The social character of ethics is best revealed by exploring the complex dynamics linking individ... more The social character of ethics is best revealed by exploring the complex dynamics linking individuals’ freedom to moral requirements. In this article, we consider James Laidlaw’s influential proposal that an anthropology of ethics makes freedom central to what is distinctively ethical in human life, but we argue that it unduly restricts the proposed scope of anthropology. This account of freedom is both overly cognitive, focusing on reflection, viewed as involving distance, decision, reasoning and doubt, and too individualistic, downplaying the importance of freedom’s normative background and excluding from consideration many documented forms of ethical experience. We propose instead an alternative, more open-ended conceptualization of freedom, distinguishing a concept of freedom that differs from its widely varying conceptions, and drawing on ethnographic material from the Hunza Valley in Northern Pakistan and elsewhere to illustrate multiple ways in which the constitution of selve...
A paradox, according to the OED, is ‘a statement seemingly self-contradictory or absurd, though p... more A paradox, according to the OED, is ‘a statement seemingly self-contradictory or absurd, though possibly well-founded or essentially true’. In this article I shall try to show that the classical orthodox Marxist view of morality is a paradox. I shall seek to resolve the paradox by trying to show that it is only seemingly self-contradictory or absurd. But I shall not claim the standard Marxist view of morality to be well-founded or essentially true. On the contrary, I shall suggest that, though coherent, it is ill-founded and illusory.
... Barry Barnes has written a very searching and sophisticated book about the sociological expla... more ... Barry Barnes has written a very searching and sophisticated book about the sociological explanation of scientific beliefs. ... about Rationality', European Journal of Sociology, 8 (1967), 247-64: 'On the Social Determination of Truth', in R. Horton and R. Finnegan (eds.), Modes of ...
The social character of ethics is best revealed by exploring the complex dynamics linking individ... more The social character of ethics is best revealed by exploring the complex dynamics linking individuals’ freedom to moral requirements. In this article, we consider James Laidlaw’s influential proposal that an anthropology of ethics makes freedom central to what is distinctively ethical in human life, but we argue that it unduly restricts the proposed scope of anthropology. This account of freedom is both overly cognitive, focusing on reflection, viewed as involving distance, decision, reasoning and doubt, and too individualistic, downplaying the importance of freedom’s normative background and excluding from consideration many documented forms of ethical experience. We propose instead an alternative, more open-ended conceptualization of freedom, distinguishing a concept of freedom that differs from its widely varying conceptions, and drawing on ethnographic material from the Hunza Valley in Northern Pakistan and elsewhere to illustrate multiple ways in which the constitution of selve...
A paradox, according to the OED, is ‘a statement seemingly self-contradictory or absurd, though p... more A paradox, according to the OED, is ‘a statement seemingly self-contradictory or absurd, though possibly well-founded or essentially true’. In this article I shall try to show that the classical orthodox Marxist view of morality is a paradox. I shall seek to resolve the paradox by trying to show that it is only seemingly self-contradictory or absurd. But I shall not claim the standard Marxist view of morality to be well-founded or essentially true. On the contrary, I shall suggest that, though coherent, it is ill-founded and illusory.
... Barry Barnes has written a very searching and sophisticated book about the sociological expla... more ... Barry Barnes has written a very searching and sophisticated book about the sociological explanation of scientific beliefs. ... about Rationality', European Journal of Sociology, 8 (1967), 247-64: 'On the Social Determination of Truth', in R. Horton and R. Finnegan (eds.), Modes of ...
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Papers by steven lukes