This chapter shows the limits and ambiguities of the concept of moral clarity even when it is applied with good intentions. Using concrete examples from contemporary politics, it warns that quite often claims invoking moral clarity are an expression of reductionist thinking and tend to overrreach.

Only a portion of the anthropological literature on philanthropy, charity, and humanitarianism explicitly engages with literature on the anthropology of ethics and morality, yet all of it describes a field of practice defined by a commitment to precisely these terms – the ethical, the moral, and the good. The first section of this essay reviews works that describe the moral and practical content and effects of philanthropic giving, focussing on the diversity of giving practices, logics, and outcomes. The second section describes how anthropologists have thought about humanitarian and philanthropic practices as the grounds upon and through which people cultivate and enact forms of ethical subjectivity. The third and final section considers anthropology’s relationship to ideas of moral clarity and moral judgement as these terms are used by anthropologists writing about, and taking part in, a range of social projects.