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373Altruism Versus Self-Interest: Sometimes a False DichotomySocial Philosophy and Policy 10 (1): 90-117. 1993.In the moral philosophy of the last two centuries, altruism of one kind or another has typically been regarded as identical with moral concern. When self-regarding duties have been recognized, motivation by duty has been sharply distinguished from motivation by self-interest. I think this view is wrong: self-interest can be the motive of a moral act. My chief concern is to argue that self-interested action -- i.e., action motivated by rational self-interest -- can be moral, but the data I use to…Read more
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368Moral Agency, Commitment, and ImpartialitySocial Philosophy and Policy 13 (1): 1-26. 1996.Communitarians reject the impartial and universal viewpoint of liberal morality in favor of the "situated" viewpoint of the agent's community, and elevate political community into the moral community. I show that the preeminence of political community in communitarian morality is incompatible with concern for people's lives in the partial communities of family, friends, or others. Ironically, it is also incompatible with the communitarian thesis about the situated nature of moral agency. Politic…Read more
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46Dignity and Vulnerability (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (1): 246-248. 2001.In this significant new addition to moral theory, George Harris challenges a view of the dignity and worth of persons that goes back through Kant and Christianity to the Stoics. He argues that we do not, in fact, believe this view, which traces any breakdowns of character to failures of strength. When it comes to what we actually value in ourselves and others, he says, we are far more Greek than Christian. At the most profound level, we value ourselves as natural organisms, as animals, rather th…Read more
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19Review of William S. Hamrick, Kindness and the Good Society: Connections of the Heart (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2002 (9). 2002.
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96Friendship and commercial societiesPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 7 (3): 301-326. 2008.Critics of commercial societies complain that the free-market system of property rights and freedom of contract tends to commodify relationships, thus eroding the bonds of personal and civic friendship. I argue that this thesis rests on a misunderstanding of both markets and friendship. As voluntary, reciprocal relationships, market relationships and friendship share important properties. Like all relations and activities that exercise important human capacities and play an important role in a m…Read more
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265The Milgram Experiments, Learned Helplessness, and Character TraitsThe Journal of Ethics 13 (2): 257-289. 2009.The Milgram and other situationist experiments support the real-life evidence that most of us are highly akratic and heteronomous, and that Aristototelian virtue is not global. Indeed, like global theoretical knowledge, global virtue is psychologically impossible because it requires too much of finite human beings with finite powers in a finite life; virtue can only be domain-specific. But unlike local, situation-specific virtues, domain-specific virtues entail some general understanding of what…Read more
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36Precis of Well-Being: Happiness in a Worthwhile LifeJournal of Value Inquiry 50 (1): 185-193. 2016.
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622LoveIn LaFollette H. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Practical Ethics, Oxford University Press. pp. 42. 2003."[L]ove is not merely a contributor - one among others - to meaningful life. In its own way it may underlie all other forms of meaning....by its very nature love is the principal means by which creatures like us seek affective relations to persons, things, or ideals that have value and importance for us. I. The Look of Love.
Neera K. Badhwar
University of Oklahoma
George Mason University
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George Mason UniversityMercatus CenterProfessor (Part-time)
Norman, Oklahoma, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy, Misc |
Value Theory |
Areas of Interest
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy, Misc |
Value Theory |