Bob Bishop

In this paper I defend the ancient thesis that agents always act under the guise of the good. I do so by arguing that the role that goodness plays in action is isomorphic to the role that truth plays in belief. In particular, I argue that the guise of the good thesis allows us to: (i) fix the topic of ethical and metaethical disagreement just as the aim of belief allows us to fix the topic of alethiological disagreements, (ii) explain the thinness of thin moral concepts in parallel to the thinness of concepts like truth, (iii) develop an account of moral testimony that parallels the best non-reductive accounts of theoretical testimony, and (iv) explains why we are open to our values changing over time in much the same way that we are open to our theoretical premises changing over time.

Thomas Aquinas famously held that (A) theft is always wrong, and also that (B) it is permissible for a starving man to take the bread he needs, openly or secretly, from another. He reconciled these two positions by claiming that (C) in cases of great need, it is not theft to take someone else’s property when she does not need it herself. On its face, (C) looks like a theoretically costly concession that Aquinas is forced into in order to reconcile (A) and (B). Our first aim is to show that this is not so. We argue that (C) is in fact the only way to accommodate a set of intuitive norms of keeping and taking. Our second aim is to show that (C) has important implications for theories of property more generally: a plausible theory of property must acknowledge a foundational sense of "belong" on which things belong to those who need them.

In this paper, I suggest that the conversation about the norms of unconditional forgiveness would benefit from a framing in terms of the question “How should I respond when I am wronged?” Taking cues from Thomas Aquinas, I propose that the best answer is “You should love,” and that there are two acts of love in response to wrongdoing: forgiveness and correction. I sketch some principles for deciding whether to do one or the other, and the result is an account which agrees in large part with “unconditional forgiveness views”, except that it holds out correction as a second—and sometimes better—option. (This, I think, is a more complete and more helpful bit of guidance than you normally get just by answering the question “When should I forgive?”) Finally, I reorient to the contemporary conversation by considering some objections to unconditional forgiveness views, and then comparing other unconditional forgiveness views to my own with respect to the reasons for forgiveness.