Moral Engines: Exploring the Ethical Drives in Human Life

In the past fifteen years, there has been a virtual explosion of anthropological literature arguing that morality should be considered central to human practice. Out of this explosion new and invigorating conversations have emerged between anthropologists and philosophers. Moral Engines: Exploring the Ethical Drives in Human Life includes essays from some of the foremost voices in the anthropology of morality, offering unique interdisciplinary conversations between anthropologists and philosophers about the moral engines of ethical life, addressing the question: What propels humans to act in light of ethical ideals?

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. The Question of ‘Moral Engines’

Part I. Moral Engines and Human Experience
Chapter 2. Ethics, Immanent Transcendence and the Experimental Narrative Self
Chapter 3. Being Otherwise
Chapter 4. Haunting as Moral Engine
Chapter 5. Every Day
Chapter 6. The Provocation of Freedom

Part II. Moral Engines and ‘Moral Facts’
Chapter 7. On the Immanence of Ethics
Chapter 8. Where in the World are Values?
Chapter 9. Fault Lines in the Anthropology of Ethics

Part III. Moral Engines and the Human Condition
Chapter 10. An Ethics of Dwelling and a Politics of Worldbuilding
Chapter 11. Human, the Responding Being
Chapter 12. The History of Responsibility