Ethos, Eidos, Habitus A Social Theoretical Contribution to Morality and Ethics
This essay sets out a practice theory perspective on morality and ethics within a Bourdieuan frame. The terms ethos and eidos are developed as field level accounts of morality – the normative character or structure of a society of culture – and ethics or,
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Abstract This essay sets out a practice theory perspective on morality and ethics within a Bourdieuan frame. The terms ethos and eidos are developed as field level accounts of morality – the normative character or structure of a society of culture – and ethics or, rather, the collective socio-logic of ethical thinking. I then discuss the idea that, consistent with Bourdieu’s social theory, social structures – such as ethos and eidos – are ontologically complicit with the systems of dispositions constitutive of habitus. Following my discussion of this idea – that the structures of habitus (systems of dispositions) stand in a homologous relationship with the structures of the social fields within which they were developed – I turn to some recent research in moral psychology. I attempt to show that the view I have outlined can assist us in understanding the picture of morality and ethics emerging from this scholarship.
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Introduction
The intellectual zeitgeist of contemporary research into morality and ethics is to connect philosophical and empirical enquiries. Thus far the latter has been largely a matter of psychological analysis, albeit with side orders of cognitive science and ‘experimental philosophy’ (X-Phi). However, these discourses remain largely disconnected from sociology and anthropology, both disciplines that have also turned their attention to morality and ethics in recent times (Fassin 2012; Fassin and Lézé 2013; Hitlin and Vaisey
Nathan Emmerich Visiting Research Fellow School of Politics International Studies and Philosophy Queen’s University Belfast [email protected]
© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2016 C. Brand (Ed.), Dual-Process Theories in Moral Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-12053-5_13
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Nathan Emmerich
2010). Whilst some research in these domains draws directly on moral philosophy, particularly virtue ethics (Laidlaw 2013),1 these disciplines not only have their own theoretical perspectives on morality/ethics (Abend 2010) and more generally. Consistent with my earlier work (Emmerich 2013; Emmerich 2014), this essay sketches a Bourdieuan perspective on morality/ethics. I then discuss some recent research into moral psychology and consider if the proffered Bourdieuan framework can assist our understanding. As such, what I present should be considered a social theoretical and praxeological perspective grounded in ethos, eidos and habitus. The latter term, sometimes rendered as hexis, can be found throughout the history of (Aristotelian) moral philosophy. However, in the account I adopt, habitus is a socio-analytic concept and has relevance to all facets of ‘social character’ and practice. This meaning and implications of Bourdieu’s habitus are discussed in more detail below, suffice to note that I am not alone in considering it important to a social theory of morality (Ignatow 2009). In contrast, the terms ethos and, particularly, eidos are unusual. Even when the term ethos appears it tends to retain its common meaning (usage) and remains relatively untheorized (Wolff 1998). The
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