Abstract

The project of inquiring into the history of our morals is premised upon the idea that some of our deeply held moral convictions might have emerged through a complicated historical process, rather than, say, through a process of rational deliberation. Were that the case, our philosophical efforts to properly understand our present moral conceptions, as well as our efforts to criticize them, would certainly profit from serious attention to the history of our morals. Jesse Prinz notes, however, that there are several different genealogical methods we could employ in pursuit of this project of historicizing morals.1 Prinz focuses upon three such methods—utilitarian genealogies (such as the ones offered by...