This paper looks into the ethics of positive perspective-taking. Positive perspective-taking is, roughly, an attitudinal orientation toward an object that treats that object as sufficiently good, or in other words, as meeting one’s normative expectations. Sometimes, positive perspective-taking is both prudent and virtuous. But sometimes, positive perspective-taking–especially about injustices done to others–seems morally suspicious. When is positive perspective-taking actually morally problematic, and in those cases, what is the nature of the moral problem? I argue that a complete answer to this (...) question should appeal to moral rights: on my view, we sometimes have moral rights against others’ putting our problems into a positive perspective. A central advantage of this proposal is its ability to account for the moral asymmetry between positive perspective-taking about injustices done to oneself and positive perspective-taking about injustices done to others. (shrink)

Existential happiness is happiness that one has a basic life at all. Having a basic life, as I understand it, involves being the subject of experiences and being an agent in some minimal sense. As I argue, existential happiness is a fitting response to having a basic life. To make this argument, I look at two possible accounts of the fittingness of existential happiness: the value of a basic life and attachment to the constitutive elements of one’s life. I also (...) consider a few possible sources of existential happiness, including encounters with death, counterfactual thinking, and hedonically positive feelings of awe directed toward one’s own consciousness. (shrink)

How can we rationally make peace with our past moral failings, while committing to avoid similar mistakes in the future? Is it because we cannot do anything about the past, while the future is still open? Or is it that regret for our past mistakes is psychologically harmful, and we need to forgive ourselves in order to be able to move on? Or is it because moral mistakes enable our moral growth? I argue that these and other answers do not (...) properly resolve the problem of temporal asymmetry in our attitudes toward moral imperfection, and I defend an alternative response, centered on our personal attachments and our biographical identity. (shrink)

Flourishing is an increasingly common construct employed in the study of human wellbeing. But its appropriateness as a framework of wellbeing at certain stages of life is contested. In this paper, we consider to what extent it is possible for someone to flourish at the end of life. People with terminal illness often experience significant and protracted pain and suffering especially when they opt for treatments that prolong life. Certain aspects of human goods, however, that are plausibly constitutive of flourishing—such (...) as meaning and purpose, deep personal relationships, and character and virtue—can be uniquely realised when life is ending. We argue that there is a qualified sense in which one can flourish at the end of life but that one must make important modifications to the criteria implicit in conventional conceptions of flourishing. We close with a discussion of the empirical assessment of wellbeing at the end of life and explore the possibility of introducing a flourishing measure in palliative care practice. (shrink)

Humility can seem like a somewhat ‘unfashionable’ virtue: the word can conjure an image of cringing servility, unduly romanticised feelings of inferiority, or a level of self-denial which seems ill-placed in a life well-lived. But the term can also capture something of great ethical importance. In this paper, I will propose an account of humility that attempts to capture this moral significance. I will then explore the connection between humility and ethical development, seeking to argue that humility has an important (...) role in ethical improvement. If such a connection is vindicated, it suggests that humility is valuable twice over: it has intrinsic worth but is also instrumentally valuable, enabling us to become better people. (shrink)

Existential happiness is happiness that one has a basic life at all. Having a basic life, as I understand it, involves being the subject of experiences and being an agent in some minimal sense. As I argue, existential happiness is a fitting response to having a basic life. To make this argument, I look at two possible accounts of the fittingness of existential happiness: the value of a basic life and attachment to the constitutive elements of one’s life. I also (...) consider a few possible sources of existential happiness, including encounters with death, counterfactual thinking, and hedonically positive feelings of awe directed toward one’s own consciousness. (shrink)