University of Pittsburgh
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 1972
CV
New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America
  •  133
    Harm to Others
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (4): 691-694. 1987.
  •  3
    Morality, Authority, and Law
    Oxford University Press UK. 2013.
    Stephen Darwall presents a series of essays that explore the Second-Person Standpoint (SPS)--an argument which advances an analysis of central moral concepts as irreducibly second personal in the sense of entailing mutual accountability and the authority to address demands. He illustrates the power of the second-personal framework to illuminate a wide variety of issues in moral, political, and legal philosophy. Section I concerns morality: for example, its distinctiveness among normative concept…Read more
  • How should ethics relate to (the rest of ) philosophy?
    In Terry Horgan & Mark Timmons (eds.), Metaethics After Moore, Oxford University Press Uk. 2006.
  •  438
    III-Moral Obligation: Form and Substance
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 110 (1pt1): 31-46. 2010.
    Beginning from an analysis of moral obligation's form that I defend in The Second-Person Standpoint as what we are answerable for as beings with the necessary capacities to enter into relations of mutual accountability, I argue that this analysis has implications for moral obligation's substance. Given what it is to take responsibility for oneself and hold oneself answerable, I argue, it follows that if there are any moral obligations at all, then there must exist a basic pro tanto obligation no…Read more
  •  155
    “Second-personal morality” and morality
    Philosophical Psychology 31 (5): 804-816. 2013.
  •  122
    Eine Antwort auf Monika Betzier, Sebastian Rödl und Peter Schaber
    Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 57 (1): 173-179. 2009.
  •  43
    Joseph Butler: Five Sermons
    Hackett Publishing Company. 1983.
    _CONTENTS:__ Introduction Selected Bibliography Five Sermons:_ The Preface_ Sermon I - Upon Human Nature Sermon II - Upon Human Nature Sermon III - Upon Human Nature Sermon IV - Upon The Love Of Our Neighbor Sermon V - Upon The Love Of Our Neighbor A dissertation upon the Nature of Virtue_.
  •  4
    Impartial Reason
    Ethics 96 (3): 604-619. 1983.
  • Reason, Self-Regard, and Morality
    Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh. 1972.
  •  3
    Ethics and Morality
    In Tristram McPherson & David Plunkett (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics, Routledge. pp. 552-566. 2017.
  •  64
    Reason, Judgment, and the Desire to Be Rational
    Journal of Philosophy 80 (9999): 652-653. 1983.
  •  253
    Authority, Accountability, and Preemption
    Jurisprudence 2 (1): 103-119. 2011.
    Joseph Raz's 'normal justification thesis' is that the normal way of justifying someone's claim to authority over another person is that the latter would comply better with the reasons that apply to him anyway were he to treat the former's directives as authoritative. Darwall argues that this provides 'reasons of the wrong kind' for authority. He turns then to Raz's claim that the fact that treating someone as an authority would enable one to comply better with reasons that apply to him anyway c…Read more
  •  164
    Welfare and Rational Care
    Princeton University Press. 2004.
    What kind of life best ensures human welfare? Since the ancient Greeks, this question has been as central to ethical philosophy as to ordinary reflection. But what exactly is welfare? This question has suffered from relative neglect. And, as Stephen Darwall shows, it has done so at a price. Presenting a provocative new "rational care theory of welfare," Darwall proves that a proper understanding of welfare fundamentally changes how we think about what is best for people.Most philosophers have as…Read more
  •  350
    Because I Want It
    Social Philosophy and Policy 18 (2): 129-153. 2001.
    How can an agent's desire or will give him reasons for acting? Not long ago, this might have seemed a silly question, since it was widely believed that all reasons for acting are based in the agent's desires. The interesting question, it seemed, was not how what an agent wants could give him reasons, but how anything else could. In recent years, however, this earlier orthodoxy has increasingly appeared wrongheaded as a growing number of philosophers have come to stress the action-guiding role of…Read more
  •  94
    The Social and the Sociable
    Philosophical 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
  •  83
    Stephen Darwall expands upon his argument for a second-personal framework for morality, in which morality entails mutual accountability and the authority to address demands. He explores the role of the framework in relation to cultural ideas of respect and honor; the development of "modern" moral philosophy; and interpersonal relations.
  •  167
    This book is a major work in the history of ethics, and provides the first study of early modern British philosophy in several decades. Professor Darwall discerns two distinct traditions feeding into the moral philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On the one hand, there is the empirical, naturalist tradition, comprising Hobbes, Locke, Cumberland, Hutcheson, and Hume, which argues that obligation is the practical force that empirical discoveries acquire in the process of deliber…Read more
  •  4
    Ethical Intuitionism and the Motivation Problem,”
    In Philip Stratton-Lake (ed.), Ethical Intuitionism: Re-evaluations, Oxford University Press Uk. 2002.
  •  150
    Pleasure As Ultimate Good In Sidgwick’s Ethics
    The Monist 58 (3): 475-489. 1974.
    The notion of pleasure lies at the very heart of Sidgwick’s moral philosophy. For Sidgwick holds not merely that pleasure is a good, but that ultimately it is the only good. And hence it is the good of pleasure which grounds his utilitarianism.
  •  251
    Self-Interest and Self-Concern
    Social Philosophy and Policy 14 (1): 158. 1997.
    In what follows I consider whether the idea of a person's interest or good might be better understood through that of care or concern for that person for her sake, rather than conversely, as is ordinarily assumed. Contrary to desire-satisfaction theories of interest, such an account can explain why not everything a person rationally desires is part of her good, since what a person sensibly wants is not necessarily what we would sensibly want, insofar as we care about her. First, however, a tale:…Read more
  •  713
    Consequentialism (edited book)
    Blackwell. 2002.
    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.
  •  341
    Moore, normativity, and intrinsic value
    Ethics 113 (3): 468-489. 2003.
    Principia Ethica set the agenda for analytical metaethics. Moore’s unrelenting focus on fundamentals both brought metaethics into view as a potentially separate area of philosophical inquiry and provided a model of the analytical techniques necessary to pursue it.1 Moore acknowledged that he wasn’t the first to insist on a basic irreducible core of all ethical concepts. Although he seems not to have appreciated the roots of this thought in eighteenth-century intuitionists like Clarke, Balguy, and…Read more
  •  100
    Reply to Feldman, Hurka, and Rosati (review)
    Philosophical Studies 130 (3): 637-658. 2006.
  •  284
    Abolishing morality
    Synthese 72 (1): 71-89. 1987.
    Peer Reviewed.