WHO ARE WE TO JUDGE?

Main Article Content

Ronald Stade

Abstract

Moral issues can be considered from three vantage points: the first is prescriptive, the second descriptive and the third ascriptive. The prescriptive view claims that certain principles ought to guide human behaviour. The descriptive view is a ‘view from nowhere’. It can be found in the historical and social-scientific study of morality. The ascriptive perspective hypothesises that certain human qualities, a fairness instinct for example, provide the bedrock for morality. What is the relationship between the three perspectives on morality? Can either (or some or all) of them supply a moral voice and vision for anthropology? Or is there something in their very coexistence that could carry forward the anthropological engagement with morality?

Article Details

Section
Working papers
Author Biography

Ronald Stade, Malmo University

Senior Lecturer, Department of Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews Director of the St Andrews Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies