Religion and the Making of Morality Systems

CURA Event 3rd Annual Lecture in the Anthropology, Sociology & Theology of Ethics Webb Keane, George Herbert Mead Collegiate Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan It is widely assumed that religion provides the foundations necessary for ethical life. There are, however, good empirical reasons to assert that ethics does not require a religious basis as such. When people come to think that ethics does depend on religion, this is for specific historical reasons that we should find puzzling rather than obvious, and whose sources and consequences we should examine. This talk looks at some of the underpinnings of the specific kinds of ethical formation characteristic of Christianity and Islam that have been called “morality systems.” Drawing on the semiotics of stance, it proposes one set of explanations for this association of ethics, as a morality system, and monotheistic religion, and suggests that certain characteristic paradoxes result. Cosponsors: Departments of Anthropology & Sociology School of Theology, Center for the Study of Global Christianity and Mission