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55Desires, Reasons, and CausesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (2): 436-443. 2003.Jonathan Dancy’s Practical Reality makes a significant contribution to clarifying the relationship between desire and reasons for acting, both the normative reasons we seek in deliberation and the motivating reasons we cite in explanation. About the former, Dancy argues that, not only are normative reasons not all grounded in desires, but, more radically, the fact that one desires something is never itself a normative reason. And he argues that desires fail to figure in motivating reasons also, …Read more
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49Respect, Concern, and MembershipIn Hans Bernhard Schmid, Christoph Henning & Dieter Thomä (eds.), Social Capital, Social Identities: From Ownership to Belonging, De Gruyter. pp. 93-104. 2014.
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660Consequentialism (edited book)Blackwell. 2003.Consequentialism collects, for the first time, both the main classical sources and the central contemporary expressions of this important position. Edited and introduced by Stephen Darwall, these readings are essential for anyone interested in normative ethics.
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43The Social and the SociablePhilosophical Topics 42 (1): 201-217. 2014.Beginning from Kant’s famous idea that “unsociable sociability” stimulates human progress and civilization, the essay investigates Kant’s categories of the “unsociable” and the “sociable,” and argues that the fundamental difference between them is that the former presuppose a social perspective that is third personal, whereas the latter is always a second-personal affair, instantiated when people relate to one another in various ways, or manifest the disposition to do so. Kant’s “unsociable” att…Read more
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11How Should Ethics Relate to (the Rest of) Philosophy?: Moore's LegacySouthern Journal of Philosophy 41 (S1): 1-20. 2003.
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25Practical Skepticism and the Reasons for ActionCanadian Journal of Philosophy 8 (2). 1978.At least since Descartes's Meditations philosophers in the West have been concerned to defend the rationality of our beliefs from the threat of epistemological skepticism. The idea that there might be nothing which we know, or more radically, which we have even the slightest reason to believe, is one that many philosophers have thought to be deserving of serious attention. It seems somewhat odd, therefore, that there has not been similar attention given to what one might call practical skepticis…Read more
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74The Development of EthicsBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (1): 131-147. 2011.This Article does not have an abstract
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54Under Moore's SpellUtilitas 10 (3): 286. 1998.As David Wiggins points out, although Ross is best known for opposing Moore's consequentialism, Ross comes very close to capitulation to Moore when he accepts, as required by beneficence, a prima facie duty to maximize the good. I argue that what lies behind this is Ross's acceptance of Moore's doctrine of agent-neutral intrinsic value, a notion that is not required by, but is indeed is in tension with, beneficence as doing good to or for others
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53Scheffler on Morality and Ideals of the PersonCanadian Journal of Philosophy 12 (2). 1982.Scheffler's paper divides into two parts. In the first, he argues that Parfit's argument from the complex view of personal identity neither can, nor is intended to, establish any moral theory; in particular, it cannot establish utilitarianism. Rather, Parfit's aim must have been simply to weaken our attachment to non-utilitarian theories. In discovering that the only philosophically respectable view of personal identity holds it to consist simply in bodily or psychological continuities and conne…Read more
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1393Moral psychology as accountabilityIn Justin D'Arms & Daniel Jacobson (eds.), Moral Psychology and Human Agency: Philosophical Essays on the Science of Ethics, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 40-83. 2014.Recent work in moral philosophy has emphasized the foundational role played by interpersonal accountability in the analysis of moral concepts such as moral right and wrong, moral obligation and duty, blameworthiness, and moral responsibility (Darwall 2006; 2013a; 2013b). Extending this framework to the field of moral psychology, we hypothesize that our moral attitudes, emotions, and motives are also best understood as based in accountability. Drawing on a large body of empirical evidence, we arg…Read more
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165Moral Obligation and AccountabilityIn Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Clarendon Press. 2007.
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52Reply to Schapiro, smith/strabbing, and Yaffe (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (1): 253-264. 2010.
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41Expressivist Relativism? (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (1): 183-188. 1998.
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63Valuing ActivitySocial Philosophy and Policy 16 (1): 176. 1999.Call the proposition that the good life consists of excellent, distinctively human activity the Aristotelian Thesis. I think of a photograph I clipped from the New York Times as vividly depicting this claim. It shows a pianist, David Golub, accompanying two vocalists, Victoria Livengood and Erie Mills, at a tribute for Marilyn Home. All three artists are in fine form, exercising themselves at the height of their powers. The reason I saved the photo, however, is Mr. Golub's face. He is positively…Read more
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100Motive and obligation in Hume's ethicsNoûs 27 (4): 415-448. 1993.:Hume distinguishes natural obligation, the motive of self-interest, from moral obligation, the sentiment of approbation and disapprobation. I argue that his discussion of justice makes use of a third notion, in addition to the other two: rule-obligation. For Hume, the just person regulates her conduct by mutually advantageous rules of justice. Rule-obligation is the notion she requires to express her acceptance of these rules in so regulating herself. I place these ideas in relation to Hume's o…Read more
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38Contractualism, Root and Branch: A Review EssayPhilosophy and Public Affairs 34 (2): 193-214. 2006.
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128Justice and RetaliationPhilosophical Papers 39 (3): 315-341. 2010.Punishment and Reparations are sometimes held to express retaliatory emotions whose object is to strike back against a victimizer. I begin by examining a version of this idea in Mill's writings about natural resentment and the sense of justice in Chapter V of Utilitarianism. Mill's view is that the ?natural? sentiment of resentment or ?vengeance? that is at the heart of the concept of justice is essentially retaliatory, therefore has ?nothing moral in it,? and so must be disciplined or moralized…Read more
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29Berkeley's moral and political philosophyIn Kenneth P. Winkler (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Berkeley, Cambridge University Press. pp. 311. 2005.
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6The Inventions of Autonomy (review)European Journal of Philosophy 7 (3): 339-350. 1999.Book reviewed in this article:J.B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy.
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79Hutcheson on Practical ReasonHume Studies 23 (1): 73-89. 1997.I describe the various ways in which Hume's critique of practical reason derives from Hutcheson and then consider a tension that arises between Hutcheson's (and Hume's) critique of noninstrumental reasons and his account of calm passions.
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308Philosophical Ethics: An Historical And Contemporary IntroductionWestview Press. 1997.Why is ethics part of philosophy? Stephen Darwall's Philosophical Ethics introduces students to ethics from a distinctively philosophical perspective, one that weaves together central ethical questions such as "What has value?" and "What are our moral obligations?" with fundamental philosophical issues such as "What is value?" and "What can a moral obligation consist in?"With one eye on contemporary discussions and another on classical texts,Philosophical Ethics shows how Hobbes, Mill, Kant, Ari…Read more
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4Authority and second personal reasons for actingIn David Sobel & Steven Wall (eds.), Reasons for Action, Cambridge University Press. 2009.
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35The authority of reasonPhilosophical Review 109 (4): 583-586. 2000.At the time of her death in 1996, Jean Hampton was working on a book on practical reason she had tentatively titled, A Theory of Reasons. The above volume consists of the materials she left, together with useful editorial clues to the state of their relative completeness. Computer file dates make it clear that Hampton was engaged in a significant revision of the text and had gotten as far as Chapter 3 of a nine-chapter book. Revisions of two-thirds of the text lay before her, and, as Richard Hea…Read more
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Value Theory |
History of Western Philosophy |
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Value Theory |
History of Western Philosophy |