Morality

About: Morality is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 22623 publications have been published within this topic receiving 545733 citations. The topic is also known as: moral & morals.

The Moral Neoliberal: Welfare and Citizenship in Italy

Abstract: Morality is often imagined to be at odds with capitalism and its focus on the bottom line, but in "The Moral Neoliberal" morality is shown as the opposite: an indispensable tool for capitalist transformation. Setting her investigation within the shifting landscape of neoliberal welfare reform in the Lombardy region of Italy, Andrea Muehlebach tracks the phenomenal rise of voluntarism in the wake of the state's withdrawal of social service programs. Using anthropological tools, she shows how socialist volunteers are interpreting their unwaged labor as an expression of social solidarity, with Catholic volunteers thinking of theirs as an expression of charity and love. Such interpretations pave the way for a mass mobilization of an ethical citizenry that is put to work by the state. Visiting several sites across the region, from Milanese high schools to the offices of state social workers to the homes of the needy, Muehlebach mounts a powerful argument that the neoliberal state nurtures selflessness in order to cement some of its most controversial reforms. At the same time, she also shows how the insertion of such an anticapitalist narrative into the heart of neoliberalization can have unintended consequences.

Political Legitimacy and Democracy

Abstract: The term ‘political legitimacy’ is unfortunately ambiguous. One serious source of confusion is the failure to distinguish clearly between political legitimacy and political authority and to conflate political authority with authoritativeness. I will distinguish between (1) political legitimacy, (2) political authority, and (3) authoritativeness. I will also articulate two importantly different variants of the notion of political authority. Having drawn these distinctions, I will argue first that political legitimacy, rather than political authority, is the more central notion for a theory of the morality of political power. My second main conclusion will be that where democratic authorization of the exercise of political power is possible, only a democratic government can be legitimate. Another ambiguity is also a source of confusion. Sometimes it is unclear whether ‘legitimacy’ is being used in a descriptive or a normative sense. In this article I am concerned exclusively with legitimacy in the normative sense, not with the conditions under which an entity is believed to be legitimate. However, a normative account of legitimacy is essential for a descriptive account. Unless one distinguishes carefully between political legitimacy, political authority, and authoritativeness, one will not be clear about what beliefs in legitimacy are beliefs about.

Lectures on the history of moral philosophy

Abstract: Editors Foreword A Note On The Texts Introduction: Modern Moral Philosophy, 1600-1800 1. A Difference between Classical and Modern Moral Philosophy 2. The Main Problem of Greek Moral Philosophy 3. The Background of Modern Moral Philosophy 4. The Problems of Modem Moral Philosophy 5. The Relation between Religion and Science 6. Kant on Science and Religion 7. On Studying Historical Texts HUME I. Morality Psychologized and the Passions 1. Background: Skepticism and the Fideism of Nature 2. Classification of the Passions 3. Outline of Section 3 of Part III of Book II 4. Hume's Account of (Nonmoral) Deliberation: The Official View II. Rational Deliberation and the Role of Reason 1. Three Questions about Hume's Official View 2. Three Further Psychological Principles 3. Deliberation as Transforming the System of Passions 4. The General Appetite to Good 5. The General Appetite to Good: Passion or Principle? III. Justice as an Artificial Virtue 1. The Capital of the Sciences 2. The Elements of Hume's Problem 3. The Origin of Justice and Property 4. The Circumstances of Justice 5. The Idea of Convention Examples and Supplementary Remarks 6. Justice as a Best Scheme of Conventions 7. The Two Stages of Development IV. The Critique of Rational Intuitionism 1. Introduction 2. Some of Clarke's Main Claims 3. The Content of Right and Wrong 4. Rational Intuitionism's Moral Psychology 5. Hume's Critique of Rational Intuitionism 6. Hume's Second Argument: Morality Not Demonstrable V. The Judicious Spectator 1. Introduction 2. Hume's Account of Sympathy 3. The First Objection: The Idea of the Judicious Spectator 4. The Second Objection: Virtue in Rags Is Still Virtue 5. The Epistemological Role of the Moral Sentiments 6. Whether Hume Has a Conception of Practical Reason 7. The Concluding Section of the Treatise Appendix: Hume's Disowning the Treatise LEIBNIZ I. His Metaphysical Perfectionism 1. Introduction 2. Leibniz's Metaphysical Perfectionism 3. The Concept of a Perfection 4. Leibniz's Predicate-in-Subject Theory of Truth 5. Some Comments on Leibniz's Account of Truth II. Spirits As Active Substances: Their Freedom 1. The Complete Individual Concept Includes Active Powers 2. Spirits as Individual Rational Substances 3. True Freedom 4. Reason, Judgment, and Will 5. A Note on the Practical Point of View KANT I. Groundwork: Preface And Part I 1. Introductory Comments 2. Some Points about the Preface: Paragraphs 11-13 3. The Idea of a Pure Will 4. The Main Argument of Groundwork I 5. The Absolute Value of a Good Will 6. The Special Purpose of Reason 7. Two Roles of the Good Will II. The Categorical Imperative: The First Formulation 1. Introduction 2. Features of Ideal Moral Agents 3. The Four-Step CI-Procedure 4. Kant's Second Example: The Deceitful Promise 5. Kant's Fourth Example: The Maxim of Indifference 6. Two Limits on Information 7. The Structure of Motives III. THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE: THE SECOND FORMULATION 1. The Relation between the Formulations 2. Statements of the Second Formulation 3. Duties of Justice and Duties of Virtue 4. What Is Humanity? 5. The Negative Interpretation 6. The Positive Interpretation 7. Conclusion: Remarks on Groundwork 11:46-49 IV. THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE: THE THIRD FORMULATION 1. Gaining Entry for the Moral Law 2. The Formulation of Autonomy and Its Interpretation 3. The Supremacy of Reason 4. The Realm of Ends 5. Bringing the Moral Law Nearer to Intuition 6. What Is the Analogy? V. THE PRIORITY OF RIGHT AND THE OBJECT OF THE MORAL LAW 1. Introduction 2. The First Three of Six Conceptions of the Good 3. The Second Three Conceptions of the Good 4. Autonomy and Heteronomy 5. The Priority of Bight 6. A Note on True Human Needs VI. Moral Constructivism 1. Rational Intuitionism: A Final Look 2. Kant's Moral Constructivism 3. The Constructivist Procedure 4. An Observation and an Objection 5. Two Conceptions of Objectivity 6. The Categorical Imperative: In What Way Synthetic A Priori? VII. THE FACT OF REASON 1. Introduction 2. The First Fact of Reason Passage 3. The Second Passage: 5-8 of Chapter 1 of the Analytic 4. The Third Passage: Appendix I to Analytic I, Paragraphs 8-15 5. Why Kant Might Have Abandoned a Deduction for the Moral Law 6. What Kind of Authentication Does the Moral Law Have? 7. The Fifth and Sixth Fact of Reason Passages 8. Conclusion VIII. The Moral Law as the Law of Freedom 1. Concluding Remarks on Constructivism and Due Reflection 2. The Two Points of View 3. Kant's Opposition to Leibniz on Freedom 4. Absolute Spontaneity 5. The Moral Law as a Law of Freedom 6. The Ideas of Freedom 7. Conclusion IX. THE MORAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE RELIGION, BOOK I 1. The Three Predispositions 2. The Free Power of Choice 3. The Rational Representation of the Origin of Evil 4. The Manichean Moral Psychology 5. The Roots of Moral Motivation in Our Person X. The Unity Of Reason 1. The Practical Point of View 2. The Realm of Ends as Object of the Moral Law 3. The Highest Good as Object of the Moral Law 4. The Postulates of Vernunftglaube 5. The Content of Reasonable Faith 6. The Unity of Reason HEGEL I. His Rechtsphilosophie 1. Introduction 2. Philosophy as Reconciliation 3. The Free Will 4. Private Property 5. Civil Society II. Ethical Life and Liberalism 1. Sitttichkeit: The Account of Duty 2. Sittlickkeit: The State 3. Sittlichkeit: War and Peace 4. A Third Alternative 5. Hegel's Legacy as a Critic of Liberalism Appendix: Course Outline

Experiments in Ethics

Abstract: In the past few decades, scientists of human nature - including experimental and cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists, evolutionary theorists, and behavioural economists - have explored the way we arrive at moral judgments They have called into question commonplaces about character and offered troubling explanations for various moral intuitions Research like this may help explain what, in fact, we do and feel But can it tell us what we ought to do or feel? In "Experiments in Ethics", the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah explores how the new empirical moral psychology relates to the age-old project of philosophical ethicsSome moral theorists hold that the realm of morality must be autonomous of the sciences; others maintain that science undermines the authority of moral reasons Appiah elaborates a vision of naturalism that resists both temptations He traces an intellectual genealogy of the burgeoning discipline of "experimental philosophy," provides a balanced, lucid account of the work being done in this controversial and increasingly influential field, and offers a fresh way of thinking about ethics in the classical traditionAppiah urges that the relation between empirical research and morality, now so often antagonistic, should be seen in terms of dialogue, not contest And he shows how experimental philosophy, far from being something new, is actually as old as philosophy itself Beyond illuminating debates about the connection between psychology and ethics, intuition and theory, his book helps us to rethink the very nature of the philosophical enterprise

An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent

Abstract: Preface - Introduction - PART 1 PHENOMENOLOGICAL - The Soteriological Character of Post-Axial Religion - Salvation/Liberation as Human Transformation - The Cosmic Optimism of Post-Axial Religion - PART 2 THE RELIGIOUS AMBIGUITY OF THE UNIVERSE - Ontological, Cosmological and Design Arguments - Morality, Experience and Overall Probability - The Naturalistic Option - PART 3 EPISTEMOLOGICAL - Natural Meaning and Experience - Ethical and Aesthetic Meaning and Experience - Religious Meaning and Experience - Religion and Reality - Contemporary non-Realist Religion - The Rationality of Religious Belief - PART 4 THE PLURALISTIC HYPOTHESIS - The Pluralistic Hypothesis - The Personae of the Real - The Impersonae of the Real - PART 5 CRITERIOLOGICAL - Soteriology and Ethics - The Moral Criterion - Myths, Mysteries and the Unanswered Questions - The Problem of Conflicting Truth-Claims - Epilogue: the Future - Bibliography - Index