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122Review: From Morality to Virtue and Back? (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (3): 695-701. 1994.
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67The Rejection of Consequentialism by Samuel Scheffler (review)Journal of Philosophy 81 (4): 220-226. 1984.
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78Comment on Stephen Darwall's The Second Person StandpointPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (1): 246-252. 2010.
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235The 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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132Equal Freedom: selected Tanner lectures on human valuesUniversity of Michigan Press. 1995.Issues at the major fault-line of political beliefs and debates.
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73On Sterba’s Argument from Rationality to MoralityThe Journal of Ethics 18 (3): 243-252. 2014.James Sterba argues for morality as a principled compromise between self-regarding and other-regarding reasons and that either egoists or altruists, who always give overriding weight to self-regarding and other-reasons, respectively, can be shown to beg the question against morality. He concludes that moral conduct is “rationally required.” Sterba’s dialectic assumes that both egoists and altruists accept that both self-regarding and other-regarding considerations are genuine pro tanto reasons, …Read more
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221Being WithSouthern Journal of Philosophy 49 (s1). 2011.What is it for two or more people to be with one another or together? And what role do empathic psychological processes play, either as essential constituents or as typical elements? As I define it, to be genuinely with each other, persons must be jointly aware of their mutual openness to mutual relating. This means, I argue, that being with is a second-personal phenomenon in the sense I discuss in The Second-Person Standpoint. People who are with each other are in one another's presence, where …Read more
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108Under 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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169Moral 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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10Responsibility within RelationsIn Brian Feltham & John Cottingham (eds.), Partiality and impartiality: morality, special relationships, and the wider world, Oxford University Press. pp. 150-168. 2010.Philosophical discussion of relationships of love and friendship has tended to focus on ways in which particularistic forms of care and concern seem to create problems for impartial ethical theories. This chapter explores ways in which regard and respect for one another as equal persons is no less central to love and friendship, and how these are best accounted for within an ethical theory that is grounded within a second-person standpoint. More specifically, it argues that central to loving and…Read more
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70Why Kant needs the second-person standpointIn Thomas E. Hill (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Kant's Ethics, Wiley-blackwell. 2009.This chapter contains sections titled: Kantian Practical Presupposition Arguments The Second‐Personal Aspect of Moral Obligation and Equal Dignity Kant's Argument for the Moral Law in Groundwork III Bibliography.
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595The value of autonomy and autonomy of the willEthics 116 (2): 263-284. 2006.It is a commonplace that ‘autonomy’ has several different senses in contemporary moral and political discussion. The term’s original meaning was political: a right assumed by states to administer their own affairs. It was not until the nineteenth century that ‘autonomy’ came (in English) to refer also to the conduct of individuals, and even then there were, as now, different meanings.1 Odd as it may seem from our perspective, one that was in play from the beginning was Kant’s notion of “autonomy…Read more
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213Hutcheson 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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336But it would be wrongSocial Philosophy and Policy 27 (2): 135-157. 2010.Is the fact that an action would be wrong itself a reason not to perform it? Warranted attitude accounts of value suggest about value, that being valuable is not itself a reason but to the reasons for valuing something in which its value consists. Would a warranted attitude account of moral obligation and wrongness, not entail, therefore, that being morally obligatory or wrong gives no reason for action itself? I argue that this is not true. Although warranted attitude theories of normative conc…Read more
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167How Nowhere Can You Get (and do Ethics)?:The View from Nowhere. Thomas NagelEthics 98 (1): 137-. 1987.
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230Motive 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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112Reply to Schapiro, smith/strabbing, and Yaffe (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (1): 253-264. 2010.
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253Authority, Accountability, and PreemptionJurisprudence 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
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164Welfare and Rational CarePrinceton 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
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