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Charles Taylor Human Agency and Language, Philosophical Papers Volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985. Pp. 294.
- Michael Slote
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- Journal:
- Canadian Journal of Philosophy / Volume 18 / Issue 3 / September 1988
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 01 January 2020, pp. 579-587
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5 - Empathy as an Instinct
- from III - Understanding Empathy
- Edited by Neil Roughley, Universität Duisburg–Essen, Thomas Schramme, University of Liverpool
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- Forms of Fellow Feeling
- Published online:
- 28 December 2017
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- 25 January 2018, pp 133-141
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Contributors
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- By Mitchell Aboulafia, Frederick Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert M. Adams, Laird Addis, James W. Allard, David Allison, William P. Alston, Karl Ameriks, C. Anthony Anderson, David Leech Anderson, Lanier Anderson, Roger Ariew, David Armstrong, Denis G. Arnold, E. J. Ashworth, Margaret Atherton, Robin Attfield, Bruce Aune, Edward Wilson Averill, Jody Azzouni, Kent Bach, Andrew Bailey, Lynne Rudder Baker, Thomas R. Baldwin, Jon Barwise, George Bealer, William Bechtel, Lawrence C. Becker, Mark A. Bedau, Ernst Behler, José A. Benardete, Ermanno Bencivenga, Jan Berg, Michael Bergmann, Robert L. Bernasconi, Sven Bernecker, Bernard Berofsky, Rod Bertolet, Charles J. Beyer, Christian Beyer, Joseph Bien, Joseph Bien, Peg Birmingham, Ivan Boh, James Bohman, Daniel Bonevac, Laurence BonJour, William J. Bouwsma, Raymond D. Bradley, Myles Brand, Richard B. Brandt, Michael E. Bratman, Stephen E. Braude, Daniel Breazeale, Angela Breitenbach, Jason Bridges, David O. Brink, Gordon G. Brittan, Justin Broackes, Dan W. Brock, Aaron Bronfman, Jeffrey E. Brower, Bartosz Brozek, Anthony Brueckner, Jeffrey Bub, Lara Buchak, Otavio Bueno, Ann E. Bumpus, Robert W. Burch, John Burgess, Arthur W. Burks, Panayot Butchvarov, Robert E. Butts, Marina Bykova, Patrick Byrne, David Carr, Noël Carroll, Edward S. Casey, Victor Caston, Victor Caston, Albert Casullo, Robert L. Causey, Alan K. L. Chan, Ruth Chang, Deen K. Chatterjee, Andrew Chignell, Roderick M. Chisholm, Kelly J. Clark, E. J. Coffman, Robin Collins, Brian P. Copenhaver, John Corcoran, John Cottingham, Roger Crisp, Frederick J. Crosson, Antonio S. Cua, Phillip D. Cummins, Martin Curd, Adam Cureton, Andrew Cutrofello, Stephen Darwall, Paul Sheldon Davies, Wayne A. Davis, Timothy Joseph Day, Claudio de Almeida, Mario De Caro, Mario De Caro, John Deigh, C. F. Delaney, Daniel C. Dennett, Michael R. DePaul, Michael Detlefsen, Daniel Trent Devereux, Philip E. Devine, John M. Dillon, Martin C. Dillon, Robert DiSalle, Mary Domski, Alan Donagan, Paul Draper, Fred Dretske, Mircea Dumitru, Wilhelm Dupré, Gerald Dworkin, John Earman, Ellery Eells, Catherine Z. Elgin, Berent Enç, Ronald P. Endicott, Edward Erwin, John Etchemendy, C. Stephen Evans, Susan L. Feagin, Solomon Feferman, Richard Feldman, Arthur Fine, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, William FitzPatrick, Richard E. Flathman, Gvozden Flego, Richard Foley, Graeme Forbes, Rainer Forst, Malcolm R. Forster, Daniel Fouke, Patrick Francken, Samuel Freeman, Elizabeth Fricker, Miranda Fricker, Michael Friedman, Michael Fuerstein, Richard A. Fumerton, Alan Gabbey, Pieranna Garavaso, Daniel Garber, Jorge L. A. Garcia, Robert K. Garcia, Don Garrett, Philip Gasper, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Bernard Gert, Roger F. Gibson, Cody Gilmore, Carl Ginet, Alan H. Goldman, Alvin I. Goldman, Alfonso Gömez-Lobo, Lenn E. Goodman, Robert M. Gordon, Stefan Gosepath, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Daniel W. Graham, George A. Graham, Peter J. Graham, Richard E. Grandy, I. Grattan-Guinness, John Greco, Philip T. Grier, Nicholas Griffin, Nicholas Griffin, David A. Griffiths, Paul J. Griffiths, Stephen R. Grimm, Charles L. Griswold, Charles B. Guignon, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Dimitri Gutas, Gary Gutting, Paul Guyer, Kwame Gyekye, Oscar A. Haac, Raul Hakli, Raul Hakli, Michael Hallett, Edward C. Halper, Jean Hampton, R. James Hankinson, K. R. Hanley, Russell Hardin, Robert M. Harnish, William Harper, David Harrah, Kevin Hart, Ali Hasan, William Hasker, John Haugeland, Roger Hausheer, William Heald, Peter Heath, Richard Heck, John F. Heil, Vincent F. Hendricks, Stephen Hetherington, Francis Heylighen, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Risto Hilpinen, Harold T. Hodes, Joshua Hoffman, Alan Holland, Robert L. Holmes, Richard Holton, Brad W. Hooker, Terence E. Horgan, Tamara Horowitz, Paul Horwich, Vittorio Hösle, Paul Hoβfeld, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Anne Hudson, Deal W. Hudson, Carl A. Huffman, David L. Hull, Patricia Huntington, Thomas Hurka, Paul Hurley, Rosalind Hursthouse, Guillermo Hurtado, Ronald E. Hustwit, Sarah Hutton, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Harry A. Ide, David Ingram, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Alfred L. Ivry, Frank Jackson, Dale Jacquette, Joseph Jedwab, Richard Jeffrey, David Alan Johnson, Edward Johnson, Mark D. Jordan, Richard Joyce, Hwa Yol Jung, Robert Hillary Kane, Tomis Kapitan, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, James A. Keller, Ralph Kennedy, Sergei Khoruzhii, Jaegwon Kim, Yersu Kim, Nathan L. King, Patricia Kitcher, Peter D. Klein, E. D. Klemke, Virginia Klenk, George L. Kline, Christian Klotz, Simo Knuuttila, Joseph J. Kockelmans, Konstantin Kolenda, Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk, Isaac Kramnick, Richard Kraut, Fred Kroon, Manfred Kuehn, Steven T. Kuhn, Henry E. Kyburg, John Lachs, Jennifer Lackey, Stephen E. Lahey, Andrea Lavazza, Thomas H. Leahey, Joo Heung Lee, Keith Lehrer, Dorothy Leland, Noah M. Lemos, Ernest LePore, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Isaac Levi, Andrew Levine, Alan E. Lewis, Daniel E. Little, Shu-hsien Liu, Shu-hsien Liu, Alan K. L. Chan, Brian Loar, Lawrence B. Lombard, John Longeway, Dominic McIver Lopes, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Steven Luper, Eugene C. Luschei, William G. Lycan, David Lyons, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Scott MacDonald, Jacob L. Mackey, Louis H. Mackey, Penelope Mackie, Edward H. Madden, Penelope Maddy, G. B. Madison, Bernd Magnus, Pekka Mäkelä, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Manley, William E. Mann (W.E.M.), Vladimir Marchenkov, Peter Markie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Ausonio Marras, Mike W. Martin, A. P. Martinich, William L. McBride, David McCabe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Robert N. McCauley, John J. McDermott, Sarah McGrath, Ralph McInerny, Daniel J. McKaughan, Thomas McKay, Michael McKinsey, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernan McMullin, Anthonie Meijers, Jack W. Meiland, William Jason Melanson, Alfred R. Mele, Joseph R. Mendola, Christopher Menzel, Michael J. Meyer, Christian B. Miller, David W. Miller, Peter Millican, Robert N. Minor, Phillip Mitsis, James A. Montmarquet, Michael S. Moore, Tim Moore, Benjamin Morison, Donald R. Morrison, Stephen J. Morse, Paul K. Moser, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Ian Mueller, James Bernard Murphy, Mark C. Murphy, Steven Nadler, Jan Narveson, Alan Nelson, Jerome Neu, Samuel Newlands, Kai Nielsen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Carlos G. Noreña, Calvin G. Normore, David Fate Norton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Donald Nute, David S. Oderberg, Steve Odin, Michael O’Rourke, Willard G. Oxtoby, Heinz Paetzold, George S. Pappas, Anthony J. Parel, Lydia Patton, R. P. Peerenboom, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Derk Pereboom, Jaroslav Peregrin, Glen Pettigrove, Philip Pettit, Edmund L. Pincoffs, Andrew Pinsent, Robert B. Pippin, Alvin Plantinga, Louis P. Pojman, Richard H. Popkin, John F. Post, Carl J. Posy, William J. Prior, Richard Purtill, Michael Quante, Philip L. Quinn, Philip L. Quinn, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Diana Raffman, Gerard Raulet, Stephen L. Read, Andrews Reath, Andrew Reisner, Nicholas Rescher, Henry S. Richardson, Robert C. Richardson, Thomas Ricketts, Wayne D. Riggs, Mark Roberts, Robert C. Roberts, Luke Robinson, Alexander Rosenberg, Gary Rosenkranz, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Adina L. Roskies, William L. Rowe, T. M. Rudavsky, Michael Ruse, Bruce Russell, Lilly-Marlene Russow, Dan Ryder, R. M. Sainsbury, Joseph Salerno, Nathan Salmon, Wesley C. Salmon, Constantine Sandis, David H. Sanford, Marco Santambrogio, David Sapire, Ruth A. Saunders, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Charles Sayward, James P. Scanlan, Richard Schacht, Tamar Schapiro, Frederick F. Schmitt, Jerome B. Schneewind, Calvin O. Schrag, Alan D. Schrift, George F. Schumm, Jean-Loup Seban, David N. Sedley, Kenneth Seeskin, Krister Segerberg, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Dennis M. Senchuk, James F. Sennett, William Lad Sessions, Stewart Shapiro, Tommie Shelby, Donald W. Sherburne, Christopher Shields, Roger A. Shiner, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert K. Shope, Kwong-loi Shun, Wilfried Sieg, A. John Simmons, Robert L. Simon, Marcus G. Singer, Georgette Sinkler, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matti T. Sintonen, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Robert C. Sleigh, Michael Anthony Slote, Hans Sluga, Barry Smith, Michael Smith, Robin Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert C. Solomon, Marta Soniewicka, Philip Soper, Ernest Sosa, Nicholas Southwood, Paul Vincent Spade, T. L. S. Sprigge, Eric O. Springsted, George J. Stack, Rebecca Stangl, Jason Stanley, Florian Steinberger, Sören Stenlund, Christopher Stephens, James P. Sterba, Josef Stern, Matthias Steup, M. A. Stewart, Leopold Stubenberg, Edith Dudley Sulla, Frederick Suppe, Jere Paul Surber, David George Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Zeno G. Swijtink, Richard Swinburne, Charles C. Taliaferro, Robert B. Talisse, John Tasioulas, Paul Teller, Larry S. Temkin, Mark Textor, H. S. Thayer, Peter Thielke, Alan Thomas, Amie L. Thomasson, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Joshua C. Thurow, Vzalerie Tiberius, Terrence N. Tice, Paul Tidman, Mark C. Timmons, William Tolhurst, James E. Tomberlin, Rosemarie Tong, Lawrence Torcello, Kelly Trogdon, J. D. Trout, Robert E. Tully, Raimo Tuomela, John Turri, Martin M. Tweedale, Thomas Uebel, Jennifer Uleman, James Van Cleve, Harry van der Linden, Peter van Inwagen, Bryan W. Van Norden, René van Woudenberg, Donald Phillip Verene, Samantha Vice, Thomas Vinci, Donald Wayne Viney, Barbara Von Eckardt, Peter B. M. Vranas, Steven J. Wagner, William J. Wainwright, Paul E. Walker, Robert E. Wall, Craig Walton, Douglas Walton, Eric Watkins, Richard A. Watson, Michael V. Wedin, Rudolph H. Weingartner, Paul Weirich, Paul J. Weithman, Carl Wellman, Howard Wettstein, Samuel C. Wheeler, Stephen A. White, Jennifer Whiting, Edward R. Wierenga, Michael Williams, Fred Wilson, W. Kent Wilson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John F. Wippel, Jan Woleński, Allan B. Wolter, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Rega Wood, W. Jay Wood, Paul Woodruff, Alison Wylie, Gideon Yaffe, Takashi Yagisawa, Yutaka Yamamoto, Keith E. Yandell, Xiaomei Yang, Dean Zimmerman, Günter Zoller, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Jack A. Zupko (J.A.Z.)
- Edited by Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2015
- Print publication:
- 27 April 2015, pp ix-xxx
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5 - Virtue ethics and moral sentimentalism
- from PART I - NORMATIVE THEORY
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- By Michael Slote, University of Miami
- Edited by Stan van Hooft, Deakin University, Australia
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- Book:
- The Handbook of Virtue Ethics
- Published by:
- Acumen Publishing
- Published online:
- 05 April 2014
- Print publication:
- 30 November 2013, pp 53-63
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Summary
Virtue ethics dominated the ancient philosophical world (at least in the West) and in recent decades has revived in a very strong way. The original impetus to that revival came from Elizabeth Anscombe (1958), who called for more attention to Aristotelian moral psychology and a more Aristotelian eventual approach to ethics itself, but although the recent revival of virtue ethics originally centred pretty much entirely around the ideas and influence of Aristotle, other forms of virtue ethics eventually emerged: virtue ethics influenced by the Stoics, by Hume and by Nietzsche. Of these newer forms of revived virtue ethics, only the Humean or sentimentalist variety seems to stand much of a chance of gaining wide philosophical acceptance in present-day circumstances. And the current possibilities for moral-sentimentalist virtue ethics have also led philosophers into more intense historical studies of Hume, and of his teacher, Francis Hutcheson, as virtue ethicists or as at least approximating to virtue ethicists.
Moral sentimentalism, very roughly, is the view that moral distinctions and motivations derive from emotion or sentiment rather than (practical) reason; and in the present chapter, I want to consider some of the most important historical forms of sentimentalist virtue ethics (or of forms of sentimentalism that contain major elements of virtue-ethical thinking) and then go on to discuss the problems and prospects of such virtue ethics in and for contemporary philosophical circumstances (which include normative approaches that are far from virtue ethics, and some forms of virtue ethics – for example, the neo-Aristotelian – that are very different from any kind of sentimentalism).
11 - The problem we all have with deontology
- Edited by Lawrence Jost, University of Cincinnati, Julian Wuerth, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
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- Book:
- Perfecting Virtue
- Published online:
- 04 February 2011
- Print publication:
- 03 February 2011, pp 260-270
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Summary
This chapter deals with the problem of justifying deontology, something that Kantian ethics notably seeks to do. Kantian defense of deontology favors the deontological answer to the specific question what the surgeon should do. Moreover, many contemporary Kantians also doubt the justificatory strength of the Formula of Universal Law and find the Formula of Humanity more promising as a way of defending deontology. The Formula of Humanity doesn't tell us that we may not treat, or even use, others as means. Deontology tells us that we must restrain not only our desire for our own welfare but also our desire to help others because, so to speak, of the negative moral weight of killing, lying and stealing. So the force of deontology seems to be a force that operates against certain human feelings or sentiments.
1 - Two Views of Satisficing
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- By Michael Slote, Professor of Ethics and Professor of Philosophy, University of Miami, Coral Gables
- Edited by Michael Byron, Kent State University, Ohio
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- Book:
- Satisficing and Maximizing
- Published online:
- 04 December 2009
- Print publication:
- 19 July 2004, pp 14-29
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The title of this essay should naturally put knowledgeable readers in mind of a certain kind of disagreement about the nature of (rational) satisficing. Many economists, philosophers, and others have held that satisficing makes sense only in relation to a larger overall maximizing or optimizing perspective, and on such a view it is rational to seek less than the best one can only if for example one is in circumstances where maximizing is impossible or where local satisficing is a means to overall optimality. For convenience, let us call this the instrumental conception of satisficing.
It is also possible to conceive satisficing as sometimes being non-instrumentally rational, as a form of decision making that is sometimes, as we can say, inherently or intrinsically rational. This has been and still is decidedly the minority view on the rationality involved in satisficing, but the disagreement between those who maintain that all rational satisficing is instrumental and those who maintain that satisficing can sometimes be rational on non-instrumental or intrinsic grounds has been an interesting feature of the recent philosophical landscape. That interestingness may well be one reason for the existence of the present book, but I don't propose to continue this particular debate in my contribution to this volume. In fact, I know of others who will be carrying it forward here, and I very much look forward to seeing what they have to say.
What I want to do here is consider a rather different distinction having to do with satisficing.
Driver's Virtues
- MICHAEL SLOTE
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Julia Driver's Uneasy Virtue offers a theory of virtue and the virtues without being an instance of virtue ethics. It presents a consequentialist challenge to recent virtue ethics, but its positive views – and especially its interesting examples – have great significance in their own right. Driver's defence of ‘virtues of ignorance’ has force despite all the challenges to it that have been mounted over the years. But there are also examples differing from those Driver has mentioned that favour the idea of such virtues. Perhaps certain virtues of religious faith and the virtue necessary for dealing as best one can with moral dilemmas both require ignorance. However, some of the examples Driver does discuss raise the question whether virtue status is based solely on consequences, rather than perhaps having (in addition) a motivational component.
Autonomy and Empathy
- Edited by Ellen Frankel Paul, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, Fred D. Miller, Jr, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, Jeffrey Paul, Bowling Green State University, Ohio
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- Book:
- Morality and Politics
- Published online:
- 04 August 2010
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- 09 February 2004, pp 293-309
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INTRODUCTION
When Carol Gilligan, Nel Noddings, and other ethicists of caring draw the contrast between supposedly masculine and supposedly feminine moral thinking, they put such things as justice, autonomy, and rights together under the first rubric and such things as caring, responsibility for others, and connection together under the second. This division naturally leaves caring ethicists with the issue of how to deal with topics such as justice, autonomy, and rights, but it also leaves defenders of more traditional moral theories (now dubbed “masculine”) with the problem of how to treat (if at all) the sorts of issues that ethicists of caring raise.
One response, among caring ethicists and others, has been to acknowledge the two types of moral thinking (however imperfectly correlated with sex or gender) while claiming that each is one-sided and needs to be complemented or supplemented with the other if we are to achieve an adequate understanding of morality, of the full range of moral phenomena. This says, in effect, that previous “masculine” moral philosophies have skimped on (the importance of) the sorts of affective bonds on which caring ethics focuses. This response also suggests that caring and human connection need to be situated within just social institutions whose character is not determined by caring, but, rather, by the less personal and more general principles and concepts of traditional moral/political philosophy and its descendants.
However, some caring ethicists have proceeded more boldly.
AUTONOMY AND EMPATHY
- Michael Slote
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- Journal:
- Social Philosophy and Policy / Volume 21 / Issue 1 / January 2004
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 13 January 2004, pp. 293-309
- Print publication:
- January 2004
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When Carol Gilligan, Nel Noddings, and other ethicists of caring draw the contrast between supposedly masculine and supposedly feminine moral thinking, they put such things as justice, autonomy, and rights together under the first rubric and such things as caring, responsibility for others, and connection together under the second. This division naturally leaves caring ethicists with the issue of how to deal with topics such as justice, autonomy, and rights, but it also leaves defenders of more traditional moral theories (now dubbed “masculine”) with the problem of how to treat (if at all) the sorts of issues that ethicists of caring raise.
11 - Moral Responsibility without Free Will
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- By Michael Slote, University of Maryland
- Edited by David Wasserman, University of Maryland, Robert Wachbroit, University of Maryland
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- Book:
- Genetics and Criminal Behavior
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 15 January 2001, pp 259-272
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Summary
The title of this chapter sounds like a contradiction in terms, but let me try to persuade you otherwise. The idea that moral or ethical value judgments can be made about people who are metaphysically unfree is, to begin with, familiar from Spinoza's Ethics. If we properly understand the notion of justice, we can make room for judgments of moral responsibility and accountability as well, without having to reassure ourselves that human beings have free will. In a virtue-ethical framework, I argue that if we understand moral obligation and social justice as calling for certain sorts of practical attitudes, or motivations, on the part of individuals and citizens, we can obviate the question of free will and still deal credibly and, if I may say, responsibly, with issues of genetic predisposition that have put such stress on recent thinking about individual and social morality. But let me first discuss the question of free will in a more general way.
The idea of moral responsibility without free will is not a contradiction, if the idea of a good society can substitute for the idea of free will in providing a basis for the punishments, penalties, incentives, and rewards that are the hallmark of moral and social accountability. Human beings, whether metaphysically free or not, can be placed in morally better or worse social conditions; and the laws instituted by a good or just society have or can have a legitimate authority over its members whatever the metaphysical status of their wills.
The Justice of Caring*
- Michael Slote
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- Journal:
- Social Philosophy and Policy / Volume 15 / Issue 1 / Winter 1998
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 13 January 2009, pp. 171-195
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- Winter 1998
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Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice, which appeared in 1982, argued that men tend to conceive morality in terms of rights, justice, and autonomy, whereas women more frequently think in terms of caring, responsibility, and interrelation with others. At about the same time, Nel Noddings in Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education sought to articulate and defend in its own right a “feminine” morality centered specifically around the ideal of caring (for people one knows). Since then, there has been a heated debate about the reality of the distinction Gilligan drew and about its potential implications for ethical theory. Discussions of the morality of caring have questioned, in particular, whether any such morality can really provide a total framework for moral thought and action. For in order to deal with our obligations to people we are not acquainted with and address large-scale issues of social morality, any morality of caring seems to require supplementation by typically “masculine” thinking in terms of rights and justice, with the result that caring turns out to be but one part of morality, rather than anything women, or more enlightened men, could find attractive as a total and self-sufficient way of approaching ethical issues.
The Virtue in Self-Interest*
- Michael Slote
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- Journal:
- Social Philosophy and Policy / Volume 14 / Issue 1 / Winter 1997
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 13 January 2009, pp. 264-285
- Print publication:
- Winter 1997
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As a motive, self-interest is constituted by a certain kind of concern for oneself; but we also use the term “self-interest” to refer to the object of such a motive, to the well-being or good life sought by a self-interested agent. In this essay, I want to concentrate on self-interest in the latter sense and say something about how self-interest or well-being relates to virtue. One reason to be interested in this relationship stems from our concern to know whether virtue pays, i.e., is in the moral agent's self-interest, a question which Plato notably asks in the Republic and which has been of concern to moral philosophers ever since. But the importance for ethics of notions like virtue and self-interest is hardly exhausted by their role in the debate over whether virtue pays; indeed, any large-scale ethical theory will presumably have something to say about how these major notions relate, so we have reason to want to understand this relationship independent of the particular desire to show that morality or virtue is in the self-interest of the (virtuous) agent.
It will be a background assumption of this essay that some ways of connecting virtue and well-being/self-interest redound to the advantage of the larger theories that incorporate them. If, in particular, we believe in the bona fides of ethical theory, then unifying power is a desideratum in ethics and it stands in favor of utilitarianism (and Epicureanism) that it offers us a way of unifying our understanding of virtue and well-being. To be sure, that advantage may to some extent or ultimately be undercut if unification leads to counterintuitive ethical consequences.