ABSTRACT
The question of if moral judgements are, or can potentially be, universally applicable or if they can only be applicable to a specific event or socio- historical situation is the question of Moral Realism. The theories of Bhaskar’s dialectical critical realist ethics (1993) and Elder-Vass’s theory of realist critique (2010) provide competing answers to this question; with both asserting that a commitment to scientific realism underpins their own theory. From my exploration of alternative approaches to this question (Honderich,1976) and how the metatheory has been identified to apply to it (Hostettler and Norrie, 2003; Collier,1998, 2003; Norrie 2010; Price, 2017) I draw the conclusion that while there are some unsupportable aspects of his theory, Bhaskar’s Moral Realist approach towards the universality of morality is more coherent within the metatheory of critical realism than Elder-Vass’s. Due to the subject matter of this chapter, it can also be read as an introduction to the key components of Dialectical Critical Realism.
