Moral Repair and the Moral Saints Problem

This article explores the forms of moral repair that the wrongdoer has to perform in an attempt to make amends for her past wrongdoing, with a focus on the issues of interpersonal moral repair; that is, what a wrongdoer can do to merit her victim‘s forgiveness and achieve reconciliation with her community. The article argues against the very general demands of atonement that amount to an obligation to stop being someone who commits wrongs—to become a moral saint—and suggests a new form of atonement that is more practical and useful in our everyday life

Relationships and Respect for Persons

Many theorists writing on the aftermath of wrongdoing have been influenced by Trudy Govier’s emphasis on interpersonal relationships. But George Sher has recently challenged this talk of relationships. Read descriptively, he argues, claims about the interpersonal effects of wrongdoing are either exaggerated or false. Read normatively, relationships add nothing to more traditional moral theory. In this essay, I argue that Govier’s relational framework both avoids Sher’s dilemma and enables her to develop the notion of respect for persons in ways that improve upon traditional Kantian discussions

Advocacy and Genuine Autonomy: The Lawyer's Role When the Client Has a Right to Do Wrong

Stephen L. Pepper argues that lawyers and clients often act together in ways that their moral convictions would prevent them from acting individually. In an attempt to address this problem, I explore the nature of the attorney's responsibility to help her client reach autonomous decisions. To do this, I review the work of some prominent medical ethicists on a parallel to Pepper's problem in doctor-patient relationships

A Unified Account of the Moral Standing to Blame

Recently, philosophers have turned their attention to the question, not when a given agent is blameworthy for what she does, but when a further agent has the moral standing to blame her for what she does. Philosophers have proposed at least four conditions on having “moral standing”: 1. One’s blame would not be “hypocritical”. 2. One is not oneself “involved in” the target agent’s wrongdoing. 3. One must be warranted in believing that the target is indeed blameworthy for the wrongdoing. 4. The target’s wrongdoing must some of “one’s business”. These conditions are often proposed as both conditions on one and the same thing, and as marking fundamentally different ways of “losing standing.” Here I call these claims into question. First, I claim that conditions (3) and (4) are simply conditions on different things than are conditions (1) and (2). Second, I argue that condition (2) reduces to condition (1): when “involvement” removes someone’s standing to blame, it does so only by indicating something further about that agent, viz., that he or she lacks commitment to the values that condemn the wrongdoer’s action. The result: after we clarify the nature of the non-hypocrisy condition, we will have a unified account of moral standing to blame. Issues also discussed: whether standing can ever be regained, the relationship between standing and our "moral fragility", the difference between mere inconsistency and hypocrisy, and whether a condition of standing might be derived from deeper facts about the "equality of persons"

The nature of normativity

There is something mysterious, and perhaps even dubious, about 'ought' claims. They seem to exert an authoritative power, a "binding force," over us. The norms of morality are most often said to exhibit such an authoritative force. The "queerness" of this alleged property has led many to moral skepticism. But, normative authority is no less mysterious in the case of the 'oughts' of epistemics, logic or prudence. The questions "Why should I believe the truth? accept deductive inferences? act prudently?" are puzzling in the same way as the more familiar worry "Why should I be moral?" Moral philosophers who have tried to explain the nature of normative authority have most frequently focused their efforts on developing theories of the nature of moral facts, our epistemic access to such facts, or our motivational responses to them. It seems to me that each of these approaches is inadequate to the task of capturing normative force. One may know that it is a fact that stealing is immoral but still wonder whether one should steal. One may feel a strong motivation to be honest without being convinced that there is good reason to be so motivated. We will not clear up the mystery of normative authority by clearing up the metaphysics, epistemology, or motivational efficacy of norms. I contend that normative authority is a matter of justification. A norm is authoritative for an agent if and only if it is justified in a thorough-going sense, which I refer to as "justification simpliciter." I analyze the nature of justification simpliciter by means of an extended analogy with epistemic justification. There is a regress problem with justification simpliciter, and there are foundationalist, coherentist and externalist approaches to solving that problem. I conclude that foundationalist and externalist models of justification simpliciter fail. I then develop a coherentist theory of the nature of normativity, called Reflective Endorsement Coherentism. According to this theory, an agent is justified in accepting norm N as a guide to her action if and only if she can both endorse N upon reflection and reflectively endorse her own practices of endorsement