Chapter 3: Materialist Ethics and Mainstream Western Philosophy

This chapter establishes empirically that the human bioform’s behavioral and reproductive survival is not possible unless certain basic norms are in place, namely respect for equality in community membership and forbearance. These values are integral to the strong version of the inseparability thesis, which asserts the idea of the individual as a socially embedded creature on the basis of equality. The principle of forbearance is its corollary and incorporates the idea of non-interference with the former principle. These two precepts constitute the minimum moral content for the fully comprehensive materialist theory of justice presented in Chap. 5 . The two precepts are tested under the existing Western philosophical record in light of (1) Aristotle’s theory of virtue and his political theory, (2) the political theory of Thomas Hobbes, (3) the naturalist epistemologies of John Finnis and Thomas Aquinas, (4) Immanuel Kant’s moral and political theories as well as his anthropological naturalism, (5) the major tenets of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, represented by Axel Honneth and Jürgen Habermas, (6) the social and ethical theory of John Dewey, (7) the theory of social meaning of George Meade, (8) the major tenets of communitarian philosophy, represented by Michael Sandel, (9) Michael Walzer’s theory of “spheres” of justice, and (10) Martha Nussbaum’s approaches to human dignity and human rationality.