Rules and Ethics: Perspectives from Anthropology and History - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1526148900 ISBN 13: 9781526148902

Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2021

Synopsis

This book investigates the pronounced enthusiasm that many traditions display for codes of ethics characterised by a multitude of rules. Recent anthropological interest in ethics and historical explorations of ‘self-fashioning’ have led to extensive study of the virtuous self, but existing scholarship tends to pass over the kind of morality that involves legalistic reasoning. Rules and ethics corrects that omission by demonstrating the importance of rules in everyday moral life in a variety of contexts. In a nutshell, it argues that legalistic moral rules are not necessarily an obstruction to a rounded ethical self, but can be an integral part of it. An extended introduction first sets out the theoretical basis for studies of ethical systems that are characterised by detailed rules. This is followed by a series of empirical studies of rule-oriented moral traditions in a comparative perspective. -- .

About this title

About the Author

Morgan Clarke is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Keble College

Emily Corran is Lecturer in Medieval History at University College London

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From the Back Cover

Ethical systems characterised by detailed rules - such as Islamic sharia and Christian casuistry - have often been dismissed as empty formalism or instruments of social control. This book demonstrates that, on the contrary, rules often enable, rather than hinder, personal ethical life.

Rules and ethics assembles anthropologists and historians to explore cases of rule-oriented ethics and their dynamics across a wide range of historical and contemporary moral traditions. Examples of pre-modern Hindu ethics and codes of civility from early modern England demonstrate how rules can form an essential element of what Michel Foucault called 'the care of the self'. Studies of Roman exemplary ethics, early modern Christian theology and the calculation of sin and merit in contemporary Muslim Palestine highlight the challenges posed by the coexistence of moral rules with other moral forms, not least those of virtue ethics. Finally, explorations of medieval and modern Islamic sharia, Christian casuistry and Jewish halakha all highlight how such traditions develop complex meta-rules - rules about rules - for managing the tensions and dilemmas that the use of rules can entail.

Together, these case studies and the theoretical framework proposed in the book's introduction offer a more nuanced, cross-cultural appreciation of the role of rules in moral life than those currently prevalent in both the anthropology of ethics and the global history of morality.

Edition details

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1526148900
• ISBN 13: 9781526148902
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Clarke Morgan, Corran Emily