Robert J. Hartman

I teach the course Becoming a Better Person that requires students to try to improve their own character traits. But how can I teach it in a way that benefits and respects my students who are diverse in ability, race, class, gender, politics, and religion? I recommend three course designs. First, promote student buy-in by incorporating diverse experiences into course content and highlighting that diverse moral and religious traditions embrace the same virtues. Second, create a culture of humble, open-ended inquiry. Although we begin in humility as learners of our authors’ best take on the virtues, the inquiry is open-ended such that students are encouraged to appeal to their own intuitions and traditions to offer improvements or challenges to the authors we read. Third, allow students to decide which virtues they want to cultivate as well as the strategies they use to do so; this avoids paternalism through student consent to the contours of the character-shaping assignment.

Improving Character will help students to appreciate reasons to develop moral virtue, understand what some moral virtues are like, offer strategies they can try out to improve their character, and consider challenging questions about moral virtue and character improvement. It includes 45 newly commissioned essays that are concise, engaging, and mostly jargon-free. It is written for undergraduate students in their first semester. The book has four sections and an appendix. PART I: CONCEPTS AND REASONS 1. Moral virtue: The basics (Heather Battaly, University of Connecticut) 2. The need for character improvement (Liezl van Zyl, University of Waikato) 3. Reasons to improve your character traits (Robert J. Hartman, Ohio Northern University) PART II: PRACTICAL WISDOM AND MORAL VIRTUES 4. Practical wisdom (Maria Silvia Vaccarezza, University of Genoa) 5. Courage (Adam C. Pelser, United States Air Force Academy) 6. Patience (Anne Jeffrey, Baylor University) 7. Perseverance (Timothy J. Pawl, University of St. Thomas) 8. Hope (Aaron D. Cobb, Wake Forest University) 9. Temperance (Alan T. Wilson, University of Bristol) 10. Honesty (Christian B. Miller, Wake Forest University) 11. Humility (Robert C. Roberts, Baylor University) 12. Mildness (Kevin Timpe, Calvin University) 13. Justice (Mark LeBar, Florida State University) 14. Gratitude (Tony Manela, Siena College) 15. Generosity (Andrew Pinsent, University of Oxford) 16. Loyalty (John Kleinig, John Jay College CUNY) 17. Integrity (Jennifer A. Herdt, Yale University) 18. Love (Eric J. Silverman, Christopher Newport University) 19. Hospitality (Brandon Warmke, University of Florida) PART III: STRATEGIES 20. Habituation and scripts to cultivate honesty (Howard J. Curzer, Texas Tech University) 21. Friendship to cultivate practical wisdom (Kristján Kristjánsson, University of Birmingham) 22. Imitating role models to cultivate courage (Eric Yang, Santa Clara University) 23. Nudging to cultivate generosity (Bart Engelen & Alfred Archer, Tilburg University) 24. Selecting circumstances to cultivate digital temperance (Dylan F. Brown, Duke University & Michael Lamb, Wake Forest University) 25. Internalizing Stoic aphorisms to cultivate mildness (Brittany Polat, Stoicare) 26. Journaling to cultivate gratitude (Philip C. Watkins, Eastern Washington University) 27. Understanding surprising human tendencies to cultivate integrity (Marcella Linn, Loyola University Chicago) 28. Anarchist calisthenics, radical honesty, and creating social norms to cultivate justice (Jason Brennan, Georgetown University) 29. Manners to cultivate civility (David McPherson, University of Florida) 30. Running to cultivate perseverance (Sabrina B. Little, Christopher Newport University) 31. Experiencing nature to cultivate patience (Silvia Caprioglio Panizza, University of Tübingen) 32. Meatless meals to cultivate temperance (Elizabeth Foreman, Missouri State University) 33. Twelve steps in Alcoholics Anonymous to cultivate humility (Michael W. Austin, Eastern Kentucky University) 34. Christian rituals to cultivate hope (Ryan West, Grove City College) 35. Reading literature to cultivate love (Kirsten M. K. Welch, Baylor University) PART IV: QUESTIONS 36. How do we know which character traits are moral virtues? (Rebecca Stangl, University of Virginia) 37. How can you know if you have successfully cultivated virtue? (Jennifer Cole Wright, College of Charleston) 38. Is character education in the university objectionably paternalistic? (Jennifer Rothschild, Wake Forest University) 39. Is virtue signaling consonant with moral virtue? (Neil Levy, University of Oxford/Macquarie University) 40. Is suffering good when it is essential to exercising a moral virtue? (Michael S. Brady, University of Glasgow) 41. Are there serious costs to being morally virtuous? (Denise Vigani, Seton Hall University) 42. What is the relationship between luck, virtue, and flourishing? (Lorraine Besser, Middlebury College) 43. Can bad luck prevent some people from developing moral virtue? (Alexandra T. Romanyshyn, Seattle University) 44. Does character luck rule out free will and moral responsibility? (Robert J. Hartman, Ohio Northern University) 45. Can the choice to radically change your character be rational? (Marcela Herdova, Florida State University) APPENDIX A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens)

Many philosophers who deny moral luck in consequences also affirm that people can be morally responsible for consequences. But this conjunction of views faces a puzzle: because consequences are almost always shaped by luck, how can people be morally responsible for lucky consequences? The solution to which these philosophers appeal is to distinguish between degree and scope of moral responsibility. Although lucky consequences cannot affect how much praise or blame people deserve, people can nevertheless be morally responsible for the consequences. We raise a new problem for this solution. We argue that if a person blames the wrongdoer to the full extent deserved for their action, they cannot justly blame the wrongdoer for the consequence. But that result is functionally equivalent to the view that people are not morally responsible for consequences. In both cases, blame for consequences is inapt. But this counterintuitive result is not implied by the position that resultant moral luck exists, which is a comparative point in the latter view’s favor.

Can luck even partially determine how much praise and blame a person deserves? In a monograph and subsequent articles, I have argued that the answer is ‘yes’ for certain kinds of luck, and so I have argued that several types of moral luck exist. In this paper, I defend my view against the novel challenge that expected desert levels give everyone exactly equal moral opportunities, and so luck in circumstance and constitution cannot provide some people with better or worse moral opportunities than others. I argue, however, that the Equal Moral Opportunity View is subject to counterintuitive implications (for example, it rules out supererogatory actions in circumstances with no blameworthy options) and cannot realize its ambition to immunize morality from unfairness. These costs form part of my argument that the Moral Luck View is more plausible.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is an invisible disability. It is a condition of overwhelming fatigue that can last for years with various other symptoms including, most importantly, post-exertion malaise. I offer my own experience with CFS and the experience of others to explain its staggering deprivations: CFS greatly reduces the scope of access to objective goods; it greatly diminishes autonomy about their realization; it creates hardships that tend to end or diminish friendships; it tends to habituate in ways that mitigate inner peace and corrupt good character; and it diminishes bodily health. With those serious deprivations in view, I explain how various virtues can recapture some degrees of well-being lost from CFS and how their corresponding vices magnify its deprivations. The virtues of humility, patience, prudence, courage, and hope mitigate the deprivations of CFS and promote well-being. The vices of pride, impatience, impulsiveness, thoughtlessness, inconstancy, rashness, cowardice, presumption, and despair compound its deprivations.

The received view is that Kant denies all moral luck. But I show how Kant affirms constitutive moral luck in passages concerning radical evil from Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. First, I explicate Kant’s claims about radical evil. It is a morally evil disposition that all human beings have necessarily, at least for the first part of their lives, and for which they are blameworthy. Second, since these properties about radical evil appear to contradict Kant’s even more famous claims about imputation, ‘ought implies can’, and free will, I unpack Henry Allison’s proof of radical evil and show how it is consistent with interpretations of Kant’s broader views about morality. Third, I define and illustrate the category of constitutive moral luck and argue that Kant embraces the existence of constitutive moral luck given Allison-style interpretations of radical evil. This provides a reason for philosophers to reject the received view, and it creates an occasion for Kantians and Kant scholars to check their reasons if they deny moral luck.

It is conventional wisdom that appreciating the role of luck in our moral lives should make us more sparing with blame. But views of moral responsibility that allow luck to augment a person’s blameworthiness are in tension with this wisdom. I resolve this tension: our common moral luck partially generates a duty to forgo retributively blaming the blameworthy person at least sometimes. So, although luck can amplify the blame that a person deserves, luck also partially generates a duty not to give the blameworthy person the retributive blame that he deserves at least sometimes.

There is an ethics of blaming the person who deserves blame. The Christian scriptures imply the following no-vengeance condition: a person should not vengefully overtly blame a wrongdoer even if she gives the wrongdoer the exact negative treatment that he deserves. I explicate and defend this novel condition and argue that it demands a revolution in our blaming practices. First, I explain the no-vengeance condition. Second, I argue that the no-vengeance condition is often violated. The most common species of blame involves anger; anger conceptually includes a desire for vengeance; and there are many pleasures in payback. Third, I clarify that it is possible to blame non-vengefully in anger and highlight three good uses for anger in non-vengeful blame. Fourth, I offer two reasons that justify the divine command prohibiting vengeance, and I note that the Christian God is merely sufficient to make non-vengeance morally obligatory. Fifth, I defend the no-vengeance condition against four biblical objections.

The received view of Kant’s moral philosophy is that it precludes all moral luck. But I offer a plausible interpretation according to which Kant embraces moral luck in circumstance and constitution. I interpret the unconditioned nature of transcendental freedom as a person’s ability to do the right thing no matter how she is inclined by her circumstantial and constitutive luck. I argue that various passages about degrees of difficulty relating to circumstantial and constitutive luck provide a reason to accept a pro-moral luck interpretation of Kant.

According to the Free Will Explanation of a traditional view of hell, human freedom explains why some people are in hell. It also explains hell’s punishment and finality: persons in hell have freely developed moral vices that are their own punishment and that make repentance psychologically impossible. So, even though God continues to desire reconciliation with persons in hell, damned persons do not want reconciliation with God. But this moral vice explanation of hell’s finality is implausible. I argue that God can and would make direct or indirect alterations in their character to give them new motivational reasons that re-enable their freedom to repent. Subsequently, I argue that it is probable that each damned person will be saved eventually, because there is a potential infinity of opportunities for free repentance. Thus, if the Free Will Explanation’s descriptions of hell and divine love are correct, it is highly probable that each person in hell escapes to heaven.

According to the character condition, a person is morally responsible for an action A only if a character trait of hers non-accidentally motivates her performing A. But that condition is untenable according to the out of character objection because people can be morally responsible for acting out of character. We reassess this common objection. Of the seven accounts of acting out of character that we outline, only one is even a prima facie counterexample to the character condition. And it is not obvious that people act out of character in that sense. We argue that whether the out of character objection succeeds ultimately depends on the unnoticed methodological commitment that cases that may not resemble human life provide good data for theorizing about moral responsibility. But even if such cases provide good data, the forcefulness of the objection is at least deflated given that its persuasive power is supposed to come from clear real-life cases.

Some philosophers contend that concomitant ignorance preserves moral responsibility for wrongdoing. An agent is concomitantly ignorant with respect to wrongdoing if and only if her ignorance is non-culpable, but she would freely have performed the same action if she were not ignorant. I, however, argue that concomitant ignorance excuses. I show that leading accounts of moral responsibility imply that concomitant ignorance excuses, and I debunk the view that concomitant ignorance preserves moral responsibility

Someone owes gratitude to God for something only if God benefits her and is morally responsible for doing so. These requirements concerning benefit and moral responsibility generate reasons to doubt that human beings owe gratitude to God for their own moral goodness. First, moral character must be generated by its possessor’s own free choices, and so God cannot benefit moral character in human beings. Second, owed gratitude requires being morally responsible for providing a benefit, which rules out owed gratitude to God because God must do what is best. Both reasons are unpersuasive. I argue that God can benefit morally good character in human beings with and without their free choices. Subsequently, I argue against views of moral responsibility that preclude divine moral responsibility and argue that influential accounts of moral responsibility preserve it. Thus, these two requirements generate no problem for owed gratitude to God.

The aim of this paper is to explore the hypothesis that luck is a risk-involving phenomenon. I start by explaining why this hypothesis is prima facie plausible in view of the parallelisms between luck and risk. I then distinguish three ways to spell it out: in probabilistic terms, in modal terms, and in terms of lack of control. Before evaluating the resulting accounts, I explain how the idea that luck involves risk is compatible with the fact that risk concerns unwanted events whereas luck can concern both wanted and unwanted events. I turn to evaluating the modal and probabilistic views and argue, firstly, that they fail to account for the connection between risk and bad luck; secondly, that they also fail to account for the connection between risk and good luck. Finally, I defend the lack of control view. In particular, I argue that it can handle the objections to the probabilistic and modal accounts and that it can explain how degrees of luck and risk covary.

Philosophers often consider problems of free will and moral luck in isolation from one another, but both are about control and moral responsibility. One problem of free will concerns the difficult task of specifying the kind of control over our actions that is necessary and sufficient to act freely. One problem of moral luck refers to the puzzling task of explaining whether and how people can be morally responsible for actions permeated by factors beyond their control. This chapter explicates and assesses skeptical, compatibilist, and libertarian approaches to moral luck. First, I argue that what makes the above problems of free will and moral luck distinct is largely their emphasis on different kinds of luck. Second, I describe and evaluate skeptical arguments from constitutive and circumstantial luck that it is impossible to act freely. Third, I explicate and assess various support and implication relationships between various kinds of compatibilism and libertarianism, on the one hand, and causal, constitutive, circumstantial, and resultant moral luck, on the other.

One way to frame the problem of moral luck is as a contradiction in our ordinary ideas about moral responsibility. In the case of two identical reckless drivers where one kills a pedestrian and the other does not, we tend to intuit that they are and are not equally blameworthy. The Character Response sorts these intuitions in part by providing an account of moral responsibility: the drivers must be equally blameworthy, because they have identical character traits and people are originally praiseworthy and blameworthy in virtue of, and only in virtue of, their character traits. After explicating two versions of the Character Response, I argue that they both involve implausible accounts of moral responsibility and fail to provide a good solution to the problem of moral luck. I close by noting how proponents of moral luck can preserve a kernel of truth from the Character Response to explain away the intuition that the drivers are equally blameworthy.

Richard Swinburne argues that belief is a necessary but not sufficient condition for faith, and he also argues that, while faith is voluntary, belief is involuntary. This essay is concerned with the tension arising from the involuntary aspect of faith, the Christian doctrine that human beings have an obligation to exercise faith, and the moral claim that people are only responsible for actions where they have the ability to do otherwise. Put more concisely, the problem concerns the coherence of the following claims: (1) one cannot have faith, (2) one has an obligation to have faith, and (3) ought implies can. To solve this dilemma, I offer three solutions that I believe have the philosophical resources to demonstrate the consistency of these claims. Thus, I defend the claim that it is logically possible for a person to be culpable for an involuntary failure to have faith in God.

Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument is that because self-creation is required to be truly morally responsible and self-creation is impossible, it is impossible to be truly morally responsible for anything. I contend that the Basic Argument is unpersuasive and unsound. First, I argue that the moral luck debate shows that the self-creation requirement appears to be contradicted and supported by various parts of our commonsense ideas about moral responsibility, and that this ambivalence undermines the only reason that Strawson gives for the self-creation requirement. Second, I argue that the self-creation requirement is so demanding that either it is an implausible requirement for a species of true moral responsibility that we take ourselves to have or it is a plausible requirement of a species of true moral responsibility that we have never taken ourselves to have. Third, I explain that Strawson overgeneralizes from instances of constitutive luck that obviously undermine moral responsibility to all kinds of constitutive luck.

The problem of moral luck is that a general fact about luck and an intuitive moral principle jointly imply the following skeptical conclusion: human beings are morally responsible for at most a tiny fraction of each action. This skeptical conclusion threatens to undermine the claim that human beings deserve their respective eternal reward and punishment. But even if this restriction on moral responsibility is compatible with the doctrine of the final judgment, the quality of one’s afterlife within heaven or hell still appears to be lucky. Utilizing recent responses to the problem of moral luck, I explore several Molinist accounts of the final judgment that resolve both theological problems of moral luck. Some of these accounts entirely eliminate moral luck while others ensure that the moral luck involved in the judgment is overall good luck. (DOWNLOAD the published version at the external link below.)

Every tenable ethical theory must have an account of moral virtue and vice. Julia Driver has performed a great service for utilitarians by developing a utilitarian account of moral virtue that complements a broader act-based utilitarian ethical theory. In her view, a moral virtue is a psychological disposition that systematically produces good states of affairs in a particular possible world. My goal is to construct a more plausible version of Driver’s account that nevertheless maintains its basic integrity. I aim to accomplish this goal by developing four problems concerning admiration and luck for Driver’s account. Subsequently, I modify the account in a way that partially or entirely mitigates each difficulty. Finally, I attempt to undermine Driver’s rationale for rejecting the modification and explore how well the modified account of moral virtue fits with utilitarian accounts of right action.

Human persons can act with libertarian freedom in heaven according to one prominent view, because they have freely acquired perfect virtue in their pre-heavenly lives such that acting rightly in heaven is volitionally necessary. But since the character of human persons is not perfect at death, how is their character perfected? On the unilateral model, God alone completes the perfection of their character, and, on the cooperative model, God continues to work with them in purgatory to perfect their own character. I argue that although both models can make sense of all human persons enjoying free will in heaven on various assumptions, the cooperative model allows all human persons in heaven to enjoy a greater degree of freedom. This consideration about the degree of heavenly freedom provides a reason for God to implement the cooperative model.

Martin Luther affirms his theological position by saying “Here I stand. I can do no other.” Supposing that Luther’s claim is true, he lacks alternative possibilities at the moment of choice. Even so, many libertarians have the intuition that he is morally responsible for his action. One way to make sense of this intuition is to assert that Luther’s action is indirectly free, because his action inherits its freedom and moral responsibility from earlier actions when he had alternative possibilities and those earlier directly free actions formed him into the kind of person who must refrain from recanting. Surprisingly, libertarians have not developed a full account of indirectly free actions. I provide a more developed account. First, I explain the metaphysical nature of indirectly free actions such as Luther’s. Second, I examine the kind of metaphysical and epistemic connections that must occur between past directly free actions and the indirectly free action. Third, I argue that an attractive way to understand the kind of derivative moral responsibility at issue involves affirming the existence of resultant moral luck.

Every account of moral responsibility has conditions that distinguish between the consequences, actions, or traits that warrant praise or blame and those that do not. One intuitive condition is that praiseworthiness and blameworthiness cannot be affected by luck, that is, by factors beyond the agent’s control. Several philosophers build their accounts of moral responsibility on this luck-free condition, and we may call their views Luck-Free Moral Responsibility (LFMR). I offer moral and metaphysical arguments against LFMR. First, I maintain that considerations of fairness that often motivate LFMR do not require its adoption. Second, I contend that LFMR has counterintuitive implications for the nature and scope of praiseworthiness and blameworthiness and that LFMR is vulnerable to a reductio ad absurdum. Third, I state some common reasons for thinking that LFMR’s commitment to true counterfactuals of libertarian freedom is problematic, and I argue that if there are no such true counterfactuals and if LFMR is true, a person is praiseworthy and blameworthy at most for a tiny fraction of her actions. Fourth, I argue that proponents of LFMR cannot escape this skeptical cost by appealing to a different kind of counterfactual of freedom. Fifth, I develop an anti-skeptical motivation to affirm the idea that luck can affect moral responsibility.

It is almost unanimously accepted that Kant denies resultant moral luck—that is, he denies that the lucky consequence of a person’s action can affect how much praise or blame she deserves. Philosophers often point to the famous good will passage at the beginning of the Groundwork to justify this claim. I argue, however, that this passage does not support Kant’s denial of resultant moral luck. Subsequently, I argue that Kant allows agents to be morally responsible for certain kinds of lucky consequences. Even so, I argue that it is unclear whether Kant ultimately endorses resultant moral luck. The reason is that Kant does not write enough on moral responsibility for consequences to determine definitively whether he thinks that the lucky consequence for which an agent is morally responsible can add to her degree of praiseworthiness or blameworthiness. The clear upshot, however, is that Kant does not deny resultant moral luck.

Luck permeates our lives, and this raises a number of pressing questions: What is luck? When we attribute luck to people, circumstances, or events, what are we attributing? Do we have any obligations to mitigate the harms done to people who are less fortunate? And to what extent is deserving praise or blame a ected by good or bad luck? Although acquiring a true belief by an uneducated guess involves a kind of luck that precludes knowledge, does all luck undermine knowledge? And how accurate are our luck attributions anyway? The academic literature has seen growing, interdisciplinary interest in luck, and this volume brings together and explains the most important areas of this research. It consists of 39 newly commissioned chapters, written by an internationally acclaimed team of philosophers and psychologists, for a readership of students and researchers. Its coverage is divided into six sections: (i) The History of Luck, (ii) The Nature of Luck, (iii) Moral Luck, (iv) Epistemic Luck, (v) The Psychology of Luck, and (vi) Future Research. The chapters in these sections cover a wide range of topics, from the problem of moral luck, to anti-luck epistemology, to the relationship between luck attributions and cognitive biases, to meta-questions regarding the nature of luck itself, to a range of other theoretical and empirical questions currently being investigated by ethicists, epistemologists, and psychologists. By bringing this research together, the Handbook serves as both a touchstone for understanding the relevant issues and a first port of call for future philosophical and psychological research on luck.