Parr Center Presents: Keshav Singh (University of Alabama at Birmingham), “Oneness and the Foundations of Ethics”

The “why be moral?” question is one of the most recalcitrant of the foundational questions of ethics. If it is ever outside our self-interest to act morally, then what reason do we have to do so? In this talk, I suggest that the recalcitrance of the “why be moral?” question comes from a tension between two features of Western Enlightenment thought: moral universalism and strong individualism. Drawing on the Sikh philosophical tradition, I argue that the “why be moral?” question becomes much simpler and easier to answer if we reject the Western assumption that there is a fundamental separation between individuals in favor of a view on which there is a fundamentaloneness to all of us. Thus, insofar as we care about accounting for a universally binding morality, moral philosophers should question the strong individualism of Western thought and take a framework of oneness more seriously.