The Diversity of Morals

How to make sense of the divergence between philosophers’ quest for a single morality and social scientists’ assumption that there are multiple moralities

When we speak of morals, what are we speaking of? Is morality singular (as many philosophers tend to assume, even if they don’t agree on what it is) or are there multiple moralities (which social scientists, notably anthropologists, study)? In The Diversity of Morals, Steven Lukes brings together these differing perspectives. Drawing on philosophy, sociology, social anthropology, psychology, and political theory, Lukes considers what the moral domain includes and what it excludes; how what is moral differs from what is conventional or customary in different contexts; whether morality is unified or a series of fragments; and, if there is a diversity of morals, what that diversity consists of.

Lukes looks both ways—toward philosophers’ quest for a single best answer to the question of morality and toward sociologists’ and anthropologists’ assumption that there are several, even many, even very many, answers—to make sense of their divergence. He traces the two approaches back to their beginnings, linking them to the differences between the ideas of David Hume, Johann Gottfried Herder and Adam Smith. Lukes examines how we went from viewing the social world as “us” versus “them” to thinking of morality as universal, envisioning shared humanity and the sacredness of the human person, and what prevents this vision from being realized. Considering the breakdown of moral constraints in the perpetration of mass atrocities, Lukes asks if there are phenomena that are beyond moral justification. And he raises this crucial question: in light of the vast variation that history and the ethnographic record display, how wide and how deep is the diversity of morals?