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This chapter contemplates the broader themes and implications of this work and constructs a new theory of moral choice. Most existing theories designed to guide moral behavior and examine the ethical acts of others fail to adequately capture what appeared in this volume's analysis to be the critical importance of psychological factors. The chapter thus proposes a new, empirically based identity theory of moral choice. It sketches the outlines of this theory and how it was derived from empirical analysis. The chapter then notes important literature in a wide range of fields, from linguistics and cognitive science to primate behavior and neuroscience, which offers scientific underpinnings for the theory. Finally, the chapter suggests how this theory can usefully help us understand other forms of ethical political behavior.

This concluding chapter presents some thoughts about the implications of this study for the overall understanding of ethics, moral psychology, and other works on prejudice and genocide. It reveals how events in the author's personal life influenced her work and how she was, in turn, changed by it, leading her to view the world differently, and making her aware of limitations in the traditional approaches to the discipline as well as heightening her commitment to interdisciplinary work and methodological pluralism in the search for fresher approaches to studying the normative bases of politics. In returning to these themes, the chapter reviews what has been learned about altruism, moral choice, and the psychology surrounding the ethics of difference.

This chapter reflects on the curious puzzle of how identity can influence moral choice, and why. In so doing the chapter discusses the background context within which this volume operates, as it traces an initial intellectual objective of explaining the psychology of genocide to an exploration of how the themes found in the Holocaust resonate with other periods of genocide, other instances of ethnic cleansing, other acts of prejudice, discrimination and group hatred, and animosity, just as they resonate with other instances of compassion, heroic altruism, and moral courage. The psychological forces at work during the Holocaust, this chapter argues, partake of the same political psychology underlying other political acts driven by identity. From here, the chapter develops a new theory of moral choice to tackle these issues and gives a brief overview of the succeeding chapters.

This chapter connects the two poles of conscious moral choice: the personal felt quality and conceptual implications. This continues the work of the previous chapters and further undermines the seductive image of ethics as centering on lone individuals making decisions for decontextualized cases that can be considered in isolation from those they would make in any other cases. It is shown that any morality, no matter how idiosyncratic, is implicitly a social morality; and that this has further implications. It requires that morality should apply irrespective of persons. It also requires a central role for general rules.

This chapter continues the discussion on the fragility of moral choices. A heightened moral awareness is the ideal, but the road to it is seen by ordinary people to lie in the consistent effort of self-improvement through attention to the proper (culturally defined) conduct of life. This is the process of maturation discussed in Chapter 1 in the context of the notion of the good life as Kashmiri Brahmans entertain it. While the pitfalls of making moral choices in a spirit of or hubris are recognized in Hindu culture, the importance of bringing what one desires under the control of what one ought to prefer is also stressed. In fact, the two perspectives are seen as mutually reinforcing rather than as contradictory. The moral effort involved is great, but failing to make the endeavour causes suffering. The theme of suffering, and of preparation for death, which are of central importance in Indian (Buddhist, Jaina, Hindu) worldviews, are introduced.

Kristen Monroe analyses the Rudolphs’ innovative use of political psychology in their study of identity, political leadership, and the consequences of perception for political action. She draws inspiration from the Rudolphs’ work on Gandhi to develop the concept of ‘moral imagination’, or the capacity to empathize with other people’s lives in ways that recast moral issues in a light that leads to innovative solutions to moral problems. Moral imagination plays a crucial role in explaining altruism and heroism. Conversely, people’s capacity to dehumanize others is an important cause of terrorism and genocide. Monroe’s analysis underscores the importance of emotions in shaping: peoples’ perceptions, moral choices, and political action. She advocates moving beyond mechanical models of ‘scientific’ explanation and developing a humanistic social science that leaves us open to surprises resulting from the innovatively creative behaviour of our fellow human beings.

This chapter offers what is essentially a kind of thought-experiment in which we might begin to see how what we have been reading in Kierkegaard might help inform actual situations of moral and personal choice and help us live good, or at least better, lives. It presents three examples, two of which come from one of the darkest episodes of modern history, whilst the third is taken from fiction. The issues in these examples invite us to ponder what it might mean to be complicit in crimes against humanity and how we might decide the limits of criminal culpability.

The rise of scientific determinism in the nineteenth century prompted English and American novelists to examine the possibility of moral motivation in a universe governed by impersonal forces. This “Reflection” considers how the American writer Theodore Dreiser, who along with many naturalist writers was influenced by evolutionary and mechanistic theories of behavior, portrays in his novel Sister Carrie a moment of moral choice: the moment when George Hurstwood wavers about whether to steal a large sum of money from his employers, only to have the decision made for him when the safe door swings shut. Although Hurstwood’s motivation is rendered irrelevant by a law of physics, Dreiser represents his internal struggle with great detail and urgency, suggesting that despite nature’s indifference to our moral beliefs, literature can and should represent the ways we imagine ourselves to be moral agents.

As business decisions and actions spill over into society in ways that arouse our concern, it is useful to explore how philosophy might offer an alternative perspective to consequentialism. This chapter reviews the conventional approach and the risks of “maximizing.” It submits that the narrowly consequential approach provides us with practical reasons for action but neglects normative or moral reasoning. Reasons for doing might be based on rational choice, but reasons for being (existential reasons) and feeling (sentimental reasons) are guided by moral choice. That these last two may not be “commensurable” does not make them less important. Treating everything as tradable with everything else may be bad for the soul and society. We have moral reasons to feel and to be certain ways, as well as to do certain things. It is time to pay greater heed to Jim March’s long-standing challenge to consequentialist decision theories.

The chapter starts by presenting a simple model in which utility maximization is influenced not only by wealth-maximization, but also by an individual's desire to make the right moral choice. It then looks at the empirical evidence. The bulk of the discussion is on the class of experiments that is believed to measure pro-social preferences. The chapter then provides a summary of the most popular games of this type. It then looks at the extent of the differences between what is observed in laboratory experiments and what is seen in naturally occurring environments, and explores how these differences affect the generalizability of experimental results outside the lab. The chapter concludes that, just as is the case with naturally-occurring data, great caution is needed when attempting to generalize lab results out of sample.

This chapter examines how torture is employed to defend a political order that operates by denying practices condoned or carried out by states and would-be states. To this end, it critiques work by Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, and Darius Rejali on torture. It also analyzes the Indian film Black Friday and martyrdom videotapes made by Muslim extremists, arguing that when torture becomes visible in media such as film it cannot be represented without throwing into question the integrity of modern institutions. Rather than seeing in torture’s supplementary character a demonstration of political rationality run wild—once it is unchained from the conventions and regulations that govern the behavior of states—the chapter contends that abuse actually illustrates the limits and anxieties of its dominion. By this account the legal conventions on torture should not be thought of as limiting political action, but instead as protecting its methods from such disruptive practices. The melodramatic role of moral choice in films about torture illustrates the possibility of life outside the regulative institutions of modern politics.

Alexander the Great and Jesus Christ are diametrically opposed. One lived a life of violence, the other shed his own blood for the sake of humanity. One was an agonistic and egotistic leader of men, the other walked selflessly and alone. One gained his victories in this world, the other is to do so in the next. The example set by Alexander inspired a fashion of self-divinization. The influence of this new-found fashion on the philosophy of religion is manifest in the famous theory of Euhemeros the Messenian, who argued that Ouranos, Kronos, and Zeus had all once been humans, and that they were deified as a reward for their benefactions to mankind. Yet there are also many memes shared by both Jesus and Alexander, including Divine sonship, dual paternity, virgin birth, moral choice in the face of temptation, world rule, mission for the benefit of humankind, death at a young age before the mission is complete and, finally, apotheosis.

This chapter introduces the work of al-Saqr by focusing on al-Shati‘ al-thani (‘The Other Shore’, 1998), the novel in which the author’s style and narrative techniques reached maturity. The chapter offers a technical analysis of such formal features, and focuses especially on how different types of dialogue are manipulated to depict the moral dilemmas and choices of the hero. Al-Shati‘ al-thani is also noteworthy as, unlike most other works analysed in this book, it is not set in the Iraqi capital, but in the author’s native city, Basra.

This essay utilizes the work of British cultural historian E.P. Thompson and German sociologist Max Weber to unpack the “moral economy” of superheroism and, by association, supervillainy. Although not primarily concerned with villain characters, it contributes to our discussion about moral choices in superhero/villain texts, choices that often lead the subjects of such texts to reject what is “legal” for what is “right.”

Magneto, the Master of Metal, perhaps the most compelling villain in comics, asks a great deal of us as readers: how do we proceed when the means justify the end? Is Magneto morally justified when he intends to kill humans in exchange for killing and hurting mutants? He does not see his actions as evil nor view himself as a villain.