One Morality or many? Liberal morality and Socialist morality; bourgeois morality and Georges Sorel's “morality of producers”; Protestant morality and Catholic; Greek morality and Christian; “aristocratic” morality and “slave” morality, “open” morality and “closed” morality—what, if any, is the relevance of such distinctions as these to moral philosophy?

Why is it that for many people questions of sexual behavior are the quintessential moral questions, while for others they are at the periphery of serious moral inquiry? Such a difference of opinion undoubtedly reflects substantive moral disagreement, but might also reflect different conceptions of what morality is about. Probably it reflects both sorts of differences, and both will receive attention in this article.

It is a matter for both surprise and disappointment that so little has been written from a philosophical perspective about the moral tradition enshrined in Europe''s oldest living literature, the Icelandic sagas. The main purpose of the present essay is to start to ameliorate this shortcoming by analysing and assessing the moral code bequeathed to us by the saga literature. To do so, I draw attention to the striking similarities between saga morality and what tends to be called an (...) ''ancient moral outlook'' (with special reference to Aristotle''s much-maligned virtue of megalopsychia) and then try to defend the credentials of both outlooks in so far as they clash, or seem to clash, with certain aspects of a ''modern moral outlook.''. (shrink)

In this work, originally published in 1986, Victor Seidler explores the different notions of respect, equality and dependency in Kant’s moral writings. He illuminates central tensions and contradictions not only within Kant’s moral philosophy, but within the thinking and feeling about human dignity and social inequality which we take very much for granted within a liberal moral culture. In challenging our assumption of the autonomy of morality, Seidler also questions our understanding of what it means for someone to (...) live as a person in his or her own right. The autonomy of individuals cannot be assumed but has to be reasserted against relationships of subordination. This involves a break with a rationalist morality, so that respect for others involves respect for emotions, feelings, desires and needs, and establishes a fuller autonomy as a basis for freedom and justice. (shrink)

Getting What You Want? offers a critique of liberal morality and an analysis of its understanding of the individual as a 'wanting thing'.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Concept of Neutrality Liberal Moral Neutrality Liberal Political Neutrality The Implications of Liberal Political Neutrality Notes.

Bob Brecher claims that it is wrong to think that morality is simply rooted in what people want. Brecher explains that in our consumerist society, we make the assumption that getting "what people want" is our natural goal, and that this goal is usually a good one. We see that whether it is a matter of pornography or getting married--if people want it, then that's that. But is this really a good thing? Getting What You Want offers a critique (...) of liberal morality and an analysis of its understanding of the individual as a wanting thing. Brecher boldly argues that the Anglo-American liberalism cannot give an adequate account of moral reasoning and action, or any justification of moral principles or demands. (shrink)

In a recent study appearing in Neuroethics, I reported observing 11 significant correlations between the “Dark Triad” personality traits – Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psychopathy – and “conservative” judgments on a 17-item Moral Intuition Survey. Surprisingly, I observed no significant correlations between the Dark Triad and “liberal” judgments. In order to determine whether these results were an artifact of the particular issues I selected, I ran a follow-up study testing the Dark Triad against conservative and liberal judgments on 15 (...) additional moral issues. The new issues examined include illegal immigration, abortion, the teaching of “intelligent design” in public schools, the use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the war on terrorism, laws defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and environmentalism. 1154 participants (680 male, 472 female; median age 29), recruited online through Amazon Mechanical Turk, completed three surveys: a 15-item Moral Intuition Survey (MIS), the 28-item Short Dark Triad personality inventory, and a five-item demographic survey. The results strongly reinforce my earlier findings. Twenty-two significant correlations were observed between “conservative” judgments and the Dark Triad (all of which were significant past a Bonferonni-corrected significance threshold of p = .0008), compared to seven significant correlations between Dark Triad and “liberal” judgments (only one of which was significant past p = .0008). This article concludes by developing a novel research proposal for determining whether the results of my two studies are “bad news” for conservatives or liberals. (shrink)

By examining the range of factors pressing on medical professionals faced with a decision in a case of late-term abortion, it becomes apparent that the theological resources ruled out of bounds by the standard account can be considered an essential part of a truly liberating and properly supple moral account of medical decision-making. Close attention to the social, political and legal context of contemporary medicine reveals that the standard account of medical ethics, Principles of Biomedical Ethics by Beauchamp and Childress, (...) despite its universalist aspirations, disempowers rather than empowers moral decision-making by medical professionals. (shrink)

Maria Morales’s striking and thought-provoking argument in Perfect Equality is that John Stuart Mill’s egalitarianism unifies his practical philosophy and that this element of his thought has been neglected in recent revisionary scholarship. Placing Mill’s arguments for the substantive value of “perfect equality” in The Subjection of Women at the center of her analysis, Morales develops a distinctive interpretation of Mill as an egalitarian liberal. Morales also aims to counter many recent communitarian critiques of liberalism as founded upon a (...) conception of the self as atomistic and individualistic. Like other Mill scholars, Morales sees Mill’s liberalism as an appealing alternative to the dominant Rawlsian theory, and she offers Mill’s approach as a response to “the still popular view that liberalism is structurally incompatible with a rich conception of the human good, particularly with a substantive commitment to equality”. Mill’s theory is not “doggedly individualistic,” and it rejects the model of liberal social life as atomistic and abstract. The well-constituted communities of the title are based upon “sympathetic, cooperative, and egalitarian values”. (shrink)

Since the establishment of the Human Genome Project and the identification of genes in human DNA that play a role in human diseases and disorders, a long, moral and political, battle has began over the extension of IPRs to information contained in human genetic material. According to the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, over the past 20 years, large numbers of human genes have been the subject of thousands of patent applications. This paper examines whether human gene patents can be justified (...) in terms of liberal theories of morality such as natural law, personality development, just reward and social utility. It is argued that human gene patents are in conflict with fundamental principles of liberal morality and justice because they result in "genetic information feudalism". (shrink)

I INTRODUCTION: RESPECT, EQUALITY AND THE AUTONOMY OF MORALITY We often invoke a notion of respect to express our sense of human equality. ...

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. In this introduction, we first give a brief overview of the debate over multiculturalism in political theory. We then situate Alan Patten’s Equal Recognition in that context by highlighting his major normative thesis, according to which there are reasons of principle, in a liberal democracy, to grant special forms of public recognition and accommodation to cultural minorities. Finally, we present a succinct summary of the nine articles that follow (...) this introduction and that critically engage with Patten’s arguments. (shrink)

This paper takes issue with the exemplarist strategy of fostering virtue development with the specific goal of improving its applicability in the context of education. I argue that, for what matters educationally, we have good reasons to endorse a liberal account of moral exemplarity. Specifically, I challenge two key assumptions of Linda Zagzebski’s Exemplarist Moral Theory (2017), namely that moral exemplars are exceptionally virtuous agents and that imitating their behavior is the main strategy for acquiring the virtues. I will (...) introduce and discuss the notions of enkratic exemplars and injustice illuminators and show that we have good reasons to consider them moral exemplars although they fail to satisfy (either of) the key assumptions. (shrink)

_Moral Politics_ takes a fresh look at how we think and talk about political and moral ideas. George Lakoff analyzed recent political discussion to find that the family—especially the ideal family—is the most powerful metaphor in politics today. Revealing how family-based moral values determine views on diverse issues as crime, gun control, taxation, social programs, and the environment, George Lakoff looks at how conservatives and liberals link morality to politics through the concept of family and how these ideals diverge. (...) Arguing that conservatives have exploited the connection between morality, the family, and politics, while liberals have failed to recognized it, Lakoff explains why conservative moral position has not been effectively challenged. A wake up call to political pundits on both the left and the right, this work redefines how Americans think and talk about politics. (shrink)

Moral disengagement was initially conceptualized as a process through which people reconstrue unethical behaviors, with the effect of deactivating self-sanctions and thereby clearing the way for ethical transgressions. Our article challenges how researchers now conceptualize moral disengagement. The current literature is overly liberal, in that it mixes two related but distinct constructs—process moral disengagement and the propensity to morally disengage—creating ambiguity in the findings. It is overly conservative, as it adopts a challengeable classification scheme of “four points in moral (...) self-regulation” and perpetuates defining moral disengagement via a set of eight psychological mechanisms, narrowing our understanding of the phenomenon. To address these problems, we propose to define process moral disengagement intensionally (specifying the necessary and sufficient conditions for correct application of the term) as intrapsychic cognitive reasoning processes through which people selectively reconstrue a moral judgment “behavior B by actor A is morally wrong” and shift it toward becoming “behavior B is not morally wrong” or “actor A is not responsible for behavior B.” This definition achieves disambiguation and increased concept clarity. We leverage the definition to motivate a classification scheme for psychological mechanisms of moral disengagement along two dimensions—reconstruing morality and reconstruing agency—and to initiate an open inventory of psychological mechanisms that specify how process moral disengagement operates. (shrink)

Moral foundations research suggests that liberals care about moral values related to individual rights such as harm and fairness, while conservatives care about those foundations in addition to caring more about group rights such as loyalty, authority, and purity. However, the question remains about how conservatives and liberals differ in relation to group-level moral principles. We used two versions of the moral foundations questionnaire with the target group being either abstract or specific ingroups or outgroups. Across three studies, we observed (...) that liberals showed more endorsement of Individualizing foundations with an outgroup target, while conservatives showed more endorsement of Binding foundations with an ingroup target. This general pattern was found when the framed, target-group was abstract and when target groups were specified about a general British-ingroup and an immigrant-outgroup. In Studies 2 and 3, both Individualizing-Ingroup Preference and Binding-Ingroup Preference scores predicted more Attitude Bias and more Negative Attitude Bias toward immigrants, more Implicit Bias, and more Perceived Threat from immigrants. We also demonstrated that increasing liberalism was associated with less Attitude Bias and less Negative Bias toward immigrants, less Implicit Bias, and less Perceived Threat from immigrants. Outgroup-individualizing foundations and Ingroup-Binding foundations showed different patterns of mediation of these effects. (shrink)

In recent decades, the discipline of bioethics has grown rapidly, as has the practice of ethical consultation. Interestingly, this new recognition of the relevance of moral philosophy to our daily life has been accompanied by skepticism among philosophers regarding the existence of moral expertise or the benefits of philosophical training. In his recent article in Bioethics, William R. Smith suggested that this skepticism is rooted in philosophers' belief that moral expertise is inconsistent with liberal–democratic values, when in fact they (...) are compatible. In this paper, we provide a unique opportunity to empirically examine Smith's observation by utilizing and extending global data on philosophers' beliefs about moral expertise, involving 4087 philosophers from 96 countries. Our findings support Smith's theoretical observation and show that societal levels of support for liberal–democratic values are associated with greater skepticism about moral expertise. We suggest that these findings might be explained by the cognitive process of motivated reasoning and an invalid inference of “is” from “ought.” Consequently, the potential tension between moral expertise and liberal–democratic values is invalidly used for rejecting the existence of moral expertise, while its main and valid implication is for how moral expertise should be applied in liberal–democratic settings. (shrink)

The moral right to liberal education involves issues of distribution and of content. The former issue bears on the distribution of educational resources. The latter issue bears on the issue of multiculturalism. Both issues are discussed from the standpoint of equal rights.

Departing from the usual discussions of public morality, and considering the moral interests of the community as a whole, this book is a contribution to this intensely debated theme and considers how public morality can be justified in theory and accommodated in practice in a liberal society.

Wendy Donner contends here that recent commentators on John Stuart Mill's thought have focused on his notions of right and obligation and have not paid as much attention to his notion of the good. Mill, she maintains, rejects the quantitative hedonism of Bentham's philosophy in favor of an expanded qualitative version. In this book she provides an account of his complex views of the good and the ways in which these views unify his moral and political thought.

In _The_ _Morality of Everyday Life_, Thomas Fleming offers an alternative to the enlightened liberalism espoused by thinkers as different as Kant, Mill, Rand, and Rawls. Philosophers in the liberal tradition, although they disagree on many important questions, agree that moral and political problems should be looked at from an objective point of view and a decision made from a rational perspective that is universally applied to all comparable cases. Fleming instead places importance on the particular, the local, and (...) moral complexity. He advocates a return to premodern traditions, such as those exemplified in the texts of Aristotle, the Talmud, and the folk wisdom in ancient Greek literature, for a solution to ethical predicaments. In his view, liberalism and postmodernism ignore the fact that human beings by their very nature refuse to live in a world of universal abstractions. While such modern philosophers as Kant and Kohlberg have regarded a mother’s self-sacrificing love for her children as beneath their level of morality, folk wisdom tells us it is nearly the highest morality, taking precedence over the duties of citizenship or the claims of humanity. Fleming believes that a modern type of “casuistry” should be applied to these moral conflicts in which the line between right and wrong is rarely clear. This volume will appeal to students of ethics and classics, as well as the general educated reader, who will appreciate Fleming’s jargon-free prose. Teachers will find this text useful because each chapter is a self-contained essay that could be used as the basis for classroom discussion. (shrink)

Grenville Wall; Moral Autonomy and the Liberal Theory of Moral Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 8, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 222–236, htt.

This paper looks at the case of moral philosophy in order to assess the extent to which and ways in which teacher education should respond to the liberal principle of justification. This principle states that moral and political decisions made by citizens with special kinds of influence and other coercive powers should be accountable to other citizens on the basis of good reasons. To what extent should teachers, who are empowered by the state with such special kinds of influence, (...) be held accountable to this principle and what kind of education is needed in order to prepare teachers for such accountability? Moral philosophy stands as an informative test case because it expressly deals in the justification of judgements and actions and so it stands to reason that arguments for moral philosophy in teacher education are likely to appeal to educational values that dovetail with demands of this principle. I first identify some preliminary criteria under which activities are understood to be educationally worthwhile in the context of the broader principle of justification. I then argue that the justificatory obligations incurred by liberal citizens who adopt the role of teacher not only allow for, but also require, moral philosophy as an activity in programmes of teacher education. (shrink)

Grenville Wall; Moral Autonomy and the Liberal Theory of Moral Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 8, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 222–236, htt.

In diesem Beitrag wird die These vertreten, daß die gegenwärtig herrschende liberal-egalitaristische idealistische Doktrin eine verzerrte Darstellung der liberalen politischen Ethik liefert. Diese idealistisch-theoretische Verzerrung kann erhebliche praktische Konsequenzen haben, insbesondere im Kontext des idealistisch-theoretischen Denkens über die Probleme globaler Gerechtigkeit. Aus einer globalen Perspektive betrachtet sind die idealistisch-theoretischen Verzerrungen der historisch entstandenen liberalen politischen Ethik in zweifacher Hinsicht gegeben. Zum einen überschätzt die liberal-egalitaristische idealistische Doktrin die substanzielle Reichweite der Universalisierungsanforderungen des Kontraktua-lismus. Zum anderen unterschätzt die Doktrin (...) die Bindungen, die liberal teleolo-gische Werte für die Verallgemeinbarkeit bedeuten. Der vorliegende Beitrag unterscheidet zwischen einer deontologischen und einer teleologischen Richtung innerhalb der idealistischen Doktrin. Außerdem werden die historisch erzeugten begrifflichen und substanziellen Bindungen innerhalb jeder der beiden Richtungen benannt, und es wird die These vertreten, daß global denkende liberale Egalitaristen diesen Bindungen ausweichen, a) indem sie die kontraktu-alistische Deontologie mit einer Naturrechts-Deontologie vermengen und b), indem sie die historische materialistische Konzeption eines aus liberaler Perspektive guten Lebens durch eine nicht-materialistische idealistisch-theoretische Variante ersetzen. Der Beitrag schließt mit der Frage, ob solche idealistisch-theoretischen Verzerrungen nicht möglicherweise die Propagierung einer politischen Ethik ermutigen könnten, die zumindest in bestimmter Hinsicht besonders ungeeignet ist, um als ein Modell für das Denken über globale Gerechtigkeit zu dienen. Wenn hier diese Bedenken erhoben werden, so bedeutet das nicht, in Abrede zu stellen, daß eine realistischer konzipierte liberale Ethik durchaus die einzige politisch lebensfähige, für diese Aufgabe verfügbare ist. The paper argues that currently dominant liberal-egalitarian ideal theory offers a distorted account of liberal political morality. These ideal-theoretical distortions may have grave practical consequences especially in the context of ideal-theoretical thinking about issues of global justice. Considered from a global perspective, ideal-theoretical distortions of historically evolved liberal political morality are twofold. First, liberal-egalitarian ideal theory overestimates the substantive reach of contractarianism"s universalisability requirements. Second, it underestimates the constraints upon universalisability imposed by liberal teleological values. The paper distinguishes between a deontological and a teleological strand within ideal theory. It specifies some of the historically engendered conceptual and substantive constraints within each strand and argues that global liberal-egalitarians evade these constraints a.) by conflating contractualist deontology with natural law deontology, and b.) by substituting the historically materialistic conception of the liberal good life with a non-materialistic ideal-theoretical variant. The paper concludes by asking whether such ideal theoretical distortions may not encourage the recommendation of a political morality that is at least in certain respect particularly ill-suited to serve as a model for thinking about global justice. Raising these worries is not to deny, however, that a more realistically conceived liberal morality may well be the only politically viable alternative available to this task. (shrink)

One of the most vexing problems in contemporary liberal democratic theory and practice is the relation between ethics and economics. This article presents a way of bringing this relation into focus in the terms offered by two incredibly influential but too-often neglected twentieth-century political philosophers: John Dewey and Friedrich Hayek. I describe important points of contact between Dewey and Hayek that enable us to begin the project of reframing contemporary debates between ethical egalitarians and economic libertarians. Cautiously recognizing these (...) commonalities whilst remaining attentive to persisting differences enables us to better approach the difficult relations between morals and markets. Specifically, I argue for a Deweyan combination of fair trade and free trade motivated by taking seriously a Hayekian caution about states. The result is a democratic theory that importantly refuses to attribute too much political efficacy to the quintessential liberal distinction between public and private. (shrink)

A brief review of the social and educational context of Hong Kong shows that the publication of the General guidelines on moral education in schools in 1981, by the Hong Kong Education Department, marked a milestone in the development of moral education. The Guidelines explicitly asserted moral education as one function of schooling, whilst also formally recognizing the home and the community as two main influences. This paper narrates how three moral sources of influence – namely Confucian‐parental, Christian‐religious and (...) class='Hi'>liberal‐civic – have shaped the development of moral education in Hong Kong from 1973 to 2003. It then examines in more detail: parental influence at home – the Confucian moral source in Chinese family; schooling influenced by religious sources – taking Christian schools as an example; and the Independent Commission Against Corruption as an official agency for moral education – a liberal source calling for civic morality. In conclusion, the post‐colonial emergence of nationalistic influence in the recently constituted Chinese Special Administrative Region, advocating national identity as the new core value, is traced and the implications for future moral education in Hong Kong are considered. (shrink)

This book expands the conversation on moral injury to include a more formal role for society in it. The author utilizes an interdisciplinary practical theology combining liberation theologies and cultural studies to interrogate how dominate ideologies can complicate moral injury reintegration among veterans.

Beginning with a wide-ranging discussion of liberal philosophers, Fairfield proposes that liberalism requires a complete reconception of moral selfhood, one that accommodates elements of the contemporary critiques without abandoning liberal individualism.

_The most complete picture to date of the moral worlds of the political left and right and how their different views relate to specific political issues_ The left and right will always have strong policy disagreements, but constructive debate and negotiation are not possible when each side demonizes the other. We need to move past our poisonous politics. In this book, social psychologist Ronnie Janoff-Bulman provides a new framework for understanding why and how we disagree. Janoff-Bulman asks readers to consider (...) the challenging possibility that both liberalism and conservatism are morally based and reflect genuine concern for the country. Moral psychology is an invaluable lens for understanding the roots of political differences. She presents a “Model of Moral Motives” that maps the most fundamental motivations recognized by psychology—approach and avoidance—onto these differences. Liberal morality focuses on providing for the group’s well-being and ensuring social justice. Conservative morality focuses on protecting the group from threats and preserving order. These moralities can account for the psychological differences between liberals and conservatives and for why certain positions resonate on each side of the political spectrum. Why, for example, do conservatives oppose abortion and favor unfettered free markets while liberals favor a woman’s right to choose and economic regulation? Understanding that our political differences are rooted in two natural forms of morality can help us begin to detoxify our politics. (shrink)