The Influence of the Nature-Culture Dualism on Morality

This is an audio version of my new chapter with Justin Farrell in the new Handbook of the Sociology of Morality, V2 (2023) called "The Influence of the Nature-Culture Dualism on Morality." The new handbook was edited by Steven Hitlin, Shai M. Dromi, and Aliza Luft and is out from Springer-Verlag New York, LLC.

Abstract:

Nature and culture are perhaps the two most consistent moral categories in Western thought. And yet, despite their stability, what nature and culture represent within a given moral system varies widely. In this chapter, we argue that the nature-culture dualism (“NCD”) has a fundamental impact on the moral imagination of different societies, and that this relationship has been underappreciated by sociology. To illustrate our argument, we trace the evolution of nature-culture dualism (“NCD”) from Greek and Roman thought, through Medieval Christian thought, and into the Modern era, from which sociology emerged. We show how in each era different presuppositions are stabilized by metaphors that naturalize a particular nature-culture dualism and set of moral beliefs, first about how humans should treat nature, and second, about what type of society nature is telling humans to build. Moving forward, sociologists should pay closer attention to the nature-culture dualism, not only because it is analytically important but because moral imagination is impossible without it.