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ROBINSON, Daniel N. Praise and Blame: Moral Realism and Its Application. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. xi + 225 pp. Paper, $29.95-Robinson brings to his defense of moral realism credentials in both philosophy and psychology, honed over a lifetime of learning. The former chairman of the Psychology Department and Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of Georgetown University, he is currently a Member of the Philosophy Faculty, Oxford University, and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University. At once at home in classical antiquity and contemporary Anglo-American philosophy, Robinson has among his many published works books entitled Aristotle's Psychology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), Intellectual History of Psychology (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), Psychology and Law: Can Justice Survive the Social Sciences (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), and Wild Beasts and Idle Humors: The Insanity Defense from Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).
Robinson defends "moral realism" against the backdrop of moral relativism, which he believes has cultural implications throughout the West. The moral realist by definition believes that moral questions are questions about reality and as such are subject to morally objective correct answers. By contrast, the moral relativist judges in the light of an ever-changing cultural context in which moral judgments are made. Social and hereditary predispositions color the relativist judgment, not time-transcending principles. Without denying the role of context Robinson argues that one has to acknowledge the difference between how a right answer is reached and...