Susan Wolf famously claimed that the life of the moral saint is unattractive from the “point of view of individual perfection.” I argue, however, that the unattractive moral saints in Wolf’s account are self-defeating on two levels, are motivated in the wrong way, and are called into question by real-life counter-examples. By appealing to a real-life case study, I argue that the best life from the moral point of view is not necessarily unattractive from the individual (...) point of view. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have been impressed with the thought that moral saints and moral monsters—or, evil people, to put it less sensationally—“mirror” one another, in a sense to be explained. Call this the mirror thesis. The project of this paper is to cash out the metaphorical suggestion that moral saints and evil persons mirror one other and to articulate the most plausible literal version of the mirror thesis. To anticipate, the most plausible version of (...) the mirror thesis implies that evil persons mirror moral saints insofar as the characters of each are marked by similar aretaic properties: suffering from extremely vicious character traits—in a sense to be explained—suffices for being evil whereas possessing extremely virtuous character traits similarly suffices for moral sainthood. (shrink)

Roy W. Perrett argues that the Hindu sage, like the western moral saint, seems precluded from pursuing non-moral ends for their own sakes. If he is precluded from pursuing non-moral ends for their own sakes, then he is precluded from pursuing non-moral virtues, interests, activities, relationships, and so on for their own sakes. A life devoid of every such pursuit seems deficient. Hence, the Hindu sage seems to forsake the good life. In response, I adapt a (...) reply that Vanessa Carbonell offers in the context of the moral saint. The Hindu sage might pursue non-moral virtues, interests, activities, relationships, and so on for their own sakes, so long as his motivation to pursue moksa is read de re rather than de dicto. Indeed, this reply is more convincing in the case of the Hindu sage than it is in the case of the moral saint. (shrink)

In _Moral Saints_, Susan Wolf raises a question for morality in general: should we strive to be perfectly moral, even though being a moral saint does not entail having a perfectly good life? Wolf answers that moral saints represent an undesirable and unattractive human ideal because they lack the “ability to enjoy the enjoyable in life” (Wolf 424). Accordingly, Wolf objects to both utilitarianism and Kantianism, claiming that these ethical theories present moral sainthood as an (...) ideal. While this paper does not object to Wolf’s account of moral sainthood, it argues against Wolf’s objections to Kantianism in three parts. First (1), I explain Wolf’s argument and objections to Kantianism; second (2), I respond to Wolf’s objections against the ‘non-ideal’ Kantian saint interpretation; and third (3), I respond to Wolf’s objections against the ‘ideal’ Kantian saint interpretation. This paper concludes that Kantianism does not present moral sainthood as a human ideal.__. (shrink)

In 1941 Father Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish friar from Warsaw was arrested for publishing anti-Nazi pamphlets and sentenced to Auschwitz. There he was beaten, kicked by shiny leather boots, and whipped by his prison guards. After one prisoner successfully escaped, the prescribed punishment was to select ten other prisoners who were to die by starvation. As ten prisoners were pulled out of line one by one, Fr. Kolbe broke out from the ranks, pleading with he Commandant to be allowed to (...) take the place of one of the prisoners, a Polish worker with a wife and children dependent upon him. "I'm an old man, sir, and good for nothing. My life will serve no purpose," the 45 year old priest pleaded. He was taken, thrown down the stairs into a dank dark basement with the other nine prisoners and left to starve. Usually, prisoners punished like this spent their last days howling, attacking each other and clawing the walls in a frenzy of despair. (shrink)

This article explores the forms of moral repair that the wrongdoer has to perform in an attempt to make amends for her past wrongdoing, with a focus on the issues of interpersonal moral repair; that is, what a wrongdoer can do to merit her victim‘s forgiveness and achieve reconciliation with her community. The article argues against the very general demands of atonement that amount to an obligation to stop being someone who commits wrongs—to become a moral saint—and (...) suggests a new form of atonement that is more practical and useful in our everyday life. (shrink)

In this thesis I want to take a look at the extreme ends of the moral spectrum. Specifically, I am going to examine the very extremes of the moral spectrum, namely the amoralist and the moral saint. I want to take a look at the justifications we have for the intuitions people commonly hold about these two opposites; the intuition being that both an amoralist and a moral saint are undesirable ideals. In examining both cases, I (...) aim to answer the central question of my thesis: can the commonly held intuitions about both the amoralist and the moral saint be justified? (shrink)

ABSTRACTSusan Wolf famously argues that moral sainthood is not an ideal for which persons should aim because it requires one to cultivate moral virtues to the exclusion of significant, nonmoral interests, and skills. I find Wolf's argument compelling in her context of persons, and seek to demonstrate that it remains so when the context is expanded to businesses. I argue that just as moral perfection precludes individuals from challenging societal norms and traditions in ways that benefit us, (...) moral perfection prevents businesses from challenging norms and traditions in ways that can promote positive social change. I also describe, and respond to, three possible objections to my position, most notably the claim that businesses' greater social power justifies demanding moral perfection from them even though we should not demand moral perfection from persons. (shrink)

This paper argues for the moral significance of the notion of an evil person or character. First, I argue that accounts of evil character ought to support a robust bad/evil distinction; yet existing theories cannot plausibly do so. Consequentialist and related theories also fail to account for some crucial properties of evil persons. Second, I sketch an intuitively plausible “affective-motivational” account of evil character. Third, I argue that the notion of evil character, thus conceived, denotes a significant moral (...) category. It marks one end of a moral continuum that has, at the opposite pole, the saint. Fourth, I argue that “frequent evildoing” accounts confuse this moral space with another: that defined by the moral hero and the moral criminal. (shrink)

Many people who perform paradigmatic examples of acts of supererogation claim that they could not have done otherwise. In this paper I will argue that these self-reports from moral exemplars present a challenge to the traditional view of supererogation as involving agential sacrifice. I will argue that the claims made by moral exemplars are plausibly understood as what Bernard Williams calls a ‘practical necessity’. I will then argue that this makes it implausible to view these acts as involving (...) agential sacrifice. (shrink)

This paper combines the social psychology concept of moral elevation with the evolutionary concept of traditions as descendant-leaving strategies to produce a new explanation of the role of saints in Christianity. Moral elevation refers to the ability of prosocial acts to inspire people to engage in their own acts of charity and kindness. When morally elevating stories and visual depictions become traditional by being passed from one generation to the next, they can produce prosocial behavior advantageous to (...) survival and reproduction among many generations of descendants. Traditions that increase the number of descendants in future generations can be seen as descendant-leaving strategies. Stories and visual depictions of the sacrifices of saints appear to be designed to produce states of moral elevation, and they have been transmitted from one generation to the next for many centuries. We propose that this ability of sacrificing saints to inspire future generations to engage in prosocial acts has contributed to the continuation and spread of Christianity. (shrink)

The idea that our epistemic practices can be wrongful has been the core observation driving the growing literature on epistemic injustice, doxastic wronging, and moral encroachment. But, one element of our epistemic practice has been starkly absent from this discussion of epistemic morality: attention. The goal of this article is to show that attention is a worthwhile focus for epistemology, especially for the field of epistemic morality. After presenting a new dilemma for proponents of doxastic wronging, I show how (...) focusing on attention not only allows us to defuse that dilemma, but also helps to substantiate accounts of what goes wrong in cases of doxastic wronging. (shrink)

The purpose of this thesis is to explain the moral content of the Confessions of St. Augustine. Accordingly, other works of the Saint, as well as commentators on the Confessions will be used solely to clarify the main moral tenets of this work. Since moral principles, moreover, are found not merely in the expressed ideas of St. Augustine, but are also embodied in his actions, moral principles will be gleaned and illustrated from both sources. When, moreover, (...) the Confessions consider man, they view him in the same theocentric fashion, in his relationship to God, and so reaffirm frequently that the happiness of man is inseparably linked with the knowledge and worship of God, the supreme Good and the cause of all moral good. (shrink)

Hablar de ciencia moral es equívoco, pues depende del concepto de ciencia que manejemos, clásico, moderno o contemporáneo. Por otra parte, aun si aceptamos la posibilidad de una ciencia moral, queda pendiente la cuestión de su estatuto epistemológico: si es una ciencia práctica, si es una ciencia especulativa, y, en todo caso, qué relación guarda con la metafísica. En este artículo se examinan estos tres temas en el pensamiento de Santo Tomás de Aquino, teniendo presentes las objeciones que (...) se han planteado dentro y fuera del tomismo. (shrink)

The ethical authority carried in the conventions of fairness and human well-being has been widely adopted under the idea of “moral economy,” forming an eclectic and interdisciplinary debate. Significant, though external to this debate, is a corpus of medieval thought which exhibits a fundamental interest in legitimate market protocols, and the political rights and obligations of agents in relation to the common good of the community. This article asserts the imperative status of a customary basis for understanding not just (...) the analytic version of moral economy but the legacy contained in what might be termed the “the moral economy of Aquinas.”. (shrink)

"In this exciting and important work, Wyschogrod attempts to read contemporary ethical theory against the vast unwieldy tapestry that is postmodernism.... [A] provocative and timely study."—Michael Gareffa, _Theological Studies_ "A 'must' for readers interested in the borderlands between philosophy, hagiography, and ethics."—Mark I. Wallace, _Religious Studies Review_.

Are morals subjective? -- Ancient moral thinkers -- Socrates (469-399 bce) -- Aristotle (384-322 bce) -- Epicurus (342-270 bce) -- Epictetus (55-135 ce) -- Modern moral thinkers -- Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) -- Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) -- Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677) -- David Hume (1711-1776) -- Adam Smith (1723-1790) -- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) -- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) -- Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832).

This essay explores the question of how to be good. My starting point is a thesis about moral worth that I’ve defended in the past: roughly, that an action is morally worthy if and only it is performed for the reasons why it is right. While I think that account gets at one important sense of moral goodness, I argue here that it fails to capture several ways of being worthy of admiration on moral grounds. Moral (...) goodness is more multi-faceted. My title is intended to capture that multi-facetedness: the essay examines saintliness, heroism, and sagacity. The variety of our common-sense moral ideals underscores the inadequacy of any one account of moral admirableness, and I hope to illuminate the distinct roles these ideals play in our everyday understanding of goodness. Along the way, I give an account of what makes actions heroic, of whether such actions are supererogatory, and of what, if anything, is wrong with moral deference. At the close of the essay, I begin to explore the flipside of these ideals: villainy. (shrink)

As the title of this book is open to various interpretations the author is very anxious that the exact nature of his undertaking should be clearly understood from the outset. His aim is neither a wholehearted defence of the Thomist moral system against contemporary criticism, nor an attempt to discredit it by modern philosophical developments, but an adaptation of it to the contemporary situation which is a sort of ‘media via’ between those extremes, where adverse criticism must alternate with (...) justification as the various conclusions and explanations of St. Thomas are evaluated in turn. Professor Leclercq foresees that this procedure will hardly find favour with the die-hard Thomist, who can ill bear to see doubt cast upon what he has come to regard as vital elements in his system, still less their abandonment as no longer valid. On the other hand, however, the contemporary moralist who looks upon Thomism as obsolete—and to him an approach is desired—will be surprised to discover how much of this 700 year old system, when stripped of its medieval trappings, can still render service to moral philosophy to-day. (shrink)

a doubtful law does not bind -- Second corollary : uncertain law cannot impose certain obligation -- Commentary on the Treatise on conscience.