Sample Chapter for Hampshire, S.: Justice Is Conflict.

http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s6721.html

In many essential respects the metaethical theory I have been assuming
is close to Hume's: that opinions about substantial justice and the
other virtues arise from, and are explained by, natural and widespread
human sentiments greatly modified by very variable customs and social
histories. But in the classical tradition, Hume still believed that
humanity has a tendency toward a consensus in its moral sentiments.
After he has dismissed the claims of reason to guarantee general
agreement in morality, he reintroduced the goal of harmony and
consensus through the idea of a constant human nature governing our
sentiments and sympathies. I have been arguing that the diversity and
divisiveness of languages and of cultures and of local loyalties is
not a superficial but an essential and deep feature of human
nature--both unavoidable and desirable--and rooted in our divergent
imaginations and memories. More fundamentally, our stronger sentiments
are exclusive and immediately lead to competition and conflict,
because our memories, and with them our imagination, are focused upon
particular persons, particular inherited languages, particular places,
particular social groups, particular rituals and religions, and
particular tones of voice; and hence our stronger loyalties are
similarly focused. We want to serve and to reinforce the particular
institutions that protect us, and to extend their power and influence
at the expense of their rivals.
---SPSmith