Ethics and the anthropology of modern reason

Abstract

In recent years, anthropologists have shown increasing interest in scientific, technical and administrative systems and their political regulation. In what follows, we suggest that a major concern in much of this work is a common interest in how, in relationship to these technical and political developments, ‘living’ has been rendered problematic. In the first part of this article, we suggest that these strands of anthropological investigation can be fruitfully analyzed by engaging the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, whose distinctive neo-Aristotelian approach has had an important influence on recent discussions of ethics in philosophy. In the second part of the article, we propose that the significance of this anthropological work lies not only in its descriptions of the specificities of local ethical formations, but also in its contribution to a broader understanding of what we propose to call ‘regimes of living’.