In Face of the Facts: Moral Inquiry in American Scholarship (Woodrow Wilson Center Press)

Cambridge University Press, 1/28/1998
EAN 9780521621335, ISBN10: 052162133X

Hardcover, 316 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm
Language: English

Recently there has been a renewed interest in moral inquiry among American scholars in a variety of disciplines. This collection of accessible essays by scholars in philosophy, political theory, psychology, history, literary studies, sociology, religious studies, anthropology, and legal studies affords a view of the current state of moral inquiry in the American academy, and it offers fresh departures for ethically informed, interdisciplinary scholarship. Seeking neither to reduce values to facts nor facts to values, these essays aim to foster discussion about inquiry and moral judgment, and demonstrate that moral inquiry need not be either dispassionate and value-free or moralistic and preachy.

Introduction
1. Pragmatism, science, and moral inquiry
2. Political theory and moral responsibility
3. Moral inquiry within the bounds of politics
a question of victimhood
4. Moral confidence
three cheers for naturalized ethics
5. Fighting (over) words
speech, power, and the moral imagination in American history
6. 'Of the standard of moral taste'
literary criticism as moral inquiry
7. The moral force field of Haitian Vodou
8. Snakes alive
resituating the moral in the study of religion
9. Social science and the moral revival
dilemmas and difficulties
10. Religion, morality, and other unmentionables
the revival of moral discourse in the law.