Blame 3
Virtue Ethics and the Morality System
Topoi 43 (2): 413–424. 2024. With Marcel van Ackeren. doi:10.1007/s11245-023-09964-9
Shows that “morality systems” in Williams’s sense are not confined to Kantian ethics, but are characterized by the organizing ambition to shelter human agency from contingency. Argues that this ambition and the reconceptualization of human psychology it draws on can be traced back to Stoicism.
ethics, moral luck, morality system, moral psychology, blame, normativity
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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 Self-Effacing Functionality of Blame
Philosophical Studies 178 (4): 1361–1379. 2021. doi:10.1007/s11098-020-01479-y
Introduces the concept of “self-effacing functionality” to reconcile two opposing views on blame. While blame serves an important regulatory function, this very functionality requires that it be justified by non-instrumental moral reasons rather than by its functionality. This approach preserves the insights of instrumentalist accounts while vindicating the authority of our moral reasons for blame.
blame, moral psychology, ethics, functionality, normativity, justification
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