Alle Publikationen
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2018
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(2018): Voluntary Simplicity Strongly Backed by All Three Main Normative-Ethical Traditions. In: Ethical Perspectives 25 (1), S. 87-116
Abstract: We examine the growing ‘Voluntary Simplicity’ (VS) movement from the perspectives of Utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, and Virtue Ethics. We argue that, from each of these three diverse perspectives, there is a compelling argument to the conclusion that citizens of the ‘developed’ world ought to embrace such simplicity in their own lives, and to facilitate its greater adoption societally and globally. We conclude by asking why it is that this compelling conclusion has not already been more widely found and acted upon. In reflecting on this question we outline some arguments for why a culture of voluntary simplicity may be needed to drive political and macroeconomic change.
2017
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(2017): Kant, Oppression, and the Possibility of Nonculpable Failures to Respect Oneself. In: The Southern Journal of Philosophy 55 (3), S. 285-305. DOI: 10.1111/sjp.12242
Abstract: I argue that Kant's ethical framework cannot countenance a certain kind of failure to respect oneself that can occur within oppressive social contexts. Kant's assumption that any person, qua rational being, has guaranteed epistemic access to the moral law as the standard of good action and the capacity to act upon this standard makes autonomy an achievement within the individual agent's power, but this is contrary to a feminist understanding of autonomy as a relational achievement that can be thwarted by the systematic attack on autonomy that occurs within oppressive social conditions. Insofar as Kant's negative duty of self-respect is unable to accommodate the ways immersion in oppressive social environments can warp an individual's understanding of what she is owed and capable of as a moral agent, it perpetuates the cruelty of unjust social systems in the guise of respecting individual autonomy. I conclude by considering Carol Hay's argument that those who are oppressed have an obligation to themselves to resist their own oppression, in order to explore how this limitation in how Kant conceives of the duty to respect the self may reach expression in contemporary ethical theory inspired by Kant.
Keywords: agency, Autonomie, Diskriminierung, Disziplin, Ethik, feminism, Feminismus, Gender, Handlungsmacht, Hay, Kant, Macht, Modelle/Theorien, Moral, moral agents, moralische Gesetze, moralisches Wissen, Moralphilosophie, oppressive social systems, Philosophie, Respekt, social systems, ethics, Three main normative ethic perspectives Kant, Utilitarismus virtue ethics, Unterdrückungssysteme -
(2017): SENTIMENTS, CONDUCT, AND TRUST IN THE LABORATORY. In: Social Philosophy and Policy 34 (01), S. 25-55. DOI: 10.1017/S0265052517000024
Abstract: In this essay we provide a brief account and interpretation of The Theory of Moral Sentiments showing that it departs fundamentally from contemporary patterns of thought in economics that are believed to govern individual behavior in small groups, and contains strong testable propositions governing the expression of that behavior. We also state a formal representation of the model for individual choice of action, apply the propositions to the prediction of actions in trust games, report two experiments testing these predictions, and interpret the results in terms directly related to the model. In short, we argue that the system of sociability developed by Adam Smith provides a coherent non-utilitarian model that is consistent with the pattern of results in trust games, and leads to testable new predictions, some of which we test.
2016
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(2016): The ethics of everyday life. Moral theology, social anthropology, and the imagination of the human. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press
Abstract: What should the opportunities and demands of my spouse’s work mean for me given the opportunities and demands of my own work? Should we move away from our extended family for a better job? Should we have children now? What kind of education do we owe our children? How do we balance the demands of our aging parents with the demands of our children? Do my spouse and my children really know how much I love them? How much should we be giving to the church and to this or that cause? Is it okay to drive this safer car and to drive it as much as I do given how much CO2 it emits? Should I really order a steak? I suspect that these are the sorts of moral questions that bedevil a majority of individuals most of the time—nothing glamorous, nothing exciting, only the warp and woof of our daily lives. We want to live faithfully and well, knowing that to live such a life will require a thousand little decisions that may have unintended ethical consequences. [End Page 379] The typical class in ethics, even Christian ethics or moral theology, and the typical anthology used in such a class follows a standard formula. The first part of the class/book is devoted to an examination of the major theories on offer and includes an account of deontological or nonconsequentialist theories (the nature of the act is what makes it wrong or right) with the greatest attention devoted to variations of Kantian ethics. It also includes various permutations of consequentialist or utilitarian ethics (do the greatest good, however that is understood, for the greatest number of people). This, in turn, is typically followed by an introduction to virtue ethics in some shape or form. After this groundwork is laid, students are then given the opportunity to sink their teeth into the juicy bits, namely the “application” of these theories and their guiding principles to a fairly standard set of moral problems, many of which are bioethical problems, including beginning of life issues such as cloning, in vitro fertilization and Assisted Reproductive Technologies, and abortion, and end of life issues such as euthanasia and physician assisted suicide. Other issues include the intentional taking of human life in war and capital punishment; hunger and poverty; and environmental responsibilities and animal welfare. Students who complete such a class may emerge relieved that morality, having so little to do with their daily lives, is not quite as demanding as they had feared. After all, how likely is it that they will come face to face with any of these hard moral problems, much less more than one? And if they should perchance encounter one of these problems, they need only to plug the moral principle into it. “Ethics is really pretty simple,” they may think. Michael Banner, Dean and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, is hardly the first to notice how distorting and unhelpful is the reduction of ethics to an attempted resolution of a hard moral problem. Moral quandaries are but a minor part of the moral life. Unlike earlier critics like Alasdair MacIntyre, who turned to Aristotle to forge a retrieval of an ethics of virtue as an alternative to an ethics of hard cases, Banner commends an “everyday ethics,” an ethics of the course of life (and says not a word about virtue). And where earlier critics, especially MacIntyre, find modern morality, both in theory and in practice, incoherent, Banner is dismissive only of the practices of most modern moral theorists (in particular, bioethicists), and not modern moral practices themselves. Indeed, moral theory should attend to moral phenomena. [End Page 380] Furthermore, because cultural anthropology (in Britain “social anthropology”) is the discipline in which moral phenomena is most closely examined and described, moral theology must partner with social anthropology. Moral theology will do its appropriate work only through its...
2015
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(2015): THE DEPTH OF CIVILIZING FEATURES. NEGATIVE DIALECTICS BETWEEN POLITENESS AND MORALITY IN KANT’S ANTHROPOLOGY. In: ENDOXA-SERIES FILOSOFICAS (35), S. 119-138
Abstract: This paper tackles the contribution that the beautiful appearance of virtue, whose multiplicity of forms can be gathered under the generic name of decorum, offers to the civilizing process and also to the progressive moralization of mankind according to Kant’s Moral Anthropology. First, I will focus on the homiletic virtues analyzed in the Metaphysics of Morals, that is, loquacity, politeness, hospitality and indulgence, which bring about a trompe l’oeil inside the subject, always prone to selfishness and to the perversion of its practical drives. Secondly, I will analyze the relationship between these “supplements of virtue,” good social manners, and an undeniable anthropological fact, that is, the weakness of human nature and the need to use aesthetic crutches to get accustomed to acting in accordance with pure practical principles. Finally, I will cast light on the importance that parerga deserves according to Kant, who argues that these special virtues must be cultivated in the midst of social life, that is to say, always in contact with others. On the contrary, moral appearance produced by the individual subject ought to be banned unequivocally, because everyone must avoid falling into false illusions about the purity of her or his own intentions.
2010
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(2010): Kant on the Highest Moral-Physical Good. The Social Aspect of Kant's Moral Philosophy. In: Kantian Review 15 (01), S. 1-36. DOI: 10.1017/S1369415400002351
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