This article provides an overview of the procedure and methods of moral sociology that are based on both an ethnophilosophy of common social existence and a natural anthropology. The first part of the text locates moral sociology within the contemporary development of empirical research on ethics, particularly in the field of experimental and evolutionistic psychology. The second part depicts some elements of a theory of motivated dependences on pleasures and rewards, which draws on the contribution of neurosciences of addiction and on field research on addictive behaviors and recovery attempts. The third part illustrates the method by featuring a recent research on love addiction, based primarily on a literary and cinematographic corpus.
Empirical ethics; Ethnophilosophy; Love dependence; Addictive behavior