Susan A. Stark

Inspired in part by a renewed attention to Aristotle's moral philosophy, philosophers have acknowledged the important role of the emotions in morality. Nonetheless, precisely how emotions matter to morality has remained contentious. Aristotelians claim that moral virtue is constituted by correct action and correct emotion. But Kantians seem to require solely that agents do morally correct actions out of respect for the moral law. There is a crucial philosophical disagreement between the Aristotelian and Kantian moral outlooks: namely, is feeling the correct emotions necessary to virtue or is it an optional extra, which is permitted but not required. I argue that there are good reasons for siding with the Aristotelians: virtuous agents must experience the emotions appropriate to their situations. Moral virtue requires a change of heart.

Childbirth in the United States is in crisis. This is especially true for Black and brown mothers. This childbirth emergency constitutes a failure of the social contract: because society has failed to provide minimally decent care for all birthing mothers, but especially for Black and brown mothers, it is necessary to allow mothers to choose home birth. I amplify the voices of Black and brown scholars and midwives to defend home birth, and I argue that home birth is safe and empowering and that it is rational for those who desire it to choose it.

A body of psychological data casts doubt on the idea of character traits. As a result, some conclude that situations determine action. This view, situationism, undercuts our conception of the individual as responsible for actions. Moreover, the situationist argues that virtue theories, because they emphasize character, are most vulnerable to this attack. At its extreme, situationists hold that there are no character traits of the sort virtue theory requires. I argue, however, that the virtue theorist can answer this critique. Their response elucidates the ordinary process of moral development and reveals that the human good is partly constituted by social context. The situationist, mistaken about the virtues, makes an important point: situations have a substantial bearing on our abilities to be morally good and to flourish. But accepting this need not undermine the virtue theorist’s view because human beings can learn to be sensitive to morally salient aspects of situations.

This commentary raises questions about the moral value of feeling pity. Whereas Professor Arenson asks whether an Epicurean hedonist can rightly feel pity given that feeling pity may be unpleasant, I ask whether feeling pity may be morally problematic for other reasons. In particular, I argue that feeling pity involves an endorsement of a morally problematic hierarchy between pitier and pitied. Because of this, I believe that we should draw a little-made distinction between compassion and pity and that individuals should cultivate compassion rather than pity. I suggest one possible way to draw the distinction between compassion and pity.

Moral philosophers have long believed, what moral agents have long known, that there is a tension between morality and happiness. Impersonal moral theories make it very difficult---if not impossible---for the perfect moral agent to have intimate friends and deep commitments. Awareness of this insight has led many moral philosophers to argue that these aspects of the good life constrain morality. But in many cases this is misguided. Rather I think that the appropriate constraints on morality must come as themselves moral constraints: the appropriate account of morality must be able to accommodate the moral value of, for instance, love or friendship. I argue that no faithful account of Kantianism can hold that motives of love and friendship have moral value---so called neo-Kantians who claim that they can, are more "neo" than Kantian. Furthermore, moral emotions can and, indeed, must play a broader role in morality than has previously been understood, and I argue for two such roles. First, I defend the view that emotions can motivate morally worthy actions. Second, I argue that even in virtue theory the role for proper emotions must be broadened. Virtue theorists hold that having the proper emotional state is partly constitutive of virtue. And some virtue theorists have held that this proper emotional state is one in which the virtuous person's emotions are fully unified, such that the courageous person, for instance, feels confidence only and no fear. Against this, I argue that it is necessary for the fully virtuous person to experience apparently conflicting emotions: the courageous person, in some cases, must feel both confidence and fear as she proceeds into battle. Only then can the virtue theorist fully explain the extent of the goodness that virtue is. In all, then, my view is that we continue to have an inadequate understanding of the role of emotions in morality. In coming to understand this better, I believe that we also come to understand that individuals can both be morally good and have intimate friends and deep commitments