In his influential book examining ethics and social life, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory(1981), philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre relates a story about the Hawaiian Islands. British explorer and navigator James Cook became the first European to visit these islands in 1778. Cook was at once impressed and mystified by many of the cultural practices he encountered among the native populace whose origins were in Polynesia thousands of miles away in the south Pacific. Members of this seafaring people had discovered and settled the Hawaiian Islands years earlier, bringing with them their social customs, spiritual practices and moral prohibitions.

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