Anna Cremaldi

This paper develops and defends an anger-based account of bitterness. In particular, it argues that contrary to what some scholars have maintained, an adequate account of bitterness does not require the concept of hope. That is, bitterness is neither disappointed hope (McFall) nor hopeless anger (Stockdale). Instead, it proposes that bitterness is better understood as unresolved anger, an emotion experienced when a lack of resolution to our violated moral expectations forces us to swallow our anger. Construing the emotion this way not only accurately captures instances of bitterness, but is also more explanatorily adequate than competing accounts.

Is it ever morally wrong for a consumer to imagine something immoral in a work of fiction, or for an author to prompt such imagining? Brandon Cooke has recently argued that it cannot be. On Cooke’s account, fictive imagining is immune to moral criticism because such cases of imagining do not amount to the endorsement of the immoral content, nor do they imply that the authors of such fictions necessarily endorse their contents. We argue against Cooke that in fact fictively imagining something immoral can be morally blameworthy, specifically in cases where fictive imagining is engaged in the service of immoral desires. Taking one potent case—namely, rape-fantasy pornography—we argue that the proper engagement with pornography requires the engagement of the consumer’s desires. Insofar as it is morally wrong to desire something immoral, or to encourage others to desire something immoral, then consumers can be held morally blameworthy for engaging in such fictive imaginings and works of fiction that are crafted to fit these purposes can be open to moral condemnation.

Is open-mindedness a moral virtue? Surprisingly, this question has not received much attention from philosophers. In this paper, we fill this lacuna by arguing that there are good grounds for thinking that it is. In particular, we show that the extant account of open-mindedness as a moral virtue faces an objection that appears to show that exercising the character trait may not be virtuous. To offset this objection, we argue that a much stronger argument can be made for the case that open-mindedness is a moral virtue by appealing to the notion of moral understanding. Specifically, we provide a new rationale as to why we should exercise open-mindedness and offer several arguments to allay the concern that doing so can at times cause us to be in an epistemically and morally weaker position.

Aristotle claims that the virtuous motive in benefitting others is altruistic. But he also claims in Nicomachean Ethics 9.7 that benefaction is an expression of self-love. This essay examines the account of benefaction with an eye to resolving the tension between these claims. By drawing out Aristotle’s comparison between reproduction and benefaction, I show that Aristotle conceives of self-love principally in terms of activities whose causal effects redound not only to the beneficiary but also to the benefactor. With this understanding of self-love, we better understand the relationship between self-love and benefaction and between self-love and friendship.

To be generous, by Aristotle’s lights, one does not have to be a saint. Rather, Aristotle’s criteria for generosity are ordinary and consistent with the norms of his day. It is surprising, then, to find Aristotle claiming that very few people succeed in being generous. This claim generates a puzzle: if generosity is not extraordinarily demanding, why are so few fulfilling its criteria? The puzzle is not addressed by the literature on generosity, but it is worth addressing for its surprising explanation. There is a natural tendency towards illiberality, given normal physiological processes associated with aging, and this tendency has broad implications for moral development. This explanation suggests that legislators wishing to instill generosity in citizens must study the means of intervening in physiological processes—a point that often goes unaddressed in studies of happiness and its relationship to external goods.

Commentators worry that Aristotelian generosity is a conglomeration of distinct virtues, rather than a single, unified virtue. This paper argues that the virtue of generosity is unified if we recognize that the generous person’s goal lies in promoting friendship — in particular, in ensuring that there is sufficient wealth to support a community of friends. One of the important consequences of this reading is that it reverses the standard interpretation according to which Aristotelian generosity resembles our modern conception of generosity as an impartial virtue. On the proposed view, Aristotelian generosity is undergirded by reciprocity, rather than impartiality.