Anthropology as Ethics

T. M. S. (Terry) Evens is Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and received his Ph.D. at the University of Manchester in 1971. He has held visiting appointments at the University of Chicago, the Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, the University of Calcutta, and Asmara University, Eritrea. He is author of Two Kinds of Rationality: Kibbutz Democracy and Generational Conflict (1995), and co-editor of the collections, Transcendence in Society: Case Studies (1990) and The Manchester School: Practice and Ethnographic Praxis in Anthropology (2006). Drawn especially to theory and phenomenology, he has sought from the beginnings of his professional career to isolate, identify, and critically explore philosophical underpinnings of empirical anthropology.

• AcknowledgmentsOrganization and Key UsagesIntroduction: Nondualism, Ontology, and AnthropologyPART I: THE ETHNOGRAPHIC SELF: THE SOCIO-POLITICAL PATHOLOGY OF MODERNITYChapter 1. Anthropology and the Synthetic a Priori: Wittgenstein and Merleau-PontyChapter 2. Blind Faith and the Binding of Isaac—the AkedahChapter 3. Excursus I: Sacrifice as Human ExistenceChapter 4. Counter-Sacrifice and Instrumental Reason—the HolocaustChapter 5. Bourdieu’s Anti-dualism and “Generalized Materialism”Chapter 6. Habermas’s Anti-dualism and “Communicative Rationality”PART II: THE ETHNOGRAPHIC OTHER: THE ETHICAL OPENNESS OF ARCHAIC UNDERSTANDINGChapter 7. Technological Efficacy, Mythic Rationality, and Non-contradictionChapter 8. Epistemic Efficacy, Mythic Rationality, and Non-contradictionChapter 9. Contradiction and Choice among the Dinka and in GenesisChapter 10. Contradiction in Azande Oracular Practice and in Psychotherapeutic InteractionPART III: FROM MYTHIC TO VALUE-RATIONALITY: TOWARD ETHICAL GAINChapter 11. Epistemic and Ethical GainChapter 12. Transcending Dualism and Amplifying ChoiceChapter 13. Excursus II: What Good, Ethics?Chapter 14. Anthropology and the Generative Primacy of Moral OrderConclusion: Emancipatory Selfhood and Value-RationalityNotes ReferencesIndex

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