How can we rationally make peace with our past moral failings, while committing to avoid similar mistakes in the future? Is it because we cannot do anything about the past, while the future is still open? Or is it that regret for our past mistakes is psychologically harmful, and we need to forgive ourselves in order to be able to move on? Or is it because moral mistakes enable our moral growth? I argue that these and other (...) answers do not properly resolve the problem of temporal asymmetry in our attitudes toward moral imperfection, and I defend an alternative response, centered on our personal attachments and our biographical identity. (shrink)

Irony has a suspicious moral reputation, especially in popular media and internet culture. Jonathan Lear (2011) introduces a proposal which challenges this suspicion and identifies irony as a means to achieve human excellence. For Lear, irony is a disruptive uncanniness which arises from a gap between aspiration and actualisation in our practical identity. According to Lear, such a disruptive experience of ironic uncanniness reorients us toward excellence, because it passionately propels us to really live up to that practical identity. (...) However, Lear’s understanding of irony is idiosyncratic and his proposal overlooks that disruption often results from value incompatibility between different practical identities. The disruption which follows from value incompatibility does not inherently reorient us toward excellence. The point is exactly that achieving excellence in one practical identity is sometimes incompatible with excellence in the other. Pace Lear, I do not identify this disruptive experience as a central example of irony. Instead, I consider irony a virtuous coping strategy for such disruption, because it introduces the necessary distance from our moral imperfection to sustain practical deliberation and maintain good mental health. Such virtuous irony negotiates a golden mean between too little disruption (complete insensitivity toward one’s imperfection) and too much disruption (a complete breakdown of practical deliberation and mental health). I argue that ironic media in popular culture provide a rich source of such virtuous irony, which I demonstrate through analysis of satirical examples. (shrink)

I here address the question of how judges should decide questions before a court in morally imperfect legal systems. I characterize how moral considerations ought inform judicial reasoning given that the law may demand what it has no right to. Much of the large body of work on legal interpretation, with its focus on legal semantics and epistemology, does not adequately countenance the limited legitimacy of actual legal institutions to serve as a foundation for an ethics of adjudication. I (...) offer an adjudicative theory in the realm of non-ideal theory: I adopt a view of law that has achieved consensus in legal philosophy, make some plausible assumptions about human politics, and then consider directly the question of how judges should reason. Ultimately, I argue that judges should be cognizant of the goods that are at stake on particular occasions of adjudication and that this requires treating legal requirements transparently, i.e., as sensitive to their moral justifications. (shrink)

Shakespeare’s Hamlet best illustrates the problem with which a thoughtful and morally motivated person is confronted if crime, dishonesty and betrayal flourish in his or her social surroundings. The Danish prince finds himself in a genuine moral dilemma upon learning that his father, the former king, died not of natural causes but was insidiously murdered by his own brother, Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, who now reigns over Denmark and shares the bed of the victim’s widow, Hamlet’s mother. Hamlet vacillates for (...) some time about what he ought to do. Finally, not without hesitancy and reluctance, he resolves to take revenge. To conceal his intentions, he acts as if he were crazy, astonishing the royal court with his altogether strange behavior. By doing so, however, he provokes the mistrust of King Claudius all the more. Claudius employs the Lord Chamberlain, Polonius, to whose daughter Ophelia Hamlet finds himself attracted, and two friends from Hamlet’s youth, Rosencrantz and Guildenstem, to spy on him. Acting on his emotions, Hamlet kills Polonius, an unprincipled and foolish schemer. This gives Claudius a welcome opportunity to get rid of Hamlet by banishing him, guarded by Rosencrantz and Guildenstem, to England, with the intention of having him murdered there . Yet Hamlet has become suspicious. In the luggage of his companions he finds the king’s letter with the order for his murder, and he replaces it with another, instructing those to whom it is addressed to kill Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He himself succeeds in escaping and returns to the Danish royal court. There he runs into Laertes, the son of Polonius and brother of Ophelia . Laertes, who cannot wait to take revenge for the deaths of his father and sister, becomes entangled by Claudius in a disgraceful attempt on Hamlet’s life. They persuade Hamlet into agreeing to a fencing match, not knowing that, whatever the outcome, he will die. For Laertes fences with a poisoned blade, and Claudius has a poisonous drink for Hamlet in reserve. The tragic end of the story is well known. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhile Spinoza stipulates an ideal moral person in the propositions on the ‘free man’ in Ethics IV, this account does not seem to be intended to function as a pedagogical tool of political relevance. Hence, it does not seem to correspond to the purpose of moral exemplarism. If we look for that kind of practical guidance, Spinoza’s political works seem more relevant. Interestingly, when we approach Spinoza’s political theory with moral exemplarism in mind, we find that instead (...) of constructing his exemplar on the idea of a supremely moral person, he emphasizes the concept of ingenium to chisel out an imperfect model of human behavior. We argue that the purpose of this is to avoid a utopian and inefficient political theory and to work out a moral practice that is capable of assisting people and communities in ethical self-transformation. (shrink)

In response to Adam’s concern that when one tries to articulate a moral commitment, the commitment is ‘falsified,’ I examine the importance of a particular articulation in the process of moral development and look for a way to engage in this articulation, while avoiding the pitfalls Adams identified. Via the example of moral formation, and more specifically, exemplarity, I show the role of articulation in moral growth. Moreover, I attempt to show that partial and imperfect articulation (...) can lead to moral growth. For if this articulation is understood as inherently partial, it does not fall into the pitfall of ‘falsification,’ nor other well-known pitfalls in the process of moral formation through exemplarity. (shrink)

Debates among contemporary philosophers and literary scholars on the moral value of representational art revolve around how art appreciation influences the audience—whether viewer or reader. Martha Nussbaum, a distinguished scholar in law and ethics who has initiated many lively dialogues on this subject, holds that we have a great deal to learn from literary works—in particular, realist novels—because they so concretely depict the ways in which personal and social circumstances shape human emotions, actions, and choices. While Charles Dickens’s Hard (...) Times can motivate impartial concern, she posits, Henry James’s The Golden Bowl demonstrates how we should conduct moral deliberation.1 Noël Carroll, a principal... (shrink)

"Explores the relationships between science and other societal sectors, notably law, religion, government and public culture, in terms of the concepts of expert and moral authority"--Provided by publisher.

An imperfect duty such as the duty to aid those in need is supposed to leave leeway for choice as to how to satisfy it, but if our reason for a certain way of satisfying it is our strongest, that leeway would seem to be eliminated. This paper defends a conception of practical reasons designed to preserve it, without slighting the binding force of moral requirements, though it allows us to discount certain moral reasons. Only reasons that offer (...) criticism of alternatives can yield requirements, but our reasons for particular ways of satisfying imperfect duties merely count in favor of the acts in question. When the state is authorized to take over charitable obligations, it should not be seen as enforcing fulfillment of our imperfect duties, but rather as forcing us to help fulfill collective duties that may be substantially modified by transfer to the state, replacing imperfect duties with perfect. Besides the cost to us in freedom of choice there is a moral cost to replacing the virtuous motives of charity with those that tend to accompany paying taxes. However, a compensating feature of state involvement is the fact that its more precise demands come with limits. (shrink)

The article “Moral distress: What are we measuring?” by Kolbe and de Melo-Martin (2023) is an important contribution both to the literature and research agenda for the complicated construct of mora...

The article focuses on the Philosophy of Freedom of the Swiss philosopher Charles Secrétan (1815-1895) and on the attempt to reconcile freedom as the fundamental experience for the human being with the alleged necessitarianism that would result from the positive sciences. The notion of “fall” as it is found in the Christian tradition allows Secrétan to rediscover an original dimension from which we can conceive the laws of nature as contingent. It is space and time that impose their constraints and (...) lead to the mismatch between the different faculties (sensitivity, imagination, intelligence, will) that is constitutive for the human experience and that prevents us from “being at any moment the whole of ourselves”. A peculiarity of Secrétan’s conception of space is that he does not see it as a condition for the numerical plurality of human beings. (shrink)

The distinction between perfect and imperfect obligations has a long history in moral philosophy and is important to many central issues in moral theory and in everyday morality. Unfortunately, this distinction is often overlooked and rarely defined precisely or univocally. This paper tries to clarify the distinction in light of recent empirical research on guilt and shame. I begin with the general notion of an obligation before distinguishing its sub-classes.

In his paper “Scientific research is a moral duty”, John Harris argues that individuals have a moral duty to participate in biomedical research by volunteering as research subjects. He supports his claim with reference to what he calls the principle of beneficence as embodied in the “rule of rescue” , and the principle of fairness embodied in the prohibition on “free riding” . His view that biomedical research is an important social good is agreed upon, but it is (...) argued that Harris succeeds only in showing that such participation and support is a moral good, among many other moral goods, while failing to show that there is a moral duty to participate in biomedical research in particular. The flaws in Harris’s arguments are detailed here, and it is shown that the principles of beneficence and fairness yield only a weaker discretionary or imperfect obligation to help others in need and to reciprocate for sacrifices that others have made for the public good. This obligation is discretionary in the sense that the individuals are free to choose when, where, and how to help others in need and reciprocate for earlier sacrifices. That Harris has not succeeded in claiming a special status for biomedical research among all other social goods is shown here. (shrink)

There is virtually no philosophical consensus on what, exactly, imperfect duties are. In this paper, I lay out three criteria which I argue any adequate account of imperfect duties should satisfy. Using beneficence as a leading example, I suggest that existing accounts of imperfect duties will have trouble meeting those criteria. I then propose a new approach: thinking of imperfect duties as duties held by groups, rather than individuals. I show, again using the example of beneficence, that this proposal can (...) satisfy the criteria, explaining how something can both have the necessity characteristic of duty, while also allowing agents the latitude which seems to attach to imperfect duties. (shrink)

Nonprofit organizations play a crucial role in society. Unfortunately, many such organizations are chronically underfunded and struggle to meet their objectives. These facts have significant implications for corporate philanthropy and Kant’s notion of imperfect duties. Under the concept of imperfect duties, businesses would have wide discretion regarding which charities receive donations, how much money to give, and when such donations take place. A perceived problem with imperfect duties is that they can lead to moral laxity; that is, a failure (...) on the part of businesses to fulfill their financial obligations to nonprofit organizations. This article argues the problem of moral laxity rests on a misinterpretation of Kantian ethics and, therefore, is really not a problem at all. As such, we argue corporate philanthropy while an imperfect duty should be interpreted more akin to perfect duties and, as a consequence, moral laxity does not arise for those corporations committed to acting on the basis of the moral law. More specifically, firms have duty-based obligations on the basis of benevolence, and as good corporate citizens, to help fund non-profit organizations. (shrink)

In this paper, I specifically consider the issue of corporate governance and normative stakeholder theory. In doing so, I arguethat stakeholder theory and responsibilities to non-shareholder constituencies can be made more intelligible by reference to Kant’sconception of perfect and imperfect duties. I draw upon Onora O’Neill’s (1996) work, Towards Justice and Virtue: A Constructivist Account of Practical Reasoning. In her text O’Neill underlines a number of relevant issues including: the integration of particularist and universalist accounts of morality; the priority of (...) obligations over rights; the importance of the distinction between imperfect and perfect duties; and the relation between the virtues and imperfect duties. On the basis of the foregoing analysis, the paper argues that business ethicists should avoid recommending the institutionalising of stakeholder responsibilities in terms of legally defined sets of stakeholder rights. Instead, we should regard stakeholder responsibilities as uniformalised imperfect duties. Conceiving responsibilities to all stakeholder groups in this manner, allows the firm the freedom to perfect these duties in ways appropriate to cultural and societal setting, and in accordance with the capacity to do so. (shrink)

I clarify Kant's classification of duties and criticize the apocryphal tradition that, according to Kant, perfect duties trump imperfect duties. I then use Kant's view to argue that judges who believe that an action is immoral and should be illegal need not set aside their beliefs in order to comply with binding precedents that permit the action. The same view of morality that causes some people to oppose certain actions, including abortion, requires lower–court judges to comply with binding precedents. Therefore, (...) someone's opposition to legal abortion, by itself, does not justify opposing that person's nomination to a lower court. (shrink)

Ethical problems in business include not only genuine moral dilemmas and compliance problems but also problems arising from the distinctive characteristics of imperfect duties. Collective action by business to perfect imperfect duties can yield significant benefits. Sucharrrangements can (1) reduce temptations to moral laxity, (2) achieve greater efficiency by eliminating redundancies and gaps that plague uncoordinated individual efforts, (3) reap economies of scale and achieve success where benefits can be provided only if a certain threshold of resources can (...) be brought to bear on a social problem; (4) solve assurance problems where voluntary compliance by some parties depends upon their perception that competitors are doing their fair share, and (5) produce higher levels of contribution than would occur through independent action in response to imperfect duties, stimulated by the perception that there is a fair distribution of burdens of contribution among all parties involved. (shrink)

This article investigates whether there is an underlying morality in the ways that human beings seek to obtain economic security within our imperfect economy, which can be illuminated through evolutionary biology research. Two research questions are the focus of the analysis: (1) What is the transaction cognitive machinery that is specialized for the entrepreneurial task of exchange-based security-seeking? and, (2) What are the moral implications of the acquisition and use of such transaction cognitions?Evolutionary biology research suggests within concepts that (...) are more Darwin- v. Huxley-based, an underlying morality supportive of algorithm-governed economizing arising from the behaviors that are most worthy of long-term reproduction. Evolutionarily stable algorithm-enhanced security-seeking is argued to be a new view of entrepreneurship, but one that, somewhat ironically, is grounded in a primordially-based entrepreneurial morality that is at the core of economic security. (shrink)

Available in English for the first time, Imperfect Garden is both an approachable intellectual history and a bracing treatise on how we should understand and experience our lives. In it, one of France's most prominent intellectuals explores the foundations, limits, and possibilities of humanist thinking. Through his critical but sympathetic excavation of humanism, Tzvetan Todorov seeks an answer to modernity's fundamental challenge: how to maintain our hard-won liberty without paying too dearly in social ties, common values, and a coherent and (...) responsible sense of self.Todorov reads afresh the works of major humanists--primarily Montaigne, Rousseau, and Constant, but also Descartes, Montesquieu, and Toqueville. Each chapter considers humanism's approach to one major theme of human existence: liberty, social life, love, self, morality, and expression. Discussing humanism in dialogue with other systems, Todorov finds a response to the predicament of modernity that is far more instructive than any offered by conservatism, scientific determinism, existential individualism, or humanism's other contemporary competitors. Humanism suggests that we are members of an intelligent and sociable species who can act according to our will while connecting the well-being of other members with our own. It is through this understanding of free will, Todorov argues, that we can use humanism to rescue universality and reconcile human liberty with solidarity and personal integrity.Placing the history of ideas at the service of a quest for moral and political wisdom, Todorov's compelling and no doubt controversial rethinking of humanist ideas testifies to the enduring capacity of those ideas to meditate on--and, if we are fortunate, cultivate--the imperfect garden in which we live. (shrink)

Forgiveness is typically regarded as a good thing - even a virtue - but acts of forgiveness can vary widely in value, depending on their context and motivation. Faced with this variation, philosophers have tended to reinforce everyday concepts of forgiveness with strict sets of conditions, creating ideals or paradigms of forgiveness. These are meant to distinguish good or praiseworthy instances of forgiveness from problematic instances and, in particular, to protect the self-respect of would-be forgivers. But paradigmatic forgiveness is problematic (...) for a number of reasons, including its inattention to forgiveness as a gendered trait. We can account for the values and the risks associated with forgiving far better if we treat it as a moral practice and not an ideal. (shrink)

This book uses Kant's idea of imperfect duty to extend the theory of the firm. Unlike perfect duty which is contractual or otherwise legally binding, imperfect duty consists of those commitments of choice that pursue some moral value, but that have practical limits to their pursuit. The author presents a broad view of the imperfect duties of management, defined as a nexus of all commitments to do good involving relations internal and external to the firm. This nexus consists of (...) three overlapping categories of (i) building a virtuous managerial community, (ii) pursuing reasoned managerial discourse, and (iii) diligent and reasoned pursuit of the body of routine managerial duties such as capital budgeting and internal controls. Specific applications of the nexus theory for stakeholder relations via fair negotiation, and for analysis of the effects on the managerial team of perquisite consumption are presented. This book has major implications for research in business ethics and allows critical insights into managerial decision making. (shrink)

This article presents an alternative understanding of corporations from the two problematic visions that see corporations as either the shareholders’ property or as nexuses of contracts. The alternative proposed here is based on the theories of pre-eighteenth-century philosophers, particularly Aristotle’s political philosophy, which Thomas Aquinas later refined. The article aims to advance a theory of corporate legal and moral responsibility for human rights based on the conception of corporations as imperfect communities whose purpose is to produce a good or (...) service through participatory work that allows individuals to self-develop while contributing to the community by satisfying consumers’ needs through collaborative work. The critical account of corporations presented here provides a sound foundation upon which to build a justification of corporate responsibility for human rights violations, providing a more accurate description of the reality of a corporation than most mainstream contemporary accounts do. (shrink)

Scientific data indicate that violence is involved in the emergence of higher forms of life from lower forms. This seems incompatible with the God of Christian revelation, who is the source of love and mercy. Current attempts to explain this tension usually focus on two approaches: the ‘gift of freedom’ or the ‘only way’ theory. I will argue that Thomas Aquinas’ understanding of nature is able to provide an interesting framework for the challenges posed by the way of the appearance (...) of life. The article will present Aquinas’ theology of nature, which seems to fit perfectly with the current state of scientific knowledge, especially when considering the relationship between God and creation.Contribution: The article shows that the problem of the interpretation of paradise in the Christian tradition may be related to the influence of the Neoplatonic tradition, which reduces paradise to the idealistic sphere. Attention is drawn to the concept of perfection, which does not mean the absence of any disvalue in the natural world, but is a relational concept. The death of animals and natural evil need not be explained by moral evil, but requires a broader interpretation of the value of the natural order. (shrink)

In this essay I rethink a view that I developed in my Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology , concerning how ethical theory should handle the phenomena that are standardly classified as supererogatory acts. The view I elaborated rejects the standard contemporary picture, according to which ethics needs to draw a line separating duty from what is "beyond duty"--the supererogatory. On the Kantian picture, beneficent acts are not beyond duty, for we are required to help others, but we are not required (...) to help whenever possible, and so it is not the case that each individual beneficent act is required by duty. Helping is required; helping here and now is not. After contrasting this view with the standard picture and explaining that much of what contemporary philosophers wanted to capture with the notion of the supererogatory can be captured with the Kantian notion of imperfect duties together with attention to the agent's character, I raise some problems for my view and try to address them. First, what about heroic actions that are not in character? Don't we need the notion of supererogatory acts to recognize their greatness? Second, isn't virtue doing all the conceptual work? Is there even any need to appeal to the notion of imperfect duties? Third, although I claimed in my book that it is an advantage of the Kantian view that moral excellence comes in many varieties, arguably it is too pluralistic. In dem Beitrag überdenke ich eine Auffassung, die ich in meinem Buch Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology entwickelt habe. Sie betrifft die Frage, wie ethische Theorien das Phänomen behandeln sollen, das üblicherweise als "Supererogation" bezeichnet wird. Die von mir ausgearbeitete Auffassung verwirft das heute gängige Bild, nach dem Ethik abgrenzen muß zwischen dem, was Pflicht ist, und dem, was "jenseits der Pflicht" steht -- dem Supererogatorischen. Nach Kants Vorstellung sind wohltätige Handlungen nicht jenseits der Pflicht, da wir verpflichtet sind, anderen zu helfen. Wir müssen jedoch nicht in jeder möglichen Situation helfen, und daher ist es nicht der Fall, daß jede einzelne wohltätige Handlung Pflicht ist. Hilfe zu leisten , ist geboten; Hilfe hier und jetzt zu leisten, nicht. In einer Gegenüberstellung dieser Auffassung mit der gängigen Vorstellung zeige ich, daß vieles von dem, was moderne Philosophen mit dem Begriff des Supererogatorischen erklären wollen, auch mit Kants Begriff der unvollkommenen Pflichten, verbunden mit einem Blick auf den Charakter des Handelnden, erklärt werden kann. Danach werfe ich einige Probleme auf, die sich meiner Auffassung stellen, und versuche, Antworten zu geben. Erstens: Wie steht es mit heldenhaften Handlungen, die nicht dem Charakter des Handelnden entsprechen? Brauchen wir nicht den Begriff des supererogatorischen Handelns, um ihre Größe zu erkennen? Zweitens: Genügt nicht der Begriff der Tugend? Besteht irgendeine Notwendigkeit, auf den Begriff der unvollkommenen Pflicht zurückzugreifen? Drittens: Obwohl ich in meinem Buch behaupte, es sei ein Vorteil der Kantischen Sicht, daß moralische Vortrefflichkeit viele Gesichter hat, ist Kants Auffassung doch vielleicht zu pluralistisch. (shrink)

I attempt first to disentangle three aspects of Kant’s distinction between perfect and imperfect duty. There is the central distinction between principles of duty contrary to that which is contradictory in conception/consistent in conception but contradictory in will. There is also a distinction between essential and non-essential duties: those which cannot, or occasionally can, be passed over consistent with the requirements of morality. Finally, there is a distinction between duties that exhibit a scalar aspect – degrees of goodness or virtue (...) – and duties that do not. My aim is to show how these distinct considerations can be reconciled as aspects of a single distinction, and I conclude that the remarkable complexity of Kant’s perfect/imperfect distinction is actually a strength, rather than a weakness. (shrink)

St. Thomas's doctrine of woman holds that woman is the imperfectus sexus and that woman is morally infirmior than man. Thomas maintains that a gradus inter virum et mulierem exists with regard to their being an imago Dei. Thus, Thomas's doctrine of woman differs from St. Augustine's doctrine of woman. ;Augustine holds that woman and man are equally an imago Dei. Augustine thinks woman is inferior to man but he confines the alleged inferiority to considerations of the body. Thomas, too, (...) holds that woman is bodily inferior to man, but he predicates a spiritual inequality on that basis. ;But as Boerresen has shown, Thomas thinks that the natural inferiority of woman can be overcome in the Resurrection. Thus, Thomas's doctrine of woman differs from Aristotle's doctrine, for the latter doctrine asserts an inequality that seems impossible to overcome. Despite the differences in the doctrines, Aristotle's work is pivotal to Thomas's understanding of woman. ;Thomas's assertion of woman's spiritual inferiority depends precisely upon the mistaken biology of the so-called one-semen theory of reproduction. That theory is reminiscent, or perhaps repetitious, of Aristotelian reproductive biology. In that theory, woman is understood to be materially deficient relative to man. Since Thomas's philosophical anthropology holds that the quality of an individual's body bears upon the quality of that individual's soul, if woman is less perfect materially, she is less perfect spiritually. ;In light of modern biological data, Thomas's understanding of being human seems to leave no room for the notion that woman is the imperfectus sexus. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Imperfect Men in Perfect Societies:Human Nature in UtopiaGorman BeauchampIUtopists view man as a product of his social environment. Nothing innate in the psychic make-up of man—no inherent flaw in his nature, no inheritance of original sin—prevents his being perfected, or at least radically ameliorated, once the social structure that shapes character can be properly reordered. Utopists, in short, deny that there is such a thing as "human nature"—if, as (...) John Plamenatz suggests, to say that something is human nature is just another way of saying that it cannot be changed.1 To accept the psychic constitution of man as fixed, immutable, is anathema to utopists, who agree rather with Ortega y Gasset: "Man has no nature. What he has is history."2 The social conditions that have obtained historically, that is to say, have made man what he has been—anything but utopian; but if man's history could be changed, so could his "nature." The idea of Progress, so pervasive in the West from the seventeenth century on, lends some credence to this contention. W. D. Howells's Altrurians, their creator notes, "get some sad amusement out of the fact that the capitalist world believes human nature cannot be changed, though cannibalism and slavery and polygamy have all been extirpated in the so-called Christian countries, and these things were once human nature, which is always changing...."3 Utopia is merely a means, then, of imaginatively expediting, directing, culminating the historically progressive creation of a morally exemplary race of men.The environmentalist psychology espoused by utopists springs from one of two anterior assumptions (although in the creation of many fictional idola the distinction between them is often blurred). The first [End Page 280] assumption is formulated most famously by Rousseau in the Discourse on Inequality: that "man is naturally good, and only by his institutions is he made bad."4 The second assumption is formulated most famously by Locke in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding: that the mind—and by extension the character—is a tabula rasa that takes impression from the stimuli exerted by the external world and thus is neither innately good or bad, but plastic, malleable.5 An intriguing conflation of these two theories operates, for instance, in the psyche of the monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In the long middle section of the book, where the monster's side of the story is presented sympathetically, his character develops in a text-book demonstration of Lockean psychology; yet, at the same time, this lumbering tabula rasa quivers with enough benevolence (the implausible provenance of which mystifies) to put most saints to shame. He becomes evil and destructive only after being persecuted unmercifully for his misshapen appearance.6 Indeed, the criminal career of Mary Shelley's monster rehearses the common utopian argument that society's injustice to man (or monster) is the source of his crimes. "With our present state of society," writes James Casey in A New Moral World (1885), "we manufacture criminals and then punish them for being so."7 H. G. Wells, in A Modern Utopia (1905), concurs: "Crime and bad lives are the measure of the State's failure, all crime in the end is the crime of the community."8 And both are but restating the charge of Sir Thomas More's Raphael Hytholoday, leveled several centuries earlier in the original Utopia (1519): "If you allow people to be badly brought up and their habits to be corrupted little by little from childhood and if you then punish them for crimes to which their early training has disposed them, what else is this, I ask, but first making them thieves and then punishing them for it?"9 Evil deeds, then, to reiterate the utopist's point, result not from some vicious mole in human nature, but from the malfunctioning of society itself. Utopia, by contrast, is—or theoretically ought to be—a world without crime.Rousseau's concept of the innate goodness of man and the evil of his institutions most often informs primitivist models of utopia, exotic worlds inhabited by noble savages uncorrupted by civilization. The idealized Indians of Montaigne's essay... (shrink)

A recent paper by David Levy focuses on “utility enhancing consumption constraints.” Levy concludes by noting that his analysis stays within standard utility maximizing theory, in contrast to my analysis of rule-governed behavior which allows imperfect decisions that don't always maximize utility. I wish to show how our two theories can be integrated, thereby representing complementary, rather than conflicting, explanations. In the process, I argue that imperfect decisions are an essential factor in the stability of any rule that constrains freedom (...) of choice. I also briefly discuss certain intrinsic problems with achieving “self-stabilizing” rules applied to moral teachings. (shrink)

There are numerous ways to conceptualize autonomy and to account for its value. Of particular poignancy is the question of whether autonomy has value for those people and cultures that apparently reject liberal principles, otherwise considered. The answer one gives to that question has implications for whether autonomy-based liberalism can or should be seen as a perfectionist political philosophy. I consider these issues by looking again at Joseph Raz’s influential account of autonomy and its relation to his liberal perfectionism. I (...) defend a proceduralist, non-perfectionist account of autonomy that, I argue, improves on Raz’s original view but in ways that are in keeping with its general spirit. (shrink)

This paper marks a radical diversion from the large body of prevailing literature in business ethics which primarily views the issue in individual-personal terms, i.e., corporate executive and employee, and suggests that making corporations more ethical would primarily come through changes in executive behavior. While this approach has strong intellectual roots in moral philosophy and religion, it fails in explaining the persistence of unethical and illegal behavior among corporations of all sizes, financial health, competitive market conditions, and, level of (...) individual executive compensation. This paper argues for a fundamentally different approach to understanding ethical behavior, or lack thereof, among corporations and their executives. It is asserted that an overwhelmingly large rationale and/or inducement for proactive ethical business behavior is rooted in competitive aspects of particular markets, and industry structures prevailing in those markets. Furthermore, while highly competitive markets may promote efficiency, they do not guarantee ethical behavior and may indeed provide greater opportunities and incentives for unethical business behavior. Thus, by following the current prognosis, we could be wasting enormous resources in terms of teaching business ethics, and creating and imposing corporate codes of conduct. We assert that these approaches would at best make a marginal improvement in the ethical performance of corporations while at the same time exacerbate the problem by ignoring more fundamental, structural issues. Imperfect markets, with their above-market profits, are a necessary but insufficient condition for corporations to behave ethically. It is only under conditions of imperfect markets that individual executives can play an important role in guiding their corporations toward greater ethical norms. These are undertaken for a variety of reasons, including, protecting a corporation''s good name, public expectations, competitive norms, and, corporate culture and individual executive''s predilections, to name a few. (shrink)

In this chapter, I seek a better understanding of both supererogation and imperfect duties in the hopes of coming up with an account of what it is to go above and beyond the call of an imperfect duty. I argue that we can go above and beyond the call of duty, not only by performing actions but also by forming attitudes. And I argue that what’s constitutive of fulfilling an imperfect duty is forming certain attitudes. I conclude, therefore, that we (...) can go above and beyond the call of an imperfect duty by forming attitudes that are morally better than those that we must at a minimum form simply to count as having the end that it requires us to have. Along the way, I show that imperfect duties provide us with neither too much nor too little latitude in choosing which ends to pursue as well as when, and to what extent, to pursue them. (shrink)

There are two distinct views on how to formulate an objective consequentialist account of the deontic status of actions, actualism and possibilism. On an actualist account, what matters to the deontic status of actions is only the value of the outcome an action would have, if performed. By contrast, a possibilist account also takes into account the value of the outcomes that an action could have. These two views come apart in their deontic verdicts when an agent is imperfect in (...) an avoidable way, viz., when agent brings about less good than she could. In this paper, I offer an argument against actualism that draws on the connection between moral obligation and practical reasons. (shrink)

Moral agency is limited, imperfect, and structurally constrained. This is evident in the many ways we all unwittingly participate in widespread injustice through our everyday actions, which I call ‘structural wrongs’. To do justice to these facts, I argue that we should distinguish between summative and formative moral criticism. While summative criticism functions to conclusively assess an agent's performance relative to some benchmark, formative criticism aims only to improve performance in an ongoing way. I show that the negative (...) sanctions associated with summative responses are only justifiably imposed under certain conditions when persons exercise their agency wrongly — conditions that do not always hold for structural wrongs. Yet even in such cases we can still use formative responses, which are warranted whenever agents fall short of moral ideals. Expanding our repertoire of moral criticism to include both summative and formative responses enables us to better appreciate both the powers and limitations of our agency, and the complexity of moral life. (shrink)

Excerpt from Moral para Intelectuales Este libro es la vers1on taquigráfica en bruto, de algunas (pocas lecciones del curso ¡de Moral que di en la Universidad de Montevideo (enseñanza Secundaria) en el año de 1908. Iusta mal escrito, o, mejor, mal hablado, hasta más allá de los límites permitidos aún en las obras que no tienen ningún fin literario, lo mal se debe a que, absorbido por ocupaciones múltiples y abrumado-ras, no... dispongo del tiempo neceseario para ¡corregir la (...) forma, dándole, ya que no la galanura y brillo que no están a mi alcance, ¡por lo menos la concisión y jus teza que el lector puede reclamar como por derecho. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

To have moral worth an action not only needs to conform to the correct normative theory ; it also needs to be motivated in the right way. I argue that morally worthy actions are motivated by the rightness of the action; they are motivated by an agent's concern for doing what's right and her knowledge that her action is morally right. Call this the Rightness Condition. On the Rightness Condition moral motivation involves both a conative and a cognitive (...) element—in particular, it involves moral knowledge. I argue that the Rightness Condition is both necessary and sufficient for moral worth. I also argue that the Rightness Condition gives us an attractive account of actions performed under imperfect epistemic circumstances: by agents who rely on moral testimony or by those who, like Huckleberry Finn, have false moral convictions. (shrink)