Thanks to a friend in the human rights program here at The Uof Chicago, I just learned today of the important work of Didier Fassin, opening the door for religious, indeed Christian, scholarship on morals & values. *https://sss.ias.edu/faculty/fassin Philosophers have always been interested in moral questions, but social scientists have been more reluctant to discuss morals and moralities. This is indeed a paradox since the questioning of the moral dimension of human life and social action was consubstantial to the founding project of their disciplines. A clue to this paradox resides in the tension between the descriptive and prescriptive vocations of social sciences.... For anthropology, the problem was even more crucial, since the confrontation with other cultures, and therefore other moralities, led to an endless discussion between universalism and relativism: given the variety of norms and values across the globe and their transformation over time, should one affirm that some are superior or accept that they are all merely incommensurable?.... Considering these difficulties, scientific but also political and ethical, it is all the more remarkable that the social sciences have reinvested in the field of morals and moralities during the past decade. This evolution reflects a broader trend in contemporary societies where moral issues have become central in the public sphere, to the point that most domains of activity have become concerned with moral evaluations and justifications. Human rights have entered the space of international relations, military operations have been presented as humanitarian wars, bioethics has redefined the boundaries of medical research, greed in finance has been denounced as unethical, compassion has become a political virtue, economic deprivation has been assessed according to merit. Under these changing circumstances, the growing public presence of moral questions could no longer be ignored by the social scientists....
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 20:53:38 +0000
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