ABSTRACT

This collection of original essays explores metaethical views from outside the mainstream European tradition. The guiding motivation is that important discussions about the ultimate nature of morality can be found far beyond ancient Greece and modern Europe. The volume’s aim is to show how rich the possibilities are for comparative metaethics, and how much these comparisons offer challenges and new perspectives to contemporary analytic metaethics. Representing five continents, the thinkers discussed range from ancient Egyptian, ancient Chinese, and the Mexican (Aztec) cultures to more recent thinkers like Augusto Salazar Bondy, Bimal Krishna Matilal, Nishida Kitarō, and Susan Sontag. The philosophical topics discussed include religious language, moral discovery, moral disagreement, essences’ relation to evaluative facts, metaphysical harmony and moral knowledge, naturalism, moral perception, and quasi-realism. This volume will be of interest to anyone interested in metaethics or comparative philosophy.

chapter |16 pages

Introduction

part I|140 pages

Moral Metaphysics

chapter 1|21 pages

The Metaethics of Maat

chapter 3|21 pages

The Nature of Mexica Ethics

chapter 4|21 pages

Etemeyaske Vpokat (Living Together Peacefully)

How the Muscogee Concept of Harmony Can Provide a Structure to Morality

chapter 6|20 pages

The Art of Convention

An Aesthetic Defense of Confucian Ritual

chapter 7|18 pages

Matilal’s Metaethics

part II|100 pages

Moral Experience

chapter 8|20 pages

Goblet Words and Moral Knack

Non-Cognitivist Moral Realism in the Zhuangzi?

chapter 9|19 pages

Constructing Morality With Mengzi

Three Lessons on the Metaethics of Moral Progress

chapter 10|15 pages

Nishida Kitarō’s Kōiteki Chokkan

Active Intuition and Contemporary Metaethics