Ethics of Belonging: A Dialogue with the Major Ethical Traditions

This article develops the Ethics of Belonging within the broader framework of the Philosophy of Belonging formulated by Carlos Federico Obregón Díaz. It argues that morality and justice are grounded in the biological, emotional, and evolutionary need to belong, integrating insights from psychology, neurobiology, anthropology, and institutional economics. The paper places the ethics of belonging in systematic dialogue with major ethical traditions—Kantian deontology, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, care ethics, recognition theories, and Marxism—showing how it overcomes the classical dilemma between abstract universalism and relativism. Instead of starting from an isolated autonomous subject, the work proposes a relational ontology summarized in the thesis “to be is to belong,” from which emerges a scientific foundation of ethics centered on the protection, integration, and repair of human belongings. Conceptually, the study articulates the chain: belonging → social ethics → justice, defining justice as the institutional organization that safeguards dignified belongings and prevents exclusion. The article also introduces the notion of the emotional belonging self and the autonomy of belonging as a reformulation of freedom beyond methodological individualism. Overall, the paper contributes to contemporary debates in moral philosophy, political theory, and interdisciplinary ethics by offering an original relational and scientifically grounded alternative to individualistic and purely rationalist ethical frameworks, with implications for institutional design, social cohesion, and the crisis of justice in fragmented societies.