Does the rise of artificial intelligence pose a threat to human sources of meaning? While much ink has been spilled on how AI could undercut meaningful human work, John Danaher has raised the stakes by claiming that AI could “sever” human beings from non-work-related sources of meaning—specifically, those related to intellectual and moral goods. Against this view, I argue that his suggestion that AI poses a threat to these areas of meaningful activity is overstated. Self-transformative activities pose a hard limit (...) to AI’s impingement on meaningful human activities. Contra Danaher, I suggest that a wider range of sources for meaning will continue to exist in a world dominated by AI. (shrink)

The social intuitionist approach to moral judgments advanced by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt presupposes that it is possible to provide an explanation of the human moral sense without normative implications. By contrast, Iris Murdoch’s philosophical work on moral psychology suggests that every description of morality necessarily involves evaluative features that reveal the thinker’s own moral attitudes and implicit philosophical pictures. In the light of this, we contend that Haidt’s treatment of the story about Julie and Mark, two siblings who decide (...) to have casual, protected, and in his view harmless sex, provides a too simplistic picture of what is involved in understanding human morality. Despite his aim to explain the roots of moral judgments, he fails to provide a deeper understanding of morality in two different respects. First, he does so by suggesting that his story contains all the relevant information needed to take a moral stand on it, and by rejecting as irrelevant the wider human context in which questions about sexual and family relations arise. Second, he simplifies the responses of the people who are subject to his experiment by disregarding their various reasons for disapproving and by equating understanding human morality with explaining an impersonal psychological process. (shrink)

Does remorse imply self-hatred? In this paper, I argue that self-hatred is a false response to one’s wrongdoing because it is corrupted by the vice of pride, which affects the perception of its object. To identify the detrimental operation of pride, I propose to study the process of change of heart and its impediments. I use the example of Kostelnička, from Janáček’s opera Jenůfa, to show that the impediment to remorse is active already as a source of wrongdoing and self-deception. (...) I identify three different aspects of Kostelnička’s pride: social ambition, defensive anger, and moral ambition. I show that it is pride as moral ambition that prevents the wrongdoer’s acknowledgment of her blameworthiness by causing her obsession with her blameless self-image and corrupting her self-love. In the last part of the paper, I reject Kostelnička’s initial self-hatred before her change of heart, because it is not based on an accurate judgement of her agency. Kostelnička’s true remorse is thereupon connected with her inner transformation towards humility and with a reorientation of her attention towards the victim of her wrongdoing, as testified in her plea for forgiveness. The implied moral improvement and reconstitution of her relationship to herself and others opens the way for her coming to terms with her guilt. (shrink)

There is a prima facie conflict between the values of love and autonomy. How can we bind ourselves to a person and still enjoy the fruits of self-determination? This chapter argues that the solution to this conflict lies in recognizing that love is the basis of autonomy: one must love a person in order to truly appreciate their autonomy. To make this case, this chapter defends a minimalist account of love, according to which love is an agreeable sensation that is (...) experienced when considering the existence of another person. On this view, the lover does not desire anything from the beloved but works to attend to their presence. Love, then, puts us in a position to appreciate the beloved in their particular way of being. By accepting the presence of the beloved we gain a sense of their autonomy. The roots of this account of love are found in the writings of Damaris Cudworth Masham. This chapter draws on the work of Kieran Setiya, David Velleman, and Kyla Ebels-Duggan to elaborate on and defend Masham’s views. (shrink)

The purpose of the text is to demonstrate a distinction between good or virtue and evil or vice, introduced by Hannah Arendt on the grounds of the novel by Hermann Melville Billy Budd. I analyze this distinction in relation to the life story of Romulus Gaita, the hero of the autobiographical novel My father Romulus, written by the Australian ethicist Raimond Gaita. The first paragraph deals with the said distinction, indicating the re-evaluation of such concept as virtue and vice in (...) Melville’s novel and his understanding of virtue. Then, I make an attempt to answer the question of why Gaita writes about his father using a category of character instead of virtue. Then, I reflect on the relationship between virtue, character, goodness and Romulus’s mental illness. Finally, I answer the question about the metaphysical foundation on which Gaita forms his conviction about the superiority of Good and goodness over virtue, and I show what particular components make up the ethics of goodness assumed by Romulus. (shrink)

I explore what BernardWilliams means by regarding one’s action ‘purely externally, as one might regard anyone else’s action’, and how it links to regret and agent-regret. I suggest some ways that we might understand the external view: as a failure to recognize what one has done, in terms of Williams’s distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic luck, and as akin to Thomas Nagel’s distinction between an internal and external view. I argue that none of these captures what Williams was getting at (...) because they do not allow one to take a view on one’s action. I offer two alternative accounts. One turns around what we identify with, the other concerns what we care about. Both accounts capture how I might regret, rather than agent-regret, my own action. I demonstrate that these accounts can explain the relationship between an insurance payout and the external view, and they can explain the agent-relativity of agent-regret. (shrink)

This paper explores early Australasian philosophy in some detail. Two approaches have dominated Western philosophy in Australia: idealism and materialism. Idealism was prevalent between the 1880s and the 1930s, but dissipated thereafter. Idealism in Australia often reflected Kantian themes, but it also reflected the revival of interest in Hegel through the work of ‘absolute idealists’ such as T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, and Henry Jones. A number of the early New Zealand philosophers were also educated in the idealist tradition (...) and were influential in their communities, but produced relatively little. In Australia, materialism gained prominence through the work of John Anderson, who arrived in Australia in 1927, and continues to be influential. John Anderson had been a student of Henry Jones, who might therefore be said to have influenced both main strands of Australian philosophical thought. (shrink)

I examine the ‘momentous’ choices that one makes early in life – about career or spouse, for example – and I ask what it means to regret such choices at the end of one’s life. I argue that such regrets are almost meaningless because of the difficulty of imaginatively accessing a much earlier self. I then contrast long-term regret to remorse, and argue that the two are qualitatively different experiences because remorse involves another person as victim.

What does it mean to see someone as human, as a member of humankind? What kind of call for justice is it to demand that a group be seen as human beings? This article explores a fundamental kind of injustice: one of perception and how we respond to our perceptions. Drawing on Cavell, Wittgenstein and Rancière, we elucidate “soul blindness” as a distinct and basic form of injustice. Rancière’s police orders and Cavell’s soul blindness are mutually constitutive; the undoing of (...) police orders entails a politics of soul dawning. Soul dawning entails acknowledging the humanity of others without erasing difference. In the concluding section, we consider white obliviousness to the Black Lives Matters movement as a case of soul blindness. Part of the political import of BLM is its capacity to illustrate how practices of soul blindness in the United States constitute whiteness in a racialized police order. (shrink)

Forgiveness is clearly an important aspect of our moral lives, yet surprisingly Kant, one of the most important authors in the history of Western ethics, seems to have very little to say about it. Some authors explain this omission by noting that forgiveness sits uncomfortably in Kant’s moral thought: forgiveness seems to have an ineluctably ‘elective’ aspect which makes it to a certain extent arbitrary; thus it stands in tension with Kant’s claim that agents are autonomous beings, capable of determining (...) their own moral status through rational reflection and choice. Other authors recognise that forgiveness plays a role in Kant’s philosophy but fail to appreciate the nature of this duty and misrepresent the Kantian argument in support of it. This paper argues that there is space in Kant’s philosophy for a genuine theory of forgiveness and hopes to lay the grounds for a correct interpretation of this theory. I argue that from a Kantian perspective, forgiveness is not ‘elective’ but, at least in some cases, morally required. I claim that, for Kant, we have an imperfect duty of virtue to forgive repentant wrongdoers that have embarked on a project of self-reflection and self-reform. I develop a novel argument in support of this duty by drawing on Kant’s theory of rational agency, the thesis of radical evil, Kant’s theory of moral development, and the formula of humanity. However, it must be noted that this is a conditional duty and Kant’s position also entails that absence of repentance on the part of the wrongdoer should be taken as evidence of a lack of commitment to a project of self-reflection and self-reform. In such cases, Kant claims, we have a perfect duty to ourselves not to forgive unrepentant wrongdoers. I argue that this duty should be understood as one of the duties of self-esteem, which involves the duty to respect and recognise our own dignity as rational beings. (shrink)

Over several decades, Cora Diamond has articulated a distinctive way of thinking about ethics. Prompted by a recent critique of Diamond, we elucidate some of the main themes of her work, and reveal their power to reconfigure and deepen moral philosophy. In concluding, we suggest that Diamond’s moral philosophical practice can be seen as one plausible way of fleshing out what Wittgenstein might have meant by his dictum that “ethics is transcendental”.

What is the place of vulnerability in our lives? The current debate about the ethics of enhancement technologies provides a context in which to think about this question. In my view, the current debate is likely to be fruitless, largely because we bring the wrong ethical resources to bear on its questions. In this article, I recall an important, but currently neglected, role that moral concepts play in our thinking, a role they should especially play in relation to the introduction (...) of new technologies. I call this the ‘contemplative role of moral concepts’. I then contrast two approaches to the contemplative role of moral concepts which are found in the current literature, and show why it is important to keep in mind both of these approaches when thinking about human vulnerability. (shrink)

Raimond Gaita’s work in moral philosophy is unusual and important in focusing on the concept of sainthood. Drawing partly on the work of George Orwell, and partly on the life and work of Simone Weil, as well as on further material, I argue that Gaita’s use of this notion to help make sense of the concept of human preciousness is unconvincing, not least because he does not properly explore the figure and psychology of the saint in any detail. I relatedly (...) argue that the notion of human preciousness in question is implausible and, in some ways, sentimental. I also explore Gaita’s concept of “speaking personally” in moral philosophy, and suggest that matters here are a great deal more complicated than he supposes. (shrink)

It is often assumed that moral questions ask for answers in the way other questions do. In this article, moral and non-moral versions of the question ‘Should I do x or y?’ are compared. While non-moral questions of that form typically ask for answers of the form ‘You should do x/y’, so-called ‘narrow answers’, moral questions often do not ask for such narrow answers. Rather, they ask for answers recognizing their delicacy, the need for a deeper understanding of the meaning (...) of the alternatives and the fact that moral decisions are, as Gaita formulates it, ‘non-accidentally and inescapably’ the agent’s to make. In short, moral questions often ask for a kind of answer that is highly different from the kind of answer non-moral questions ask for. In presupposing the ideal answer to a moral question to be a narrow answer, moral philosophers have tended to overlook this. (shrink)

Moral philosophy has traditionally aimed for correct or appropriate moral judgments. Consequently, when asked for moral advice, the moral philosopher first tries to develop a moral judgment and then informs the advisee. The focus is on what the advisee should do, not on whether any advice should be given. There may, however, be various kinds of reasons not to morally judge, to be ‘morally modest’. In the first part of this article, I give some reasons to be morally modest when (...) moral advice is asked for. Second, I show how Wittgenstein radicalizes these reasons to such an extent that the very possibility of giving moral advice seems threatened. Third, I argue that taking Wittgenstein and the need for moral modesty seriously does not make moral advice impossible, but rather asks for a notion of moral advice in which moral advice is not necessarily linked to the ideal of a moral judgment. Fourth, I highlight some advantages of a Wittgensteinian notion of moral advice over traditional notions. (shrink)

I examine the familiar criterial view of personhood, according to which the possession of personal properties such as self-consciousness, emotionality, sentience, and so forth is necessary and sufficient for the status of a person. I argue that this view confuses criteria for personhood with parts of an ideal of personhood. In normal cases, we have already identified a creature as a person before we start looking for it to manifest the personal properties, indeed this pre-identification is part of what makes (...) it possible for us to see and interpret the creature as a person in the first place. This pre-identification is typically based on biological features. Except in some interesting special or science-fiction cases, some of which I discuss, it is human animals that we identify as persons. (shrink)

An influential view of education is that it prepares young people for adult life, usually in the areas of civic engagement, leisure and contemplation. Employment may be a locus for learning some worthwhile skills and knowledge, but it is not itself the possible locus or one of the possible loci of a worthwhile life. This article disputes that view by drawing attention to those aspects of employment that make it potentially an aspect of a worthwhile life. The exercise and development (...) of one's abilities, co-operation with others, self-discovery and the pursuit of excellence are all identified as potential components of a worthwhile life. If such an aspect of life is worth striving for then education should prepare one for it. Objections to this argument are reviewed and ultimately rejected. (shrink)

In Eichmann in Jerusalem , Hannah Arendt struggled to defend the possibility of judgment against the obvious problems encountered in attempts to offer legally valid and morally meaningful judgments of those who had committed crimes in morally bankrupt communities. Following Norrie, this article argues that Arendt’s conclusions in Eichmann are equivocal and incoherent. Exploring her perspectival theory of judgment, the article suggests that Arendt remains trapped within certain Kantian assumptions in her philosophy of history, and as such sees the question (...) of freedom in a binary way. The article argues that Adorno’s philosophy of freedom provides the resources to diagnose and overcome Arendt’s shortcomings. Adorno’s position provides a way of embracing the antinomical character of judgment, by emphasising the need for elements of reason and nature in the phenomenon of freedom. In Adorno’s lights, judgment becomes an attempt to express a ‘spirit of solidarity’ with the tragic status of the potentially free but actually unfree subject of modernity. (shrink)

A polemical account of Australian philosophy up to 2003, emphasising its unique aspects (such as commitment to realism) and the connections between philosophers' views and their lives. Topics include early idealism, the dominance of John Anderson in Sydney, the Orr case, Catholic scholasticism, Melbourne Wittgensteinianism, philosophy of science, the Sydney disturbances of the 1970s, Francofeminism, environmental philosophy, the philosophy of law and Mabo, ethics and Peter Singer. Realist theories especially praised are David Armstrong's on universals, David Stove's on logical probability (...) and the ethical realism of Rai Gaita and Catholic philosophers. In addition to strict philosophy, the book treats non-religious moral traditions to train virtue, such as Freemasonry, civics education and the Greek and Roman classics. (shrink)

Theorists about love typically downplay the scale of persistent and possibly intractable disagreement about love. Where they have considered such disagreements at all, they have tended to treat them as an example of the lack of clarity surrounding the concept of love, a problem which can be resolved by philosophical analysis. In doing so, they invariably slip into prescriptive mode and offer moral injunctions in the guise of conceptual analyses.This article argues for philosophical modesty. I propose that the starting point (...) of any coherent philosophical investigation of love must be a willingness to take our disagreements seriously. These disagreements stem from profound moral differences: we disagree about love inasmuch as we disagree about how we should properly treat one another.With a series of examples drawn from philosophy, literature and real life I attempt to illustrate some of the disagreements that arise in relation to erotic love. Drawing upon the work of Wittgenstein, Friedrich Waissman and W.B. Gallie, I suggest that any robust theory of love needs to take account of its contestable nature and the integral role it plays in our moral life. (shrink)

In his 1980 book Against Empiricism: On Education, Epistemology and Value, British philosopher R. F. Holland exposes the inadequacies of a philosophy of education originating from an empiricist worldview. By following Plato’s view that the issue of what qualifies as knowledge has to be understood with reference to whether it is teachable, Holland’s critique of empiricism highlights the social and communal dimensions of education. The primary objective of this paper is to offer a reassessment of Holland’s thoughts on education and (...) value. To do so, I first discuss Holland’s use of Plato’s ideas in his article ‘Epistemology and Education’ to demonstrate that Holland’s position can offer us a fruitful way to diagnose common, prevalent educational practices. I then turn to look at Holland’s views on value and morality. To illustrate how his thoughts on education can be seen to be relevant to the contemporary world, I explore and criticize some implicit presuppositions on knowledge in the 20... (shrink)

In “Correspondence to Reality in Ethics”, Mario Brandhorst examines the view of ethics that Wittgenstein took in his later years. According to Brandhorst, Wittgenstein leaves room for truth and falsity, facts, correspondence and reality in ethics. Wittgenstein's target, argues Brandhorst, is objectivity. I argue that Brandhorst's arguments in favour of truth, facts, reality and correspondence in ethics invite similar arguments in favour of objectivity, that Brandhorst does not recognise this because his conception of objectivity is distorted by a Platonist picture (...) and that he misinterprets the passage which he takes to support a Wittgensteinian case against objectivity. (shrink)

This paper examines the possibility of setting a boundary between religion and “pseudo-religion” (or superstition). Philosophers of religion inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ideas, in particular, insist that religious language-use can be neither legitimated nor criticized from the perspective of non-religious language-games. Thus, for example, the “theodicist” requirement that the existence of evil should be theoretically reconciled with theism can be argued to be pseudo-religious (superstitious). Another example discussed in the paper is the relation between religion and morality. The paper concludes (...) by reflecting on the issue of relativism arising from the Wittgensteinian contention that the religion vs. pseudo-religion division can only be drawn within a religious framework, and on Wittgenstein’s own suggestion that the religious person “uses a picture”. (shrink)

There is a gap between what we think and what we think we think about ethics. This gap appears when elements of our ethical reflection and our moral theories contradict each other. It also appears when something that is important in our ethical reflection is sidelined in our moral theories. The gap appears in both ways with the ethical idea glory. The present exploration of this idea is a case study of how far actual ethical reflection diverges from moral theory. (...) This divergence tells against moral theory, and in favour of less constricted and more flexible modes of ethical reflection. (shrink)

Suppose that realism about values is true, that there are objects and states of affairs which are intrinsically valuable, that some objects and states of affairs are intrinsically more valuable than others and that some objects and states of affairs are intrinsically valuable for Sam, and others for Maria.

This article critically examines the rationales for the well-settled principle in sentencing law that an offender’s remorse is to be treated as a mitigating factor. Four basic types of rationale are examined: remorse makes punishment redundant; offering mitigation can induce remorse; remorse should be rewarded with mitigation; and remorse should be recognised by mitigation. The first three rationales each suffer from certain weaknesses or limitations, and are argued to be not as persuasive as the fourth. The article then considers, and (...) rejects, two arguments against remorse as a mitigating factor in sentencing: that the crime, not the offender, is the focus of punishment; and that the truly remorseful offender would not ask for mitigation. The article concludes with a brief consideration of whether a lack of remorse should be an aggravating factor. (shrink)

If, as a number of writers have predicted, the computers of the future will possess intelligence and capacities that exceed our own then it seems as though they will be worthy of a moral respect at least equal to, and perhaps greater than, human beings. In this paper I propose a test to determine when we have reached that point. Inspired by Alan Turing’s (1950) original “Turing test”, which argued that we would be justified in conceding that machines could think (...) if they could fill the role of a person in a conversation, I propose a test for when computers have achieved moral standing by asking when a computer might take the place of a human being in a moral dilemma, such as a “triage” situation in which a choice must be made as to which of two human lives to save. We will know that machines have achieved moral standing comparable to a human when the replacement of one of these people with an artificial intelligence leaves the character of the dilemma intact. That is, when we might sometimes judge that it is reasonable to preserve the continuing existence of a machine over the life of a human being. This is the “Turing Triage Test”. I argue that if personhood is understood as a matter of possessing a set of important cognitive capacities then it seems likely that future AIs will be able to pass this test. However this conclusion serves as a reductio of this account of the nature of persons. I set out an alternative account of the nature of persons, which places the concept of a person at the centre of an interdependent network of moral and affective responses, such as remorse, grief and sympathy. I argue that according to this second, superior, account of the nature of persons, machines will be unable to pass the Turing Triage Test until they possess bodies and faces with expressive capacities akin to those of the human form. (shrink)

Moral reasoning traditionally distinguishes two types of evil:moral and natural. The standard view is that ME is the product of human agency and so includes phenomena such as war, torture and psychological cruelty; that NE is the product of nonhuman agency, and so includes natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, disease and famine; and finally, that more complex cases are appropriately analysed as a combination of ME and NE. Recently, as a result of developments in autonomousagents in cyberspace, a new (...) class of interesting and importantexamples of hybrid evil has come to light. In this paper, it is called artificial evil and a case is made for considering it to complement ME and NE to produce a more adequate taxonomy. By isolating the features that have led to the appearance of AE, cyberspace is characterised as a self-contained environment that forms the essential component in any foundation of the emerging field of Computer Ethics. It is argued that this goes someway towards providing a methodological explanation of whycyberspace is central to so many of CE's concerns; and it isshown how notions of good and evil can be formulated incyberspace. Of considerable interest is how the propensity for anagent's action to be morally good or evil can be determined evenin the absence of biologically sentient participants and thusallows artificial agents not only to perpetrate evil but conversely to `receive' or `suffer from'it. The thesis defended is that the notion of entropy structure,which encapsulates human value judgement concerning cyberspace ina formal mathematical definition, is sufficient to achieve thispurpose and, moreover, that the concept of AE can be determinedformally, by mathematical methods. A consequence of this approachis that the debate on whether CE should be considered unique, andhence developed as a Macroethics, may be viewed, constructively,in an alternative manner. The case is made that whilst CE issues are not uncontroversially unique, they are sufficiently novel to render inadequate the approach of standard Macroethics such as Utilitarianism and Deontologism and hence to prompt the search for a robust ethical theory that can deal with them successfully. The name Information Ethics is proposed for that theory. Itis argued that the uniqueness of IE is justified by its beingnon-biologically biased and patient-oriented: IE is anEnvironmental Macroethics based on the concept of data entityrather than life. It follows that the novelty of CE issues suchas AE can be appreciated properly because IE provides a newperspective. In light of the discussion provided in this paper, it is concluded that Computer Ethics is worthy of independent study because it requires its own application-specific knowledge and is capable of supporting a methodological foundation, Information Ethics. (shrink)

This paper traces the distinction between the claims of love and the claims of morality in the work of Raimond Gaita, and disputes it using examples from Gaita’s work – particularly his use of “decency” in place of morality – which I try to understand better through this scrutiny. I disclose in Gaita’s work the tension between highlighting love and praise of decency and I try to show that the tension between love and decency indeed remains present in his writing, (...) but not as a contrariness of claims from both departments. Though they constitute two different claims, their mixture is imaginable and valuable even if, by taking part in it, the sense of both love and decency changes, which, however, might be seen as an opportunity to open new horizons for working both of them into human life. (shrink)

In the concluding lines of Part Three of The Claim of Reason, Stanley Cavell writes: ‘If the moralist is the human being who best grasps the human position, teaches us what our human position is, better than we know, in ways we cannot escape but through distraction and muddle, then our first task in subjecting ourselves to judgment is to tell the moralist from the moralizer’. Cavell then proceeds to characterize the moralizer as one who is ‘speaking in the name (...) of a position one does not occupy, confronting others in positions of which one will not imagine the acknowledgement’. Beginning with an exposition of Cavell’s notion of ‘moral position’, I will offer an interpretation of the distinction he draws between the moralist and the moralizer; I will then explain how the moral philosopher’s use of morally significant words may come to resemble the moralizer’s; and then I will argue that contemporary English-speaking moral philosophy as represented by the recent debates concerning ‘moral testimony’, or ‘moral deference’, has been failing its moralist aspirations, and that, by Cavell’s lights, the morality reflected in those debates is, in essence, that of the moralizer. (shrink)

I start by presenting an intuitively appealing account of forgiveness, ‘the insult account’, which nicely explains the cycle from wrongdoing to forgiveness. We need to respond to wrongdoing by blaming our offenders because they insult us with their actions, 529–55, 2001; Hampton 1988a, b). How can wrongdoing be overcome? Either by the retraction of the insult or by taking necessary steps to correct for the wrong done. Once the insult has been retracted, usually by apology or remorse, forgiveness can come (...) about. Martin The Journal of Philosophy, 107, 534–53, has recently criticized this promising account of forgiveness. My aim here is to defend an improved version of the ‘insult account’. I propose an account of earned forgiveness through apology, which shares features with the ‘insult account’ criticized by Martin, but also improves upon problems found in the ‘insult account’. This new account will successfully solve the puzzle of forgiveness. Drawing on Bovens’ account of apologies, I argue that apologies uniquely earn the wrongdoer’s forgiveness. I finally address a concern about the relation between apologies and forgiveness, recently raised by Hallich Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 16, 999–1017,. I argue that my expressive view of what the function of apologies is will answer his skepticism about apologies. (shrink)

The “disability paradox” is the idea that for those who become severely disabled, their own quality of life assessment remains at or slightly below the QoL assessments of normal controls. This is a source of skepticism regarding third-person QoL judgments of the disabled. I argue here that this skepticism applies as well to those who are in the minimally conscious state. For rather simple means of sustaining an MCS patient’s life, the cost of being wrong that the patient would not (...) want further support is high. Pair this cost with the reason to be skeptical of third-person judgments, and my argument suggests not withholding food and water from MCS patients. (shrink)

In this essay, I demonstrate the value of the Bildungsroman for philosophy of education on the grounds that these narratives raise and explore educational questions. I focus on a short story in the Bildungsroman tradition, Thomas Hardy’s “A Mere Interlude”. This story describes the maturation of its heroine by narrating a series of events that transform her understanding of what it means to lead a human life. I connect her conceptual shift with two paradigms for leading a human life. One (...) stresses the exercise of distinct human capacities like agency and autonomy, whereas the other stresses human vulnerability to fate or moral luck. I conclude by offering important reasons for educators to adopt the later paradigm over the former. (shrink)

Raimond Gaita's example of saintly love, in which the visit of a nun to psychiatric patients has profound effects on him, has been criticised for being an odd and unconvincing example of saintliness. I defend Gaita against four specific criticisms; firstly, that the nun achieves nothing spectacular, but merely adopts a certain attitude towards people; secondly, that Gaita must already have certain beliefs for the example to work; thirdly, that to be acclaimed a saint requires a saintly biography, not just (...) an incidence of good behaviour; and finally, that there is something oppressive about saintly behaviour. I consider that Gaita does indeed leave himself open to criticism on this last point by claiming that saints love impartially. I argue that his description of the example suggests rather that the customs and practices of partial love are at the heart of saintliness and not some form of 'life-denying' impartiality. If I am right, then this has the twofold effect of making saintliness appear achievable by ordinary mortals and explaining our feelings of wonder in the face of such saintly behaviour. (shrink)

Should those who get dirty hands be punished? There is strong disagreement among even those who support the existence of such scenarios. The problem arises because the paradoxical nature of dirty hands - doing wrong to do right - renders the standard normative justifications for punishment unfit for purpose. The Consequentialist, Retributivist and Communicative approaches cannot accommodate the idea that an action can be right, all things considered, but nevertheless also a categorical wrong. This paper argues that punishment is indeed (...) appropriate for those who dirty their hands and that there are three normative justifications that can be used to support this claim. These are the justifications from ‘Catharsis’, ‘Recognition of Evil Suffered’ and ‘Causal Responsibility’. Together they provide the sui generis justifications for punishing dirty hands. (shrink)

Widely chosen by students of society as an approach under which to labour, emancipatory, liberatory or, otherwise put, critical social thought occupies a position between knowledge and practical action whose coherence is taken for granted on account of the pressing nature of the issues it attempts to deal with. As such it is rarely subjected to scrutiny and the methodological, conceptual and moral challenges it faces are not properly identified. The contribution of this article is to raise these problems into (...) view clearly and unambiguously. This is undertaken via a careful examination of Alice Crary’s recent work, in which she attempts, firstly, to defend a left-Hegelian version of Critical Theory by relating it to the work of Peter Winch and, second, to issue a set of methodologically radical recommendations on employing the sensibility-shaping powers of the literary form. The article aims to deepen our understanding of the fundamental tensions between the Critical Theory and Wittgensteinian traditions, which Crary attempts to bring together and, ultimately, of those crucial features of our moral practices that frustrate the enterprise of critical social thought. (shrink)

It is in its Consequentialist mood that Australian philosophizing most clearly displays the 'no-nonsense' quality that we are tempted to think of as a national virtue: I hope this volume goes some way to showing the dangers of our being tempted by such flattering but ultimately shallow (and indeed morally coarse) national myths.

In this paper, it is argued that the criticism of the Enlightenment project in education and the disappearance in the philosophy of education discourse of particular educational problems which confront practitioners has resulted in a philosophy of education which — as a kind of Spielerei — begs the question. To revitalize itself, philosophy of education must take up anew its perennial mission, one near to specific educational problems. In explaining how the “I” of the educator can be conceived after postmodernism, (...) this study elaborates the concepts of “integrity” and “particularity” as relevant for education. Education itself is conceived as a personal relation with a real person that aids in developing individuality. It is concluded that this answer is an authoritative and authentic response from one individual to another within a particular situation. (shrink)

The article addresses Raimond Gaita's attempt to construe the ethical in terms of a notion of speech that is tied to presence (each of us, he holds, is called to become someone ‘authentically present in speech and deed’ (Gaita 1991, p. 145)), a notion through which he articulates a sense both of human uniqueness – speech demands that one find one's own words – and of human fellowship: to find one's words is to achieve the depth that enables one to (...) be taken seriously by others. The article argues, however, that the notion of speech is caught in a double bind; for it requires a spontaneity that is incompatible with the self‐presence that it also requires. In a way that Gaita cannot acknowledge, goodness is beyond speech. (shrink)

Raimond Gaita affirms absolute goodness as the only thing with the power to keep fully among us the worst kind of evildoer. At issue in this goodness is a wonder that he ties to joy. Yet Gaita does not, perhaps cannot, imagine this power with respect to the evildoer concretely enough for it to move us in the way his account requires. An aspect of his writings that resists the emphasis on a joyous wonder may assist our thinking about the (...) relation to the evildoer. (shrink)

Ever since Kant asked: “How am I to develop the sense of freedom in spite of the restraint?” in his lecture on education, the tension between necessary educational influence and unacceptable restriction of the child’s individual development and freedom has been considered an educational paradox. Many have suggested solutions to the paradox; however, this article endorses recent discussions in educational philosophy that pursue the need to fundamentally rethink our understanding of education and upbringing. In this article it is argued that (...) it is incomprehensible to describe an intervention of an educator as a constraint on a child’s actions and that such an intervention would be in need of justification; as Kant and many others after him have done. Educational intervention should not be understood as a restriction of a child’s endeavour to learn, because any educational intervention is educational. Furthermore, it is argued that the notion of restraint is based on the concept of human beings as radically separated which lead to the assumption that education is restrictive per se. In contrast, this article argues that indoctrination, manipulation, and coercion are rather phenomena within our educational forms of life. Recognizing the interrelations between human beings should play a constitutive part in the conceptualisation of individual freedom. A bond with others is the foundation upon which a child develops its own identity and an understanding of itself as an agent who can express its own will and takes responsibility for its words and actions. (shrink)

This article considers a central ethically relevant interpersonal emotion, guilt. It is argued that guilt, as an irreducible moral category, has a constitutive role to play in our ways of conceptualizing our relations to other people. Without experiencing guilt, or being able to do so, we would not be capable of employing the moral concepts and judgments we do employ. Elaborating on this argument, the paper deals with what may be described as the "metaphysics of guilt." More generally, it is (...) suggested, through a case study on the concept of guilt, that a moral theory avoiding naïve emotivism yet emphasizing the role of emotions in morality can and should pay attention to the transcendental status of emotions such as guilt--emotions constitutive of our concept of moral seriousness. Instead of psychologizing moral emotions, the paper employs Raimond Gaita's Wittgenstein-inspired way of examining the place of the concepts of guilt and remorse in our ethical language-use. Finally, some methodological remarks on the possibility of transcendental reflection in moral philosophy are presented. While it is not necessary to commit oneself to any specific religious tradition in order to emphasize the constitutive role of guilt in the way suggested in the paper, it turns out that the moral depth of this concept requires that one is least open to religiously relevant ways of using moral language. In the fundamental metaphysical sense examined in the paper, guilt is a concept whose home language-game is religious rather than secular ethics. (shrink)

Abstract: This article defends a controversial metaphilosophical thesis: it is not immediately obvious that "the best argument wins" in philosophy. Certain philosophical views, for example, extremely controversial ethical positions, may be intolerable and impossible to take seriously as contributions to ethical discussion, irrespective of their argumentative merits. As a case study of this metaphilosophical issue, the article discusses David Benatar's recent thesis that it is, for everyone, harmful to exist. It is argued that ethical and cultural "unthinkabilities" set limits to (...) philosophical reasoning that even the most insightful arguments cannot transcend. (shrink)

The problem of suffering crucially focuses on meaninglessness. Meaningful suffering—suffering having some “point” or function—is not as problematic as absurd suffering that cannot be rendered purposeful. This issue is more specific than the problem of the “meaning of life” (or “meaning in life”). Human lives are often full of suffering experienced as serving no purpose whatsoever – indeed, suffering that may threaten to make life itself meaningless. Some philosophers—e.g., D.Z. Phillips and John Cottingham—have persuasively argued that the standard analytic methods (...) of philosophy of religion in particular ought to be enriched by literary reading and interpretation, especially when dealing with issues such as this. The problem of evil and suffering can also be explored from a perspective entangling literary and philosophical approaches (Kivistö & Pihlström, 2016). This double methodology is in this paper applied to the problem of evil and suffering by considering an example drawn from Holocaust literature: Primo Levi’s work is analyzed as developing an essentially ethical argument, with a philosophical-cum-literary structure, against theodicies seeking to render suffering meaningful. By means of such a case study, I hope to shed light on the problem of meaningless suffering, especially regarding the moral critique of “theodicist” attempts to interpret all suffering as meaningful. (shrink)

In the “Lecture on ethics”, Wittgenstein declares that ethical statements are essentially nonsense. He later told Friedrich Waismann that it is essential to “speak for oneself” on ethical matters. These comments might be taken to suggest that Wittgenstein shared an emotivist view of ethics—that one can only speak for oneself because there is no truth in ethics, only expressions of opinion (or emotions). I argue that this assimilation of Wittgenstein to emotivist thought is deeply misguided, and rests upon a serious (...) misunderstanding of what is implied by the nonsensicality of ethical claims on Wittgenstein's view. I develop a reading of Wittgenstein's remarks in the “Lecture on ethics” on which ethical statements, despite their nonsensicality, reveal the perspective of the speaker. The purpose of ethical language is to elucidate a speaker's perspective. Such elucidations, and the perspectives they reveal, can be evaluated, criticized, and respected on principled grounds even if, as Wittgenstein insists, no ethical judgment can be (objectively) justified by any fact. I contrast Wittgenstein's comments on ethics with some comments made by Frank Ramsey (from the same period), which appear similar to Wittgenstein's remarks on value. Contra Ramsey's insistence that there is “nothing to discuss” about (or within) ethics, a proper understanding of Wittgenstein's views does not commit us to passing over ethics in silence. (shrink)

In this article I will address the question of determining the moral limits of reproductive decisions. In so doing I will examine the contributions made by John Harris, who has over the years consistently addressed the ethical implications of advancing reproductive technologies. In addressing these matters, Harris has centred his arguments on the principle of harm and with this in mind has set out a specific theoretical framework from which decisions about disability and causing harm, as in the case of (...) reproductive decisions, can be rationally addressed. This discussion will attempt to question the conceptual scheme that he proposes. The aim here is not to present an alternative theoretical contribution to the morality of reproductive choice. Rather, in the attempt to follow some of the directives in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, the aim is to demonstrate some of the pitfalls of what Wittgenstein has described as the “craving for generality” in contemporary philosophy. I propose that this craving can distort, in this instance, our ordinary usage of concepts such as harm, suffering and disability and their role in the moral vocabulary of reproductive decision making. (shrink)

The concept of human dignity arguably has great relevance to education as it is mentioned in several human rights and education policy documents on the national and international level, providing their moral justification. However, when the concept is discussed within philosophical research, it is often seen as consisting of two different conceptions – intrinsic dignity and attributed dignity. The paper seeks to challenge this binary through a reconstructive interpretation of Martha Nussbaum’s conception of dignity, proposing inflorescent dignity, as a more (...) fully fledged way of understanding dignity and how it relates to education. Through use of a fictional example, I argue that inflorescent dignity, grounded in intrinsic dignity, has relevance to education because it gives rise to moral, relational, and thus pedagogical, demands on education to be primarily focused on human flourishing as well as the acknowledgement of human actuality and potential, and for this to permeate all levels of education. (shrink)

In analytic moral philosophy it is standard to use unrealistic puzzles to set up moral dilemmas of a sort that I will call Lockean Puzzles. This paper will try to pinpoint just what is and what is not problematic about their use as a teaching tool or component part of philosophical arguments. I will try to flesh out the claim that what may be lost sight of in such Lockean puzzling is the personal dimension of moral deliberation—for example, moral problems (...) differ from technical problems in the sense that they are non‐transferable, we cannot hand them over to others for solution. (shrink)