“If the basic principles of existing communities really embodied a decent approximation of the way people should think about themselves and treat one another, then such approaches to morality might get things at least approximately right. But as long as the truth remains closer to the reverse of this – as long as our societies remain massive scenes of oppression, injustice, and corruption – moral philosophy does better by encouraging us to alienate ourselves from the ethical life of our existing communities and instead to take as a fundamental a purely rational deliberative standpoint.”
Allen Wood
