Aloysius Ventham

The central claim of constitutivism is that there is an inescapable, constitutive aim (or feature) of action that generates and grounds normativity in general, and moral normativity in particular. However, constitutivist accounts often face two significant challenges: the specificity challenge, which argues that any norm-generating aim is too specific to be genuinely inescapable (giving rise to so-called ‘shmagency’ objections), and the vagueness challenge, which contends that any sufficiently general aim fails to generate specific norms. This paper argues that a version of constitutivism that draws on a Hegelian account of willing can overcome both challenges, thereby enabling constitutivism to maintain its viability as a metaethical theory.

This paper explores the concept of friendship by examining the way this relationship is accommodated within two of the three major models within normative ethics: specifically, Kantian Deontology and Aristotelianism. I argue that the models of friendship compatible with Kantian Deontology fail to give an adequate account in virtue of failing to provide the necessary robustness required in genuine friendships. Aristotelian accounts come under pressure for their emphasis on similarity and virtue mirroring, which may not reflect the diversity found in real-world friendships. The paper proposes a novel account of friendship, termed the adverbial model, which values the unique way individuals relate to their world. This model addresses the robustness requirement I propose as a necessary desideratum, and accommodates friendships between individuals with differing interests and values.

Normative blackballing in the context of a friendship refers to a practise where one party actively tells the other that they no longer wish to be friends in virtue of that friend holding abhorrent beliefs. This paper argues that normative blackballing is not morally required in cases where one party develops a morally bad belief if we hold the view that friendships are robust attachments. If this is true, then at least two of the major positions within the current debate on the specific wrongness of being friends with bad people are wrong to argue that the termination of a friendship can be morally required of us. I will draw on Brennan’s work(2023) and take the argument as given that no objective sufficiency criteria can be offered to justify normative blackballing. I will then show how subjective accounts also fail to justify normative blackballing by showing that there is no mechanism to appropriately weigh trivial, but passionately held, beliefs. If any belief an agent themself considers sufficiently bad justifies normative blackballing, then this undermines friendship’s robust nature. We either have to accept the subjective criteria and reject robustness, or accept robustness and deny that beliefs are sufficient for normative blackballing.

This paper argues that constitutivism is not a novel account but rather collapses into Aristotelianism albeit with new, conceptually clear and philosophically rich, terminology. The paper explores the Aristotelian structure of constitutivism and responds to objections from some constitutivists (Katsafanas 2013. Agency and the Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism. Oxford University Press) that Aristotelian metaethical accounts cannot meet the practicality requirement in ethics. The author concludes that if the constitutivist can respond to Enoch’s ‘schmagency’ objection, then the Aristotelian can accommodate the practicality requirement by invoking the same mechanism. This paper thus presents constitutivism as an inherently Aristotelian theory, capable of meeting the challenges posed by externalist objections, and not simply that an Aristotelian version of constitutivism can be articulated.

This paper argues that constitutivism is not a novel account but rather collapses into Aristotelianism albeit with new, conceptually clear and philosophically rich, terminology. The paper explores the Aristotelian structure of constitutivism and responds to objections from some constitutivists (Katsafanas 2013. Agency and the Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism. Oxford University Press) that Aristotelian metaethical accounts cannot meet the practicality requirement in ethics. The author concludes that if the constitutivist can respond to Enoch’s ‘schmagency’ objection, then the Aristotelian can accommodate the practicality requirement by invoking the same mechanism. This paper thus presents constitutivism as an inherently Aristotelian theory, capable of meeting the challenges posed by externalist objections, and not simply that an Aristotelian version of constitutivism can be articulated.