Abstract
The article addresses the role played by “moralized revulsion”, understood as the
emotional disgust we feel against individuals and social practices that we deem to
be the object of moral evaluation, from an evolutionist perspective. The first part
provides a general analysis of the emotion of revulsion and its triggers. Then, the
paper discusses two opposing positions regarding the reliability and instrumental value of revulsion in promoting “adequate” moral judgments and inciting to
moral action. It then proposes a reinterpretation of the problem from an evolutionist perspective, attempting to correlate the diverse value judgments promoted by
moralized revulsion with different adaptive strategies. Finally, it correlates those
strategies with liberal and conservative moral positions.