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Ethics versus morality

A problematic divide

The University of Tennessee - Knoxville, USA

I explicate the distinction between ethics and morality in terms of four central contrasts, and argue (1) that moral theories that embrace the implicit divide are both theoretically and practically problematic in their failure to meet certain widely accepted standards of theoretical coherence and in their resulting propensity to generate indeterminable conflicts among norms, and (2) that social roles represent one aspect of the moral life that cannot be understood in terms of this distinction. My suggestion will be that we ought to explore an interpretation of the moral realm according to which all moral attributes are relative to social roles, since a role-centered morality promises a way of overcoming this problematic divide.

Key Words: ethics • morality • reductionism • roles

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Vol. 35, No. 9, 1063-1077 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0191453709343388


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