Moral Understandings

Abstract

This book defends an expressive-collaborative model of morality that challenges common assumptions in philosophical ethics. Morality is best revealed in practices of responsibility that express shared understandings about who we are, what we value, and to whom we are accountable for what we do. Morality is collaborative as we reproduce or shift our moral understandings together in many daily interactions of social life. For this reason, moral practices cannot be separated from other social practices, nor moral identities from social roles and institutions in particular ways of life; morality is not socially modular. But not everyone has the same power to set or change moral terms, and differently valued social-moral identities with different responsibilities and privileges are the rule in human societies. This book argues for empirically informed and politically critical ethics that aims for transparency about the moral significance of social differences including, but not only, gender differences. The book responds to the work of major philosophers of the 20th century, such as Bernard Williams, John Rawls, Robert Goodin, Charles Taylor, and Alasdair MacIntyre, while putting the tools of feminist epistemology and ethics to use. It also challenges uncritical assumptions in academic ethics about what we are in a position to know and for whom we are in a position to speak. This text is the second edition and contains an updated view of the state of moral philosophy, a new chapter on the moral and epistemological significance of public projects of truth-telling, and a concluding response to some common questions about the book.