Agency 3
Moralism as a Dualism in Ethics and Politics
Political Philosophy 1 (2): 432–462. 2024. doi:10.16995/pp.17532
Argues that both moralism in ethics and political moralism originate from a problematic dualism that transforms the useful distinction between the moral and the non-moral into a rigid divide. As the historical comparison with ancient Greek thought shows, this obscures genuine conflicts of values and fails to adequately address complex political realities such as “dirty hands” situations.
ethics, political moralism, realism, conflicts of values, Hume, Bernard Williams
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A Shelter from Luck: The Morality System Reconstructed
In Morality and Agency: Themes from Bernard Williams. András Szigeti and Matthew Talbert (eds.), 184–211. New York: Oxford University Press. 2022. doi:10.1093/oso/9780197626566.003.0009
Offers a synthesis of Williams’s critical remarks on Kantian morality; the key idea is that modern morality strives to shelter life from luck.
agency, ethics, blame, moral luck, morality system, voluntariness
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The Essential Superficiality of the Voluntary and the Moralization of Psychology
Philosophical Studies 179 (5): 1591–1620. 2022. doi:10.1007/s11098-021-01720-2
Argues that the notion of the voluntary is an essentially superficial notion that does important work on the condition that we do not try to metaphysically deepen it, and that attempts to deepen it illustrate a problematic tendency to warp our conception of the mind under pressure from moral aspirations.
history, justice, moral psychology, agency, responsibility, philosophy of action
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