•  58
    The transfiguration of everyday life
    Metaphilosophy 25 (4): 238-261. 1994.
    After more than forty years I still warmly recall the edifying conversations that I had in the episcopal palace in Bergamo with my revered bishop. Msgr. Radini Tedeschi. About the persons in the Vatican, from the Holy Father downwards, there was never an expression that was not respectful, no, never. But as for women or their shape or what concerned them, no word was ever spoken. It was as if there were no women in the world. This absolute silence, this lack of any familiarity with regard to the…Read more
  •  113
    Using the bench trial of Colorado’s Amendment 2 as an example, this article focuses on the more general question of expert testimony in moral philosophy. It argues that there is indeed expertise in moral philosophy but argues against admitting such expert testimony in cases dealing with what John Rawls terms “constitutional essentials” and ‘matters of basic justice.” Developing the idea of public reason inherent in the Rawlsian concept of political liberalism, the article argues that philosopher…Read more
  •  84
    Political Animals: Luck, Love and Dignity
    Metaphilosophy 29 (4): 273-287. 1998.
    Human beings are both needy and dignified. How should we think about the relationship between our neediness and our worth? Card argues well that our vulnerability to luck is intertwined in the very conditions of moral agency. We can see the merit of her approach even more clearly by turning to some difficulties the Stoics have in preserving dignity while removing vulnerability. Stoicism does, however, help us to sort through the difficulties involved as we try to combine love of particular peopl…Read more
  •  33
    Feminism and internationalism
    Metaphilosophy 27 (1-2): 202-208. 1996.
  •  28
    Compassion : Human and animal
    In N. Ann Davis, Richard Keshen & Jeff McMahan (eds.), Ethics and Humanity: Themes From the Philosophy of Jonathan Glover, Oxford University Press. pp. 202--226. 2009.
  •  2
    Stoic laughter : a reading of Seneca's apocolocyntosis
    In Shadi Bartsch & David Wray (eds.), Seneca and the Self, Cambridge University Press. 2009.
  •  9
    Perceptive equilibrium : literary theory and ethical theory
    In Garry L. Hagberg & Walter Jost (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Literature, Wiley-blackwell. 2010.
    This chapter contains sections titled: The Absence of the Ethical Reflective Equilibrium Straightness and Surprise Perception and Method Perception and Love Literary Theory and Ethical Theory.
  • Ethics of narration
    In Peter Gratton, John Panteleimon Manoussakis & Richard Kearney (eds.), Traversing the Imaginary: Richard Kearney and the Postmodern Challenge, Northwestern University Press. 2007.
  •  115
    Women and the law of peoples
    Politics, Philosophy and Economics 1 (3): 283-306. 2002.
    John Rawls argues, in The Law of Peoples , that a principle of toleration requires the international community to respect `decent hierarchical societies' that obey certain minimal human rights norms. In this article, I question that line of argument, using women's inequality as a lens. I show that Rawls's principle would require us to treat the very same practices of the very same entity differently if it happens to set up as an independent nation rather than a state within a nation, and I criti…Read more
  •  50
    The complexity of groups: A comment on Jorge Valadez
    Philosophy and Social Criticism 29 (1): 57-69. 2003.
    Valadez’ book is an excellent investigation of the question of group rights. Nonetheless, there are some serious objections to group rights that he does not investigate. Groups contain hierarchies of power: thus giving legal privileges to a group is usually tantamount to giving more power to those already in power within the group. Groups have unclear and changing boundaries of membership; group rights often reify the current definition of a group and militate against change. Finally, there are …Read more
  •  168
    Any defense of universal norms involves drawing distinctions among the many things people actually desire. If it is to have any content at all, it will say that some objects of desire are more central than others for political purposes, more indispensable to a human being's quality of life. Any wise such approach will go even further, holding that some existing preferences are actually bad bases for social policy. The list of Central Human Capabilities that forms the core of my political project…Read more
  •  109
    Précis of upheavals of thought (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (2). 2004.
    Emotions shape the landscape of our mental and social lives. Like the “geological upheavals” a traveler might discover in a landscape where recently only a flat plane could be seen, they mark our lives as uneven, uncertain, and prone to reversal. Why and how? Is it because emotions are animal energies or impulses that have no connection with our thoughts, imaginings, and appraisals? In the passage from which my title is taken, Proust denies this, calling the emotions “geological upheavals of tho…Read more
  •  107
    Transcendence and human values (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64 (2). 2002.
    Robert Adams has written a most impressive book. To say that it is the major philosophical contribution to theocentric ethics in recent years, given moral philosophers’ general avoidance of religious topics, would be grossly inadequate praise. Nor would that judgment adequately convey the book’s fresh and subtle contributions to many more familiar topics in philosophical ethics, from the nature of ethical language to the virtues to the role of civil liberties in a pluralistic society. Most impre…Read more
  •  820
    Virtue Ethics: A Misleading Category?
    The Journal of Ethics 3 (3): 163-201. 1999.
    Virtue ethics is standardly taught and discussed as a distinctive approach to the major questions of ethics, a third major position alongside Utilitarian and Kantian ethics. I argue that this taxonomy is a confusion. Both Utilitarianism and Kantianism contain treatments of virtue, so virtue ethics cannot possibly be a separate approach contrasted with those approaches. There are, to be sure, quite a few contemporary philosophical writers about virtue who are neither Utilitarians nor Kantians; ma…Read more
  •  50
    How should what economists call “social values” be measured?
    The Journal of Ethics 3 (3): 249-273. 1999.
    Most economists and some philosophers distinguish individual utilities from interpersonal social values. Even if challenges to that conceptual distinction can be met, further philosophically interesting questions arise. I pursue three in this paper, using, as context for the discussion, health economics and its attempt to discern empirically a social welfare function to help guide rationing decisions. (1) To discern these utilities and values in a manner that is morally appropriate if they are t…Read more
  •  326
    Mortal immortals: Lucretius on death and the voice of nature
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (2): 303-351. 1989.
  •  285
    Equity and mercy
    Philosophy and Public Affairs 22 (2): 83-125. 1993.