Morality, Moral Cognition, and Social Structure: A Critical, Humanist Review

[摘要] Writing this thesis has been a long journey. Early in the American Culture Program, I took on a sociological orientation. My curiosity about the relation of the Protestant ethic and social Darwinism to modern ideology led me to think about a sociology of knowledge capable of judging the material consistency of popular knowledge. My composition has been contemporaneous with my change from lawyer to teacher. For twelve years, I counselled and represented poor people, seeing the way ;;the system;; treats those with the least resources for protecting themselves or fighting back, day after day. It became clearer to me that the problems of poor people were not ;;legal;; but political and I was directly forbidden from assisting them to do precisely what was needed to marshal and express their power politically. I wanted to understand why empowerment was so distant and elusive. The clients who expressed (and with whom I shared) cynicism about ;;the system;; often mixed in religion when waxing philosophical. I learned much about the politics of poverty and powerlessness from those who shared their ideas and from those who only shared their troubles, but I still have much to learn.

[发布机构] University of Michigan

[效力级别] universal morality

[关键词] morality;universal morality;Liberal Studies