Synopses & Reviews
"A treasure trove of richly stimulating ideas."
--Kwame Anthony Appiah, author of Experiments in Ethics"At last, an account of ethical life that is as rich and many layered as ethical life itself. Webb Keane takes us from its instinctual beginnings, through the elaboration of moral notions in everyday interaction, to the broader field of conscious ethical change in history. Every chapter is full of reflection-provoking insights, based on extensive research in a number of fields. This book is a game changer."--Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age
"Webb Keane has provided us with an exceptionally broad and nuanced account of the natural and social histories of human ethical conduct. Unlike almost any other, the account is balanced between both cultural universals and cultural variability in the creation of human ethical life. This book is a must-read for everyone interested in the evolution of human sociality."--Michael Tomasello, author of A Natural History of Human Morality
"Ethical Life is a brilliant synthesis of the major issues in moral theory and the anthropology of ethics. Keane masterfully provides us with a model of interdisciplinary engagement--insightful, measured, world aware, and sensitive to the different shades of argument he engages. This book is an outstanding contribution to our understanding of our lives as ethical beings."--Veena Das, author of Affliction: Health, Disease, Poverty
"With Ethical Life, Webb Keane confirms his place as one of anthropology's most gifted thinkers. The scope of this book is phenomenal, ranging over a host of disciplines and debates with erudition. Ethical Life provides a new model for what bold anthropology can achieve, bringing us back to the difficult question of how to understand the natural and social histories of humankind--a question that many of us have simply been too timid to ask."--Matthew Engelke, London School of Economics
"This ambitious book synthesizes perspectives from anthropology, psychology, philosophy, and history, putting forward with impressive force and clarity a distinctive and persuasive argument. Ethical Life is a work of considerable scholarship and original thought."--James Laidlaw, author of The Subject of Virtue: An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom
Synopsis
The Description for this book, Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories, will be forthcoming.
Synopsis
The human propensity to take an ethical stance toward oneself and others is found in every known society, yet we also know that values taken for granted in one society can contradict those in another. Does ethical life arise from human nature itself? Is it a universal human trait? Or is it a product of one's cultural and historical context? Webb Keane offers a new approach to the empirical study of ethical life that reconciles these questions, showing how ethics arise at the intersection of human biology and social dynamics.
Drawing on the latest findings in psychology, conversational interaction, ethnography, and history, Ethical Life takes readers from inner city America to Samoa and the Inuit Arctic to reveal how we are creatures of our biology as well as our history--and how our ethical lives are contingent on both. Keane looks at Melanesian theories of mind and the training of Buddhist monks, and discusses important social causes such as the British abolitionist movement and American feminism. He explores how styles of child rearing, notions of the person, and moral codes in different communities elaborate on certain basic human tendencies while suppressing or ignoring others.
Certain to provoke debate, Ethical Life presents an entirely new way of thinking about ethics, morals, and the factors that shape them.
About the Author
Webb Keane is the George Herbert Mead Collegiate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter and Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Part One Natures
Introduction Ethical Affordances, Awareness, and Actions 3
Some Questions about Ethical Life 6
Defining Ethics and Morality 16
Awareness and Reflexivity 21
Ethical Affordances 27
Overview of the Book 32
Chapter 1 Psychologies of Ethics 39
Seeking Ethical Foundations 39
How Psychologists Define Ethics and Morality 40
Empathy and Altruism 46
Self and Other 48
Mind Reading 51
Psychology's Challenge to Ethical Awareness 54
Moral Emotions and Normative Judgments 58
Third-Person Perspective 63
Making Things Explicit 67
Ethical Affordances in Psychology 70
Part Two Interactions
Chapter 2 Selves and Others 77
Giving Accounts 77
Intersubjectivity 79
Intention-Seeking 83
Conversational Inferences 86
Shared Reality 88
Regard for One Another 93
A Semiotics of Character 96
Ethical Vulnerability 99
Chapter 3 Problematizing Interaction 110
Dignity and Respect 110
Variations on Intersubjectivity 117
Underdetermined Emotions, Specific Concepts 122
The Opacity of Other Minds 124
Interiority 126
One's Own Thoughts 128
Local Themes, Affordances Everywhere 130
Chapter 4 Ethical Types 133
Moral Breakdown? 133
Self-Awareness and Other People 136
Standing before the Law 140
The Inner Clash of Ethical Voices 143
Dysfluency and Ethical Conflict 146
Disciplining the Clash of Voices 148
Typifying Character Explicitly 151
Ethical Figures and Types 153
Defining the Situation 156
Interaction as Affordance 160
Part Three Histories
Chapter 5 Awareness and Change 167
Shifting Stances 167
Ethical Progress? 172
The Social Production of Ethical Problems 180
Abolitionism 184
Consciousness-Raising 187
From Personal Experiences to Analytical Categories 190
Reconstructing Ethical Feelings 194
Chapter 6 Making Morality in Religion 199
Ethical Life and Morality Systems 199
Historical Objects 201
Taking Ethics in Hand 203
Ethics as Piety 206
Habitual Ethics 207
The God's-Eye Point of View 208
Entextualization and Sacred Truth 211
Abstraction and Struggle 214
Chapter 7 Making Morality in Political Revolution 216
The Ethical Attack on Religion 216
Ethical Sources of Vietnamese Revolutionary Thought 218
Everyday Ethics, Everyday Oppression 221
Revolutionary Ethics 223
Reforming Social Interaction 228
The Various Fates of Ethical Revolution 233
History's Affordances 237
Conclusion 241
Affordances, Awareness, Agency 241
Human Rights 248
Humanitarianism 256
First-, Second-, and Third-Person Positions 259
Bibliography 263
Index 281