This talk by Mairaj Syed (UC Davis) explores why religious ethical traditions should be studied not only descriptively but also as normative resources for constructive inquiry. In the secular academy, explicit normative engagement is often confined to philosophy departments. This raises a critical question: why should the study of ethics—especially religious and non-Western systems—be limited to descriptive approaches in other disciplines?

Situating this question within ongoing and unresolved methodological debates about the purpose of humanistic inquiry in the modern and postmodern Western intellectual tradition, the talk examines how decolonial and Global South perspectives challenge these paradigms. As the demand for ethical frameworks beyond the Western paradigm grows, this talk argues that embracing normative inquiry allows religious ethics to more effectively address the moral challenges of our time.”

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