David McNaughton

Forgiveness usually gets a very good press in our culture: we are deluged with self-help books and television shows all delivering the same message, that forgiveness is good for everyone, and is always the right thing to do. But those who have suffered seriously at the hands of others often and rightly feel that this boosterism about forgiveness is glib and facile. Perhaps forgiveness is not always desirable, especially where the wrongdoing is terrible or the wrongdoer unrepentant. In this book, Garrard and McNaughton suggest that the whole debate suffers from a crippling lack of clarity about what forgiveness really amounts to. They argue that it is more difficult, complex and troubling than many of its advocates suppose. Nevertheless, they conclude, a proper understanding of forgiveness allows us to avoid cheap and shallow forms of it, and enables us to see why it is right and admirable to forgive even unrepentant wrongdoers

Sextus Empiricus: Outlines of Scepticism Translated by Julia Annas & Jonathan Barnes Cambridge University Press 1994 ISBN‐0–521–30950–6 Hardback ISBN 0–521–31205‐X Paperback Republicanism, Liberty and Commercial Society 1649–1776 David Wootton Stanford University Press, 1994 viii, 497 pp. £35 ISBN 0804723567 John Marshall: John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility Cambridge University Press, 1994 Pp. xxi + 485. ISBN 0–521–44380–6 £55 0–521–44687–3 £22.95 Ian Harris: The Mind of John Locke: A Study of Political Theory in its Intellectual Setting Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 Pp. xv + 429. ISBN 0–521–35603–2 Lawrence E. Klein: Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness Cambridge University Press, xii, 217 pp. £30 Cahiers Montesquieu: Lectures de Montesquieu, Actes du Colloque de Wolfenbuttel réunis par Edgar Mass et Alberto Postigliola Liguori Editore, Napoli; Universitas, Paris; Voltaire Foundation, Oxford, 1993. ISBN 0–7294–0462–5. £18.00 George Armstrong Kelly: The Humane Comedy: Constant, Tocqueville, and French Liberalism with a foreword by Stephen R. Graubard, Cambridge University Press, 1992. ISBN 0–521–41227–7. £35.00 Christopher J. Berry: The Idea of Luxury. A Conceptual and Historical Investigation Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 xiv + 271 pp., 0–521–466911 pbk Sarah Gibbons: Kant's Theory of Imagination. Bridging Gaps in Judgement and Experience Oxford Philosophical Monographs. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1994 pp. 205 plus x. £27.50 Andrew Brook: Kant and the Mind Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1994. pp. 327 plus xii. £35.00 The Correspondence of John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte trans. and ed. by Oscar A. Haac New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1995 pp. xxvi + 403. £31.95 ISBN 1–56000–148–8 Alan P. F. Sell: Philosophical Idealism and Christian Belief University of Wales Press, 1995 ISBN 0–7083–1310–8. 338 pp. £35.00 Agnosticism: Contemporary Responses to Spencer and Huxley Ed. Andrew Pyle Thoemmes Press, Bristol, 1995, pp. xxvi + 301 ISBN 1–85506–404–9 £14.95, 1–85506–405–7 £45.00

I wish from my Heart, I could avoid concluding, that since Morality, according to your Opinion as well as mine, is determin'd merely by Sentiment, it regards only human Nature & human Life. … If Morality were determin'd by Reason, that is the same to all rational Beings: But nothing but Experience can assure us, that the Sentiments are the same. What Experience have we with regard to superior Beings? How can we ascribe to them any Sentiments at all? They have implanted those Sentiments in us for the Conduct of Life like our bodily Sensations, which they possess not themselves. When we ask whether morality ‘regards only human nature and human life’ we might be concerned with one of two kinds of question. We may be asking what kinds of being could share our moral point of view. What is the potential scope of the community of moral agents and assessors? Is the moral point of view essentially a human point of view? Could we, or should we, adopt a wider standpoint which would leave room for a significant moral dialogue with non-human moral agents, if there are any? Alternatively, we could be asking whether only human beings should be the objects of moral concern or whether we should widen the circle of concern to include other kinds of being. We may make the same point using a helpful device of Cora Diamond's. We may be concerned with what should replace x or with what should replace y in the formula: We x s assess together conduct and character in so far as it affects ourselves and our fellow y s

McNaughton and Rawling present a view on which practical reasons are facts, such as the fact that the rubbish bin is full. This is a non-normative fact, but it is a reason for you to do something, namely take the rubbish out. They see rationality as a matter of consistency. And they see duty as neither purely a matter of rationality nor of practical reason: on the one hand, the rational sociopath is immoral; but, on the other, morality does not require that we always act on the weightiest moral reasons. McNaughton and Rawling criticize various forms of internalism, including Williams’s, and they tentatively propose a view of duty that is neither purely subjective in Prichard’s sense, nor purely objective.

significant role for accomplishment thereby admits a ‘Trojan Horse’ (267).1 To abandon hedonism in favour of a conception of well-being that incorporates achievement is to take the first step down a slippery slope toward the collapse of the other two pillars of utilitarian morality: welfarism and consequentialism. We shall argue that Crisp’s arguments do not support these conclusions. We begin with welfarism. Crisp defines it thus: ‘Well-being is the only value. Everything good must be good for some being or beings’ (264). The first part of this definition is potentially misleading, since it makes it sound as if welfarism adopts a monistic account of value, in which well-being is the only good thing. But well-being, as Crisp notes, when discussing hedonism, is best understood as consisting in a balance of good things over bad in one’s life. So understood, welfarism is silent on the issue of what things are good; it places a structural restriction on what kinds of things can be good: they must be things that are good for beings. It is a separate task to supply the content to fit this structure by determining what things are good, and welfarists differ in their answers: hedonists traditionally assert that pleasure alone is good; others add further items such as knowledge and virtue. Why is the thought that a person’s well-being depends importantly on what they accomplish a threat to welfarism? An accomplishment is judged both by its outcome or product and by the manner of the performance itself. But an activity or outcome is only an achievement if it is worthwhile, and whether it is worthwhile will depend on whether it exhibits what Crisp asserts to be ‘non-welfarist values’ (266), such as beauty, grace, importance, or style - excellences which welfarism, in Crisp’s view, cannot accommodate because they cannot be ‘cashed out in welfarist terms’, or ‘reduced to the value of well-being’ (266). Here Crisp rests his case, but it is worth trying to get clearer about the difficulties in order to see if the welfarist can meet them..

In this paper, the principal objections to unconditional forgiveness are canvassed, primarily that it fails to take wrongdoing seriously enough, and that it displays a lack of self-respect. It is argued that these objections stem from a mistaken understanding of what forgiveness actually involves, including the erroneous view that forgiveness involves some degree of condoning of the offence, and is incompatible with blaming the offender or punishing him. Two positive reasons for endorsing unconditional forgiveness are considered: respect for persons and human solidarity; and it is argued that the latter provides more plausible grounds for it than the former

In recent years the distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons has been taken by many to play a key role in distinguishing deontology from consequentialism. It is central to all universalist consequentialist theories that value is determined impersonally; the real value of any state of affairs does not depend on the point of view of the agent. No reference, therefore, to the agent or to his or her position in the world need enter into a consequentialist understanding of what makes an action right or wrong or morally permissible. Consequentialism thus provides an agent-neutral account of both the right and the good.

In this paper we defend a version of moral internalism and a cognitivist account of motivation against recent criticisms. The internalist thesis we espouse claims that, if an agent believes she has reason to A, then she is motivated to A. Discussion of counter-examples has been clouded by the absence of a clear account of the nature of motivation. While we can only begin to provide such an account in this paper, we do enough to show that our version of internalism can be defended against putative counter-examples. All theories of motivation which take what motivates to be a psychological state run foul of the following plausible constraint: the reason why you ought to do an action and the reason why you do it can be the same. In our view, however, while what motivates is a reason (which is a fact) the state of being motivated is a cognitive stage, viz. the belief that one has reason to act. In cases where the agent's relevant beliefs are false, then she has no reason to act, but nontheless her action can be explained in other ways.