Moral philosophy is often said to be about what we owe to each other. Do we owe anything to ourselves?

In this paper, I critique one aspect of Simester and von Hirsch’s, Crimes, Harms, and Wrongs—their recognition of harm and offence principles, but failure to construct a paternalistic principle, despite their willingness to countenance some small measure of criminal paternalism. Construction of such a principle would have clarified the problems of as well as the limits to criminalising paternalism.

This paper explores the possibility that some cases of criminal paternalism might include among their justifying reasons an appeal to human dignity.

Despite the impressive progress that has been made on both the empirical and conceptual fronts of boredom research, there is one facet of boredom that has received remarkably little attention. This is boredom's relationship to morality. The aim of this article is to explore the moral dimensions of boredom and to argue that boredom is a morally relevant personality trait. The presence of trait boredom hinders our capacity to flourish and in doing so hurts our prospects for a moral life. (...) -/- . (shrink)

Uno de los elementos más criticados de la Metafísica de las costumbres es el de la posibilidad de deberes éticos con uno mismo. En este artículo reviso las críticas más usuales y muestro cómo pueden refutarse desde la propia argumentación kantiana. Después señalo cómo Fichte, en su Doctrina de las costumbres, acepta los deberes con uno mismo, pero los reubica en el sistema de los deberes. Finalmente comento que la relectura fichteana parte de una confusión respecto del papel del agente (...) moral en primera persona en el ideal kantiano del reino de los fines. (shrink)

Ever since Schopenhauer ́s accusation, it has been disputed whether Kant ́s few remarks concerning the ethical human-animal-relationship in the Lectures and in the Doctrine of Virtue fail to support ethical arguments on behalf of animals. One critique that plays a central role is whether Kant would have forbidden cruelty to brutes for educational purposes. In addition to these old objections, Kant ́s ethics is charged to be speciesistic by animal ethicists and animal rights philosophers at present.The following article examines (...) especially §17 of the Doctrine of Virtue, which is the only animal ethical text authorized by Kant himself. The interpretation starts by taking the context of §17 into account, particularly the “Episodic Section on an Amphiboly in Moral Concepts”. The systematic output of the cruelty-account and of the duty classes is then analyzed. Central for the understanding of Kant ́s argumentation relating to animals are the perfect duties to oneself, which are linked to Kant ́s foundation of human dignity. Finally the roles of the physical and emotional needs of brutes and humans in Kant ́s ethics are compared with each other. Some conclusions are then drawn concerning human and animal rights in relation to a duty-based argumentation. The article therefore appreciates Kant ́s integration of animal suffering into the very core of his virtue ethics, an integration that may be able to open the door for an enlightened animal ethics based on human responsibility. (shrink)