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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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28Berkeley'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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127Justice 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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306Philosophical 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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33The 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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78Hutcheson 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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152Normativity and Projection in Hobbes’s LeviathanPhilosophical Review 109 (3): 313-347. 2000.A perennial problem in interpreting Hobbes’s moral and political thought in Leviathan has been to square the apparently irreducible normativity of central Hobbesian concepts and premises with his materialism and empiricism. Thus, Hobbes defines a “law of nature” as a “precept or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life” and the “right of nature” as “the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preser…Read more
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10919. Self-Deception, Autonomy, and Moral ConstitutionIn Brian P. McLaughlin & Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (eds.), Perspectives on Self-Deception, University of California Press. pp. 407-430. 1988.
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37Book Review:Thomas Reid on Freedom and Morality. William L. Rowe (review)Ethics 103 (2): 389-. 1993.
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96Moral discourse and practice: some philosophical approaches (edited book)Oxford University Press. 1997.What are ethical judgments about? And what is their relation to practice? How can ethical judgment aspire to objectivity? The past two decades have witnessed a resurgence of interest in metaethics, placing questions such as these about the nature and status of ethical judgment at the very center of contemporary moral philosophy. Moral Discourse and Practice: Some Philosophical Approaches is a unique anthology which collects important recent work, much of which is not easily available elsewhere, …Read more
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80Egoism and MoralityIn Desmond M. Clarke & Catherine Wilson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Early Modern Europe, Oxford University Press. 2011.This article examines changes in the conception of morality and egoism in early modern Europe. It explains that the postulate that human beings were fractious, covetous, and endowed with a strong drive towards self-aggrandizement was associated with Thomas Hobbes, and his writings produced a strong counterflow in the form of assertions and demonstrations of altruism and benevolence as natural endowments of human beings. It suggests that the modern ethical thought has defined itself by its concer…Read more
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111Welfare and Rational CarePrinceton University Press. 2002.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
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294Contractarianism, contractualism (edited book)Blackwell. 2003.Contractualism/Contractarianism collects, for the first time, both major classical sources and central contemporary discussions of these important approaches to philosophical ethics. Edited and introduced by Stephen Darwall, these readings are essential for anyone interested in normative ethics.
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42The 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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295Precis: The second-person standpoint (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (1): 216-228. 2010.
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151Agreement Matters: Critical Notice of Derek Parfit, On What MattersPhilosophical Review 123 (1): 79-105. 2014.Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons (1984) mounted a striking defense of Act Consequentialism against a Rawls-inspired Kantian orthodoxy in moral philosophy. On What Matters (2011) is notable for its serious engagement with Kant's ethics and for its arguments in support of the “Triple Theory,” which allies Rule Consequentialism with Kantian and Scanlonian Contractualism against Act Consequentialism as a theory of moral right. This critical notice argues that what underlies this change is a view o…Read more
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204Internalism and agencyPhilosophical Perspectives 6 155-174. 1992.have come in for increasing attention and controversy. A good example would be recent debates about moral realism where question of the relation between ethics (or ethical judgment) and the will has come to loom large.' Unfortunately, however, the range of positions labelled internalist in ethical writing is bewilderingly large, and only infrequently are important distinctions kept clear.2 Sometimes writers have in mind the view that sincere assent to a moral (or, more generally, an ethical) jud…Read more
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89Symposia papers: Autonomist internalism and the justification of moralsNoûs 24 (2): 257-267. 1990.
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19Honor, History, and Relationship: Essays in Second-Personal Ethics IiOxford University Press. 2013.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
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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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Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |
History of Western Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Value Theory |
History of Western Philosophy |