University of Cape Town

In this presentation, I introduce the project that I am leading in the study of religion, ethics and morality. I situate these questions in the history of the study of religions, arguing that ethics and morality were progressively removed from the major theories and definitions of religions. In particular, the major theories from Schleiermacher to Chidester did not put ethics and morality in the centre of their reflections. A recent revival in the study of ethics in anthropology has inherited an approach to ethics that vacillates between Kant and James.