Morality

About: Morality is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 22623 publications have been published within this topic receiving 545733 citations. The topic is also known as: moral & morals.

Within a Range of Possibilities: Morality and Ethics in Social Life

Abstract: Despite its now common currency the anthropological concept of morality remains underdeveloped. One anthropologist who has made several important attempts to work out a more precise theoretical concept of morality is Joel Robbins. In his most recent contribution to this endeavor Robbins addresses the tension in anthropology between what he calls the morality of reproduction and the morality of freedom. In this article, I suggest an alternative solution to the problem of conceiving the distinction between a nonconsciously enacted morality and the conscious awareness of ethical dilemmas and moral questioning. I will support this distinction with ethnographic and life-historical material from my research on the moral lives of some Muscovites.

Moral Judgment The Influence of Ethical Ideology

Abstract: In order to determine when ethical ideology influences judgments of morality, individuals who endorsed an absolutist, exceptionist, subjectivist, or situationist ideology morally evaluated an actor linked, at varying levels of responsibility, to positive or negative outcomes. As predicted, absolutists judged the actor more harshly than exceptionists, but only when the described actor has foreseen or intended to produce a highly negative consequence.

Moral economy and cultural work

Abstract: While the ‘culturalization’ of the economy has led some to welcome the ‘turn to life’ (Heelas, 2002) and anticipate the remoralization of economic activity, others argue the cultural turn is conducive only to consolidating neo-liberalism's characteristic demoralization of economic relations.The cultural industries, as a leading sector of the culturalized economy, are seen to be particularly culpable in this respect, offering the illusion of freedom, but actually eroding the ethical basis of work through tendencies for individuation and exploitation. Building on the recent renewal of interest in ‘moral economy’, this article argues that claims for the demoralization of cultural industries may be premature. Empirical evidence is presented from interviews with cultural entrepreneurs in Manchester, UK, to reveal how social and political values are biographically important and made evident in the routine context of work. The conclusion offers that individualization may provide some opportunity to re-establish ...

Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche's Genealogy

Abstract: Christopher Janaway presents a full commentary on Nietzsche's most studied work, On the Genealogy of Morality , and combines close reading of key passages with an overview of Nietzsche's wider aims. Arguing that Nietzsche's goal is to pursue psychological and historical truths concerning the origins of modern moral values, Beyond Selflessness is distinctive in that it also emphasizes the significance of Nietzsches rhetorical methods as an instrument of persuasion. Nietzsche's outlook is broadly naturalist, but he is critical of typical scientific and philosophical methods for their advocacy of impersonality and suppression of the affects. In contrast to his opponents, Schopenhauer and Paul Ree, who both account for morality in terms of selflessness, Nietzsche believes that our allegiance to a post-Christian morality that centres around selflessness, compassion, guilt, and denial of the instincts is not primarily rational but affective: underlying feelings, often ambivalent and poorly grasped in conscious thought, explain our moral beliefs. The Genealogy is designed to detach the reader from his or her allegiance to morality and prepare for the possibility of new values. Janaway shows how, according to Nietzsches perspectivism, one can best understand a topic such as morality through allowing as many of ones feelings as possible to speak about it, and how Nietzsche seeks to enable us to feel differently': his provocation of the reader's affects helps us grasp the affective origins of our attitudes and prepare the way for healthier values such as the affirmation of life (as tested by the thought of eternal return) and the self-satisfaction to be attained by 'giving style to one's character'. Contents A Note on Translations and Abbreviations 1. Nietzsche's aims and targets 2. Reading Nietzsche's Preface 3. Naturalism and genealogy 4. Selflessness: the struggle with Schopenhauer 5. Nietzsche and Paul Ree on the origin of moral feelings 6. Good and evil: Nietzsche's artistic revaluation 7. Free will, autonomy, and the sovereign individual 8. Guilt, bad conscience, and self-punishment 9. Will to power in the Genealogy 10. Nietzsche's illustration of the art of exegesis 11. Disinterestedness and objectivity 12. Perspectival knowing and the affects 13. The ascetic ideal, meaning, and truth 14. Beyond selflessness

Merchants of Morality

Abstract: How do a few Third World conflicts become international causes celebres, while most remain isolated and unknown? Why, for instance, has there been so much recent attention to the Darfur crisis - but so little to ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, despite vastly more casualties in the latter than in the former? This article, a brief, popularized version of my new book, "The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media, and International Activism," rejects the view that those who gain such support are simply the lucky winners in a "global humanitarian lottery." It also rejects the idea that there is a "meritocracy of suffering" in which the worst-off groups gain the most support. Instead, I argue that conflicts and the insurgent groups involved in them, face a Darwinian struggle for scarce media attention, NGO activism, and international concern. In this competition, the lion's share of resources go to the savviest, not the neediest.