Conceptual structures of moral experience in cross-cultural comparative analysis

This dissertation argues that the substance of many of the theoretical issues and debates of contemporary Western ethics have questionable relevance in respect to the complex dynamism of the modern world to answering Socrates' question, "How shall we live?" or as this dissertation engages the question, "By what values shall we live?" This problem arises as a consequence of an overly abstract disengagement from empirical considerations that is argued to be the result of a Western conception of moral rationality in which moral justification must meet the conditions of objectivity and universalizability. This conception of rationality retains the influence of Kant. The specific empirical considerations that are mostly absent in Western moral inquiry are non-Western conceptions of morality and contemporary research in the Cognitive Sciences and particularly empirical moral psychology. This dissertation engages in cross-cultural comparative analysis by examining the moral structures of African Communitarian ethics and Buddhist ethics and then turns to current research in the Cognitive Sciences and moral psychology. When many of the traditional abstract debates of contemporary Western ethics are analyzed in the light of the foregoing empirical considerations, the introduction of those empirical considerations has a powerful effect on the shape and substantive claims at issue in those debates. Hence, the dissertation concludes that a more empirically-informed socially-engaged ethics would be beneficial for Western moral inquiry.