Paper short abstract:

Moral issues can be considered from three vantage points: the first is prescriptive, the second descriptive and the third ascriptive. The prescriptive view claims that certain principles ought to guide human behaviour. The descriptive view is a ‘view from nowhere’. It can be found in the historical and social-scientific study of morality. The ascriptive perspective hypothesises that certain human qualities—for example, the ability to put oneself in someone else’s shoes—provide the bedrock for morality. What is the relationship between the three perspectives on morality? Can either (or some or all) of them supply a moral voice and vision for anthropology?