Cross-cultural Ethics, Moral Status, Right Action, and a Relational Moral Theory

In this article I respond to six contributors to a special issue of Social Theory and Practice that is devoted to critical discussions of my book A Relational Moral Theory: African Ethics in and Beyond the Continent. In this book I articulate a general principle of rightness that is substantially informed by values salient in the African philosophical tradition (and some others in the Global South) and defend it as preferable to some major rivals, including utilitarianism and Kantianism. Key topics that I address in this article include methodological issues, such as whether it is appropriate to provide an interpretation of the African tradition with some characteristically Western concepts and how metaphysical claims should inform the construction of normative ethical theories, as well as substantive issues pertaining to how to understand the nature of moral status and right action

Action (physics) · Applied philosophy · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Moral disengagement · Moral philosophy · Moral psychology · Normative ethics · Sociology · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Psychology · Social Psychology

• Cross-cultural and Applied Ethics in the Light of a Relational Moral Theory

  Open Access•Thaddeus Metz•Ethical Theory and Moral Practice•2025

  Add to list