This chapter compares and contrasts the thought of three philosophers – Bernard Williams, Charles Taylor, and Martha Nussbaum – who developed influential and idiosyncratic ways of reforming Anglo-American moral philosophy. Their positions substantially overlap inasmuch as they hold that the goods of human life are necessarily multiple and persistently in conflict, which has implications for the structure and content of ethical life everywhere. All three are of interest to anthropology because they hold that history, culture, social relations, and biographical experience make a difference to the goods and values that inform human life, and therefore that moral philosophy needs to be, to at least a very large degree, an empirical, descriptive, and comparative discipline. The different, sometimes even rival, ways in which they pursue that project offer anthropologists of ethics the chance to reflect on how and why they might develop an anthropology that would fulfil these authors’ different visions of moral philosophy.

As a response to the totalitarian monstrosities of the dehumanization of hundreds of millions of people in the Cultural Revolution, human dignity was enshrined in the Chinese Constitution, not only as a foundational right but also as a basic principle. The basic rights that are necessary to implement this basic principle were all enshrined in the Constitution. China has made notable progress in protecting the nonpolitical dignity of Chinese citizens by means of civil, criminal, and administrative law. However, constitutional principles and rights in China are not justiciable, which together with other factors, such as the nonexistence of a robust tribunal of public opinion, has led to the fact that the political dignity of Chinese citizens – something that is essential to their independence and autonomy — however remains unprotected in practice. There is still a long way to go for China to transform the constitutional dream of inviolable human dignity into a reality.

Chapter 4 discusses Kierkegaard’s elusive critique of ethical eudaimonism. It is shown that Kierkegaard develops and radicalizes an influential Kantian critique of eudaimonism, according to which ethical eudaimonism entails egoism and instrumentalism concerning virtue that make morality second to self-interest. In the late twentieth century, discussions of this familiar critique have been renewed by the reemergence of virtue ethics and eudaimonism. Still, many share the worry that eudaimonism involves an objectionable egoism and instrumentalism concerning virtue. Although Kierkegaard’s critique of eudaimonism is controversial and more successful against hedonistic eudaimonism (Epicureanism) than Stoicism or Aristotelianism, it still seems largely defensible. At least, reconstructions indicate that genuine (noninstrumental) other-regard is incompatible with eudaimonism’s focus on personal happiness (eudaimonia) as the highest good. Kierkegaard thus seems to succeed in weakening ethical eudaimonism and in developing a noneudaimonistic view that is broadly Kantian.

Chapter 8 reconstructs Kierkegaard’s ignored critique of consequentialism, a critique that is still relevant to ethics. It is argued that morality and religion require not only good intentions but also a good character. However, since moral character itself is not directly accessible, but only shown indirectly by words and deeds, Kierkegaard describes it in terms of hidden inwardness, which is only seen by God. Still, such inwardness neither entails a hidden, private domain nor “negative outwardness,” which “confines itself (in order not to be seen for what it is)” (Jack Mulder). Nor does it entail enclosing reserve (Indesluttethed), which is inwardness in deadlock. Instead, it represents an inwardness that strives to express itself in words and deeds. As a result, Kierkegaard’s moral psychology is more defensible and less problematic than often assumed.

J. S. Mill in the 1830s and early 1840s, Barrell argues, thought extensively about the practical problems of historical enquiry. His progressive theory of historiography, sketched in the article on Jules Michelet, rejected presentism and the resort to ‘everyday experience’. This rejection was bolstered by his reception of German Historismus, Romanticism, and ‘Continental’ philosophy, all of which set out to de-familiarise and imaginatively reconstruct the past. The best modern historians, J. S. Mill argued, were more attentive than their eighteenth-century predecessors to the past’s animating uniqueness, and it is significant that Hume, Gibbon, and other eighteenth-century luminaries barely featured in his account. At the same time, his defence of general principles provided continuities with Scottish philosophical history and the utilitarian tradition in which he was raised. Thomas Carlyle’s account of the French Revolution, while innocent of presentism, was ultimately conjectural and uncritical, whereas Grote’s History of Greece combined criticism with philosophical insight, placing it somewhere between the second and third stages of historical enquiry.

The best option for defending the use of the legislative perspective is a hybrid approach that includes both consequentialist and nonconsequentialist commitments. Given that the theory in its original theistic form combined nonconsequentialist religious commitments with weak consequentialist reasoning, a successful adaptation of the legislative perspective to appeal to contemporary secular audiences will need to address both types of moral commitments. The type of legislative perspective under consideration is one that is moderate in its strength, realistic, at least weakly consequentialist, and applies to counterfactual cases where one is not literally legislating. The six moral commitments that one must endorse in order to use the legislative perspective in the specified sense are plausible, but they require a hybrid approach that is neither solely consequentialist nor exclusively nonconsequentialist. The nonconsequentialist reasons that justify the shift to the legislative perspective are stronger in cases where people are making decisions in political contexts, even if those contexts are not legislative contexts.

Chapter 6 looks at three prominent consequentialist strategies that have been employed more recently to justify different forms of the legislative perspective as well as a fourth option that is Kantian. The first option, exemplified by Robert Goodin, Conrad Johnson, and Frederick Schauer, is to restrict legislative consequentialism’s scope to the design of rules, policies, and institutions. The second option, pursued by Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer, is to follow Sidgwick and accept a disjunction between moral rules and moral right (or between decision rules and the standard of right). The third option, used by Brad Hooker, seeks to justify a consequentialist legislative perspective based on its fit with our moral judgments using something akin to a reflective equilibrium approach rather than having consequentialism itself be the foundation. The chapter then considers a very different fourth option where the shift to a legislative point of view depends on Kantian claims as seen in the work of Thomas Hill, Jr. and Derek Parfit. Each of these approaches, however, includes serious drawbacks.

The concluding chapter summarizes the theoretical analysis and empricial findings of the preceding chapters. It then argues that one of the key problems with the laws of war is that they enable states to evade accountaibility for imposing high risks on the civilian population. Although the principles of distinction and proportionality impose some restraints on what states can do in war, the permissive effects of the principle of proportionality provide states with significant flexibility when it comes to battlefield decisions that threaten civilians. Building on Jurgen Habermas's discourse ethics, it argues for a principle of affected interests that would correct for some of the permissive effects of the laws of war by requiring states to give equal consideration to civilians in how the incidental risks of war are distributed.