Book review of Maxine Sheets-Johnstone’s The Roots of Morality

Abstract

The Roots of Morality is Maxine Sheets-Johnstone's third book in a trio of Roots… books. The first was the The Roots of Thinking (1990), and the second The Roots of Power: Animate Form and Gendered Bodies (1994). Like her other work, The Roots of Morality makes use of an unusually wide range of sources and philosophical perspectives. The aim of the book is to elucidate 'an understanding of morality grounded in the nature of human nature'. To achieve this, Sheets-Johnstone seeks to examine the 'fundamental realities of human nature' and to articulate a 'foundation- alist morality'—a framework that identifies and explores 'pan-cultural aspects of human existence' (p.1). The book is divided into two parts with the first focused on what is usually considered the 'dark side of human nature'. Topics in this part include power, death, 'real male-male competition' and evil. The book moves in part II to discuss what is usually considered the more 'positive side' of human nature; the chapters focus on empathy, child' sp lay, trust and caring. The book also contains a detailed Prologue in which Sheets-Johnstone examines the challenge of 'grounding' the moral sense by discussing the Humean background to contemporary accounts of sympathy, selfishness and the nature and role of affect more generally. It also frames the culture/nature distinction in terms of mythology and religion, patriarchal symbolism, contemporary Western science and pan-cultural practices of war. The book ends with an Epilogue in which a form of moral naturalism is outlined; one that tries to provide an account of morality which is interdependent with social-psychological approaches to human nature. At over 400 pages long, the book is a sustainedand compellingaccount offundamental andmorally vital aspects of subjectivity, intersubjectivity and human nature. The book advocates and is itself a rare example of genuinely interdisciplinary research. It is relevant to philosophers with interests in a number of areas, as well as psychologists, anthropologists and others. According to Sheets-Johnstone: 'A universal morality must necessarily rest on universal foundations; that is, it must logically derive from what is pan-cultural'