Obgleich die Ausdrücke ‚moralische Pflicht’ und ‚moralische Verantwortung’ auf den ersten Blick nahezu austauschbar scheinen, ist in einigen Debatten dennoch fast ausschließlich von moralischer Verantwortung die Rede. Dies gilt insbesondere für die moralische Beurteilung von individuellen Handlungen in kollektiven Kontexten. Hier scheint die Rede von einer ‚kollektiven Verantwortung‘ besonders attraktiv zu sein. In diesem Aufsatz setze ich mich diesem Trend entgegen und argumentiere dafür, dem Pflichtbegriff in kollektiven Kontexten gegenüber dem Begriff der Verantwortung den Vorrang zu geben. Mein Fokus liegt (...) hierbei auf einer bestimmten Art von Handlungen in kollektiven Kontexten, nämlich auf Handlungen in sogenannten Aggregatkollektiven. Von Aggregatkollektiven verursachte Schäden sind häufig kumulative Schäden, bei denen die Handlungen der Mitglieder eines Aggregatkollektivs einzeln betrachtet keinen merklichen Unterschied für das Auftreten des Schadens machen. Die Rede von Verantwortung legt ein Haftbarkeitsmodell moralischer Verantwortung nahe, welches sich in Bezug auf Handlungen in Aggregatkollektiven als problematisch erweist. Ich zeige, dass Kants Konzeption unvollkommener Pflichten eine vielversprechende Alternative zu dem kausal gefärbten Begriff der moralischen Verantwortung darstellt. Durch den Spielraum, den unvollkommene Pflichten Akteuren lassen, bieten sie eine ähnliche Offenheit wie der Begriff der moralischen Verantwortung. Anders als die Zuschreibung von Verantwortung vermeidet die Rede von unvollkommenen Pflichten jedoch die in kollektiven Kontexten oft inadäquate und kontraproduktive Assoziation von Haftung und Schuld. (shrink)

It is sometimes held that modern institutionally-focussed conceptions of social justice are lacking in one essential respect: they ignore the importance of civic friendship or solidarity. It is also, typically simultaneously, held that Aristotle’s thought provides a fertile ground for elucidating an account of civic friendship. I argue, first, that Aristotle is no help on this score: he has no conception of distinctively civic friendship. I then go on to argue that the Kantian distinction between perfect and imperfect duties is (...) more useful than talk of civic friendship in capturing the non-institutional demands of social justice. (shrink)

Should we conceive of corporations as entities to which moral responsibility can be attributed? This contribution presents what we will call a political account of corporate moral responsibility. We argue that in modern, liberal democratic societies, there is an underlying political need to attribute greater levels of moral responsibility to corporations. Corporate moral responsibility is essential to the maintenance of social coordination that both advances social welfare and protects citizens' moral entitlements. This political account posits a special capacity of self-governance (...) that corporations can intelligibly be said to possess. Corporations can be said to be "administrators of duty" in that they can voluntarily incorporate moral principles into their decision-making processes about how to conduct business. This account supplements and partly transforms earlier pragmatic accounts of corporate moral responsibility by disentangling responsibility from its conventional linkages with accountability, blame and punishment. It thereby represents a distinctive way to defend corporate moral responsibility and shows how Kantian thinking can be helpful in disentangling the problems surrounding the concept. (shrink)

Critics often accuse Kant and Kantians of rigorism: of advocating highly general exceptionless principles of duty that strictly prohibit action kinds like lying or breaking promises. In this article, I draw on arguments from the generalism-particularism debate to show that the way in which Kantians usually understand universality prevents them from solving this problem and leaves them stuck in a trilemma. I then argue that they should abandon this common conception—the “strict conception,” on which universal principles don’t permit any exceptions—in (...) favor of a “relaxed conception,” on which universal principles do permit certain exceptions, namely principled exceptions. (shrink)

Case studies, both with a view to didactical and argumentative purposes, are widely used in applied ethics. However, case studies are often used without methodological considerations concerning the premises and limitations of these kind of studies as methodological tools within ethics. The present paper critically examines the recourse to – real or fictitious – case studies. Important suggestions will be taken from Kant’s philosophy. Kant himself occasionally uses case studies in his ethical writings. Yet, he also discusses the relevance as (...) well as the limitations of case studies in ethics. Against the background of this analysis, the opinion that ethics can be taught or developed in concreto, or that ethics might eventually be resolved into compilations of case studies must be rejected. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 55, Issue 6, Page 935-948, December 2021.

This paper considers the role of ‘vices of culture’ in Immanuel Kant’s account of radical evil and education. I argue that Kant was keenly aware of a uniquely human tendency to allow a self...

‘Universalist’ moral principles have fallen into disfavour because too often they have been pretexts for unilateral impositions upon others, whether domestically or internationally. Too widely neglected has been Kant’s specifically Critical re-analysis of the scope and character of rational justification in all non-formal domains, including the entirety of epistemology and moral philosophy, including both justice and ethics. Rational judgment is inherently normative because it is in part constituted by our self-assessment of whether the considerations we now integrate into a candidate (...) judgment have been integrated as they ought, so as to form a cogent, justifiable judgment. Constitutive of this self-assessment is that rational judgments must be based upon considerations which can be communicated to all others, such that they too can assess them as sufficiently cogent justification; also constitutive of this rational self-assessment is that we actually engage with others who do assess our judgments. Kant’s Critical principles rule out in principle any unilateral imposition upon others, whether in cognition or morals. Using Kant’s Critical principles and methods in connection with ‘practical anthropology’ and the enormously important domain of acquired rights and obligations shows how Kant had already justified fundamentally universal principles of justice which can be institutionalised in variously distinctive cultures, and which form the proper bases for our acquired, specifically social rights and obligations, including those of friendship and community. (shrink)

Contemporary casuistry, informed by a centuries-old intellectual tradition within the Jesuit order of the Catholic Church, characteristically maintains that ethical judgment does not rely on abstract laws, general rules or universal principles. Ethical judgment is formed through a subtle activity of comparing prior, settled cases with the current problem one is experiencing. Judgment on moral matters is therefore thought to be highly context-dependent and requires a sensitivity to the unique facts and social circumstances of each case. This discussion reviews the (...) origins of casuistry within Jesuit thought and then examines the implications of casuistry for organizational ethics. Our central argument is that contemporary casuistry, while correct to emphasize the particularity of ethical judgment, is nonetheless compatible with an important role for general principles in ethical decision-making within organizations. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

According to a widely accepted philosophical model, agent-regret is practically significant and appropriate when the agent committed a mistake, or she faced a conflict of obligations. I argue that this account misunderstands moral phenomenology because it does not adequately characterize the object of agent-regret. I suggest that the object of agent-regret should be defined in terms of valuable unchosen alternatives supported by reasons. This model captures the phenomenological varieties of regret and explains its practical significance for the agent. My contention (...) is that agent-regret is a mode of valuing: a way in which the agent expresses and confers value. (shrink)

The paper engages with the Casuistic questions posed in the book on the Perfect Duties to Oneself, in the Metaphysical Principles of the Doctrine of Virtue of the Metaphysic of Morals. It investigates whether it is possible to identify Kant’s literal answers to the casuistic questions that Kant himself poses, concluding that it is not. Therefore, Kantian answers rather than Kant’s answers are discussed. The paper’s outcome supports a rigorist interpretation of Kant’s ethics.

This paper considers the role of ‘vices of culture’ in Immanuel Kant’s account of radical evil and education. I argue that Kant was keenly aware of a uniquely human tendency to allow a self-centered concern for status to misunderstand or co-opt the language of dignity and equal worth for its own purposes. This tendency lies at the root of the ‘vices of culture’ and ‘aggravated vices’ that Kant describes in the Religion and Doctrine of Virtue, respectively. When it comes to (...) moral education, then, it will be crucial that the developing agent have a clear understanding of the shared dignity of rational agents and the particular duties that are defined, in part, by their tendency to alter status among agents. I argue that the casuistical questions that Kant attaches to these discussions in the Doctrine of Virtue are an example of a pedagogical device that might help pupils to overcome this tendency so closely associated with radical evil. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In this address I argue that different perspectives on the normative foundations of corporate responsibility reflect underlying disagreements about the ideal arrangement of tasks between market and state. I initially recommend that scholars look back to the “division of moral labor” inspired by John Rawls’ seminal work on distributive justice in order to rethink why, and to what extent, corporations take on responsibilities normally within the purview of government. I then examine how this notion is related to recent theoretical work (...) in the field of business ethics. I thereafter turn to provide a brief outline of an alternative view that sees corporations as having responsibilities in so far as markets are sites of delegated oversight over the production of social goods that might otherwise be administered by the state. (shrink)

Die Verwendung von Fallbeispielen, sowohl in didaktisch-illustrativer als auch in systematisch-argumentativer Absicht, ist in der Angewandten Ethik eine weitverbreitete Praxis. Die Inanspruchnahme erfolgt jedoch vielfach ohne eine angemessene Reflexion über die Voraussetzungen und Grenzen des Einsatzes von Fallbeispielen als methodischem Werkzeug innerhalb der Ethik. Im vorliegenden Beitrag soll daher der Rekurs auf konkrete – reale oder fiktive – Handlungsszenarien kritisch untersucht werden. Wichtige Hinweise werden dabei der Philosophie Kants entnommen, der selbst in seinen moralphilosophischen Schriften gelegentlich Beispiele verwendet, der aber (...) zugleich auch die grundlegende Bedeutung sowie die methodologischen Grenzen des Einsatzes von Beispielen an verschiedenen Stellen thematisiert hat. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser Analyse muss insbesondere die Meinung, Ethik lasse sich rein in concreto vermitteln, entwickeln oder könne gar in die Zusammenstellung von Fallsammlungen aufgelöst werden, zurückgewiesen werden. (shrink)