moral change and progress, the truth of moral relativism, and attempts to debunk morality. The ethical turn uncovers a richer picture of moral phenomena on the intersubjective level, one akin to a virtue theoretic focus on moral character, with striking similarities of moral phenomena across cultures. Perennial debates are not settled but the ethical turn strengthens moral philosophy's empirical turn and it rewards serious attention from philosophers.

Rethinking the moral in narrating trauma: Ethnographic insights on clinical reasoning

“…The “good” for the described epistemic community has been continually redefined in accordance with various criteria: the communal goals, the definition of patient’ needs, the psychological theories on parenting and trauma. This situated moral work reflects the reoccurrence of moral decision-making “as a sequence of small moments that one by one are often … barely discernible” (Komesaroff, 2008, p. 144).…”

“…What is important for the purpose of this article is the assumption that this interactive and collective process of reasoning in clinical work has fundamental moral dimensions. Critical moral issues are involved “not just in the great questions of life and death” (Komesaroff, 2008, p. 26), but also in what appear to be “the simplest and straightforward” clinical decisions and interactions. When the therapists tell stories, explains Mattingly, “the good become situated within very human dramas … clinical reasoning is no longer simply a matter of matching symptoms and signs to diagnostic categories … it enters a far more shadowed and conflicted practical domain …” (Mattingly, 1998, p. 291).…”

“…When the therapists tell stories, explains Mattingly, “the good become situated within very human dramas … clinical reasoning is no longer simply a matter of matching symptoms and signs to diagnostic categories … it enters a far more shadowed and conflicted practical domain …” (Mattingly, 1998, p. 291). As illness is always “polysemic and multivocal” (Kleinman, 1988), and the patient's story never comes out as a single coherent account (Komesaroff, 2008), the process of clinical reasoning may intertwine conflicting ethical considerations (Brodwin, 2013) and various explanatory models. These models may contain “contradictions and shift in content” (Kleinman, 1988, p. 122).…”

The Ethical Turn on the Sports Field

“…While anthropologists engaged with morality since the early days of the discipline, the concept itself was mostly taken for granted; "not explained, depicted, or analysed" (Edel, 1962, as cited in Klenk, 2019. Klenk (2019) states that the attempts in that direction have remained sporadic 1 . Mattingly and Throop (2018, p.476) claim that "the foundations of the field were clearly shaped by theoretical and ethnographic engagements with ethical dimensions of social life" and give anthropological classics as early examples of this varied engagement, including the works of Malinowski (1926Malinowski ( , 1929Malinowski ( , 1936, Evans-Pritchard (1937), Mauss (2002Mauss ( [1923Mauss ( -1924), and Bateson (1936).…”

Éticas falibles para máquinas (in)falibles

“…La respuesta es clara y definitiva: NO. La totalidad de etnografías realizadas por investigaciones antropológicas a lo largo del mundo abogan tras su meta-estudio por un relativismo moral (Klenk, 2019). Al mismo tiempo, ello no impide que existan modos universales de gestionar lo moral en la mayor parte de culturas.…”