Masolo takes as his starting point a dinnertime discussion between two teenagers on the role of tradition, a discussion that led into a debate on the merits of the idea of autonomous reason. The author was struck by their cosmopolitan multiculturalism and by the transient nature of the communities from which people source their points of view, allowing them to question the rationality of opposing views. This article expands such theoretical concerns and applies them to an assessment of Kant’s culture-free moral principles against a communitarian view of the resources of reason.
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