Theorising Morality: Assembling the Intellectual Resources

Abstract

This chapter assembles some of the intellectual resources to introduce, explore critically and theorise the moral. To pursue this task it is necessary to allude to a rich compendium of philosophical ethics; theological and Christological insights; the doctrine of personalism; psychoanalysis and symbolic ethics. Furthermore, after considering politico-economic and moral conditions before and after the great transformation of the late-18th century, specific references to moral economy are introduced before turning briefly to social theory.