Moral Discourse in a Pluralistic World

How shall we collectively confront the global problems we face? In Moral Discourse in a Pluralistic World, Daniel Vokey argues that it is possible for people from very different religious, political, philosophical, and cultural traditions to talk productively about the issues that divide them.

Vokey refutes moral scepticism—the pervasive belief that conflict is impossible to resolve in a rational way—by confronting two kinds of relativist arguments: that we cannot understand the positions of people whose perspectives are incommensurable with our own and that moral values are matters, not of truth, but of opinion, preference, and custom. Vokey challenges the first by reconstructing and extending Alasdair MacIntyre’s account of the rationality of traditions of inquiry. Using the term moral discourse to refer to the processes involved in assessing moral points of view, Vokey shows how evaluating the relative merits of rival paradigms is a crucial step in the search for consensus.

Vokey confronts the second kind of relativist argument by drawing from the teachings of Mahayana Buddhism. He uses Buddhist teachings to locate moral truth in our reasons of the heart, our prediscursive understanding of what is genuinely worth caring about most deeply, while also restoring the link within Aristotelian ethics between the good and the beautiful.

By clarifying the ways in which genuine agreement on moral issues can be pursued through moral discourse, Vokey provides a coherent conceptual framework for addressing the political, social, and environmental problems arising from unresolved moral conflict.

Daniel Vokey is assistant professor of Education, University of Prince Edward Island, Canada.