The persistence of deep moral disagreements--across cultures as
well as within them--has created widespread skepticism about the
objectivity of morality. Moral relativism, moral pessimism, and the
denigration of ethics in comparison with science are the results.
"Fieldwork in Familiar Places" challenges the misconceptions about
morality, culture, and objectivity that support these skepticisms,
to show that we can take moral disagreement seriously and yet
retain our aspirations for moral objectivity.
Michele Moody-Adams critically scrutinizes the anthropological
evidence commonly used to support moral relativism. Drawing on
extensive knowledge of the relevant anthropological literature, she
dismantles the mystical conceptions of "culture" that underwrite
relativism. She demonstrates that cultures are not hermetically
sealed from each other, but are rather the product of eclectic
mixtures and borrowings rich with contradictions and possibilities
for change. The internal complexity of cultures is not only crucial
for cultural survival, but will always thwart relativist efforts to
confine moral judgments to a single culture. "Fieldwork in Familiar
Places" will forever change the way we think about relativism:
anthropologists, psychologists, historians, and philosophers alike
will be forced to reconsider many of their theoretical
presuppositions.
Moody-Adams also challenges the notion that ethics is
methodologically deficient because it does not meet standards set
by natural science. She contends that ethics is an interpretive
enterprise, not a failed naturalistic one: genuine ethical inquiry,
including philosophical ethics, is a species of interpretive
ethnography. We havereason for moral optimism, Moody-Adams argues.
Even the most serious moral disagreements take place against a
background of moral agreement, and thus genuine ethical inquiry
will be fieldwork in familiar places. Philosophers can contribute
to this enterprise, she believes, if they return to a Socratic
conception of themselves as members of a rich and complex community
of moral inquirers.
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