This submission has been removed because it is soapboxing, promotion of a political agenda, or moralizing. We don't allow content that does these things because they are detrimental to unbiased and academic discussion of history.
This only peripherally addresses your question, but "presentism" isn't just an ethical/moral approach - presentism is any application of contemporary assumptions to the past. For example, in my particular area, I often deal with nationalist presentism - that is, the assumption that people in the past saw themselves as members of cohesive nation-states just as most people do today.
This submission has been removed because it is soapboxing, promotion of a political agenda, or moralizing. We don't allow content that does these things because they are detrimental to unbiased and academic discussion of history.
In all of my studies in history and (more recently) archaeology, I've approached the subject of right and wrong, good and evil, with regards to my subject matter (whether that be the middle ages or Republican Rome) as frankly none of my business. As a historian, it isn't my job to judge past actions, only to posit the how, what, when, where, and if I'm feeling particularly ambitious/clever, the whys of a given event, trend, movement, or group of people.
While arguing over the compos mentis status of various historical figures is often entertaining (Caligula or Elagabalus spring immediately to mind), and discussing the actions of any historical figure or group of people is a paramount concern of many branches of history (especially in the 20th century, theory having moved away from the 'Big Man' in the last several decades), the objective rightness of these actions has little to no bearing on what I'm studying.
I would argue that making a moral judgement has become anathema to historians over the last century as it can (and does) lead to supremely terrible scholarship. I would also argue that describing any single individual as 'good' or 'evil' or any number of other moral adjectives is mostly harmless. It can be objectively argued that Vlad Tepes or Genghis Kahn were not particularly nice people, even by the standards of their own time (they were also, undoubtedly, effective).
Where we run into the pitfalls of moral judgement is when we ascribe these same adjectives to whole cultures. The practice of objective descriptiveness, I believe (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong) goes back to the rampant ethnocentrism present in much of the scholarship from the 19th and early 20th centuries, and is a reactionary move (and a positive one, in my opinion).
There are numerous examples throughout the ancient world of traditions which we would find today morally repugnant but which, when framed in the larger cosmological and societal framework of the time, were seen as both normal, and in some cases even necessary to the proper functioning of society - human sacrifice among various cultures springs to mind as the most obvious example. Our job, as historians and anthropologists and archaeologists, is not to judge these societies based on a 20th or 21st century moral rubric, it is to attempt to unravel the history and culture of ancient - or not so ancient - peoples.
We are not the arbiters of justice, and the past is not on trial. Ultimately, attempting to find an 'objective moral truth' as it applies to the past is counter-productive and has led to a lot of really bad history over the preceding century. Saying Caligula was an unpleasant chap to be around has a basis in historical 'fact' - most of the written sources were written by his detractors - and is at least somewhat reasonable. Stating that the Aztec, or the Romans, or any temporally foreign culture were 'good' or 'evil' or anywhere in between is both ethnocentric and wildly beyond our preview as social scientists or scholars of the humanities.
This response may have gotten away from me, but it's a question that fascinates me (I like to dabble in theory on occasion) and I hope I at least tangentially addressed what you were trying to get at, or was at the very least coherent. I'd cite particular theorists but this was rather off the cuff and it's not my area of expertise, I'm sure others have some recommendations they could make.
Edit: Having read some of your responses - especially that with regards to undergrads hand-waving morality - I'd argue that the average undergrad (depending on how far into their studies they are) doesn't have a particularly solid grasp of any of the various theories they're espousing - or at least i didn't, and I would consider myself a post-colonialist, although not a post-modernist necessarily.
"If one accepts that there is an ethical framework from which one can derive accurate moral statements" << this would be the crux of your whole approach, and its frankly rather baseless. 'Ethical frameworks' as you call them are human creations, not intrinsic natural entities. You cant divorce them from the humans which create or maintain them.
Not to mention that you seem to have a skewed view of Vlad Tepes.