Sean McKeever and Michael Ridge
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- May 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780199290659
- eISBN:
- 9780191603617
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199290652.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Because of its extremely ecumenical view of what considerations might count as reasons, particularism threatens to ‘flatten the moral landscape’ by making it seem that there is no deep difference ...
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Because of its extremely ecumenical view of what considerations might count as reasons, particularism threatens to ‘flatten the moral landscape’ by making it seem that there is no deep difference between, for example pain and shoelace color. After all, particularists have claimed, either could provide a reason provided a suitable moral context. To avoid this result, particularists can try to draw a distinction between default and non-default reasons. This chapter argues that all but the most deflationary ways of drawing this distinction are either implausible or else insufficient to help the particularist avoid flattening the moral landscape. The difficulty can be avoided if the particularist’s extremely ecumenical view of reasons is rejected.Less
Because of its extremely ecumenical view of what considerations might count as reasons, particularism threatens to ‘flatten the moral landscape’ by making it seem that there is no deep difference between, for example pain and shoelace color. After all, particularists have claimed, either could provide a reason provided a suitable moral context. To avoid this result, particularists can try to draw a distinction between default and non-default reasons. This chapter argues that all but the most deflationary ways of drawing this distinction are either implausible or else insufficient to help the particularist avoid flattening the moral landscape. The difficulty can be avoided if the particularist’s extremely ecumenical view of reasons is rejected.
Jennifer A. Herdt
- Published in print:
- 2022
- Published Online:
- March 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780192849205
- eISBN:
- 9780191944451
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780192849205.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
Obligation is a feature of accountability relations among moral agents, who track their own and one another’s commitments and entitlements. When we have grasped the semantic-pragmatic shape of ...
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Obligation is a feature of accountability relations among moral agents, who track their own and one another’s commitments and entitlements. When we have grasped the semantic-pragmatic shape of obligation as marked out by the blameworthy, we have understood its binding character and do not need a theory of its nature or essence beyond what it is as manifest kind. Efforts to distinguish worth-regarding from moral obligations (Wolterstorff) or state-of-the-world-regarding from second-personal obligations (Darwall) are shown by the chapter to be unsuccessful. Further, first-personal and second-personal authority stand and fall together; one awakens to the task of unifying one’s own agency only as one is addressed by others as an agent. Being perfected as a moral agent takes place only insofar as one’s participation in these accountability relations, too, is perfected. Yet it is because perfecting these accountability relations is itself good that one has reason to perfect them. Hence, the chapter argues, ecstatic eudaimonism fits hand in glove with this account of obligation.Less
Obligation is a feature of accountability relations among moral agents, who track their own and one another’s commitments and entitlements. When we have grasped the semantic-pragmatic shape of obligation as marked out by the blameworthy, we have understood its binding character and do not need a theory of its nature or essence beyond what it is as manifest kind. Efforts to distinguish worth-regarding from moral obligations (Wolterstorff) or state-of-the-world-regarding from second-personal obligations (Darwall) are shown by the chapter to be unsuccessful. Further, first-personal and second-personal authority stand and fall together; one awakens to the task of unifying one’s own agency only as one is addressed by others as an agent. Being perfected as a moral agent takes place only insofar as one’s participation in these accountability relations, too, is perfected. Yet it is because perfecting these accountability relations is itself good that one has reason to perfect them. Hence, the chapter argues, ecstatic eudaimonism fits hand in glove with this account of obligation.