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These days, arguments about distributive justice—i.e. arguments about who should get what—often centre around two ideas. One is that goods should be distributed equally. The other is that how people fare in life should depend on what they are responsible for. In a wide‐ranging discussion, the author asks what it is that draws us to these two ideas and whether they lend themselves to being combined, in the way contemporary egalitarian thinkers seek to combine them, or whether they necessarily pull in different directions. Along the way, he examines how arguments about responsibility and natural talents bear upon the standing of market rewards and he looks at recent theoretical attempts to show that the recipients of social benefits should be willing to engage in contributive activity in return. The conclusion is clear—there is no natural tendency for a commitment to equality to support an attachment to responsibility nor for an attachment to responsibility to support a commitment to equality.

This book is a critical survey of the following three questions of egalitarian distributive justice. where does distributive equality matter? Why does it matter? And among whom does it matter? These questions may be referred to, respectively, as the questions of the site, ground, and scope of distributive equality. The book defends an institutional site for egalitarian justice, a luck eglitarian ideal of why equality matters, and the idea that the scope of distributive justice is global. The account of equality proposed in this work may be described as “institutional luck egalitarianism” that is global in scope.

One of the key supposed ‘platitudes’ of contemporary epistemology is the claim that knowledge excludes luck. One can see the attraction of such a claim, in that knowledge is something that one can take credit for; it is an achievement of sorts, and yet luck undermines genuine achievements. The problem, however, is that luck seems to be an all-pervasive feature of our epistemic enterprises that tempts us to think that either scepticism is true, and we don’t know very much after all, or else knowledge is compatible with knowledge after all. My claim is that we do not need to choose between these two austere alternatives, since a closer inspection of what is involved in the notion of epistemic luck reveals varieties of luck that are compatible with knowledge possession and varieties that aren’t. We can thus do justice to the intuition that knowledge is compatible with (some forms of) luck without acceding to the sceptical claim that we do not know as much as we think we do. Nevertheless, I also claim that there is a sceptical problem lurking in the background that is related to the problem of epistemic luck, though it is not best thought of in terms of the possession of knowledge.

This book comprises eleven chapters which engage with, or take their point of departure from, the influential work in moral and political philosophy of Bernard Williams (1929–2003). Various themes of Williams's work are explored and taken in new directions. The chapters are all concerned with Williams's work on the viability or wisdom of systematic moral theory, and his criticism, in particular, of moral theory's preoccupation with impartiality. Some chapters address Williams's work on moral luck, and his insistence that moral appraisals bear a disquieting sensitivity to various kinds of luck. One chapter makes further connections between moral luck and the ‘non-identity problem’ in reproductive ethics. Other chapters investigate Williams's defence of ‘internalism’ about reasons for action, which makes our reasons for action a function of our desires, projects, and psychological dispositions. One chapter attempts to plug a gap in Williams's theory which is created by Williams's deference to imagination, while another chapter connects these issues to Williams's accommodation of ‘thick’ ethical concepts as a source of knowledge and action-guidingness. A further chapter examines Williams's less-known work on the other central normative concept, ‘ought’. Another chapter takes a look at Williams's work on moral epistemology and intuitionism, comparing and contrasting his work with that of John McDowell, and Gerald Lang explores Williams's work on equality, discrimination, and interspecies relations in order to reach the conclusion, similar to Williams's, theory that ‘speciesism’ is very unlike racism or sexism.

The three parts of the book comprise three distinct investigations under a common theme: enquiry into inter-relationships between issues about the nature of knowledge and issues about the value of knowledge. The first investigation provides an analysis of problems concerning the value of knowledge and a critical examination of responses to these by virtue epistemologists. The book finds virtue-theoretic accounts wanting and argues that there is a cognitive state — understanding — which is similar to, but different from knowledge, and which has final value. In the second investigation the book presents accounts of perceptual knowledge, knowledge from indicator phenomena, and knowledge from testimony, in each of which recognitional abilities feature prominently. Consideration of these abilities, the book claims, enables us to reach a better understanding of knowledge and its value. The third investigation focuses on the relationship between perceptual knowledge and knowledge of our own intentional actions. The book argues for an account of knowledge and justification to which a certain kind of second-order knowledge is central and applies this both to perceptual knowledge, and knowledge of our own intentional actions, with a view to explaining ways in which knowledge is of value.

This book offers a systematic, comprehensive framework for thinking about the moral evaluation of character. Many recent attempts to stake out a place in moral philosophy for this concern define virtue in terms of its benefits for the virtuous person or for human society more generally. Part One of this book presents and defends a conception of virtue as intrinsic excellence of character, worth prizing for its own sake and not only for its benefits. The other two parts address two challenges to the ancient idea of excellence of character. One challenge arises from the importance of altruism in modern ethical thought, and the question of what altruism has to do with intrinsic excellence. Part Two argues that altruistic benevolence has indeed a crucial place in excellence of character, but that moral virtue should also be expected to involve excellence in being for other goods besides the well-being (and the rights) of other persons. It explores relations among cultural goods, personal relationships, one's own good, and the good of others, as objects of excellent motives. The other challenge is typified by doubts about the reality of moral virtue, arising from experiments and conclusions in social psychology. Part Three of the book explores in detail the prospects for an empirically realistic conception of excellence of character as an object of moral aspiration, endeavour, and education. It argues that such a conception will involve renunciation of the ancient thesis of the unity or mutual implication of all virtues, and acknowledgement of sufficient ‘moral luck’ in the development of any individual's character to make virtue very largely a gift, rather than an individual achievement, though nonetheless excellent and admirable for that.

Under what conditions are people responsible for their choices and the outcomes of those choices? How could such conditions be fostered by liberal societies? Should what people are due as a matter of justice depend on what they are responsible for? For example, how far should healthcare provision depend on patients' past choices? What values would be realized and which hampered by making justice sensitive to responsibility? Would it give people what they deserve? Would it advance or hinder equality? The explosion of philosophical interest in such questions has been fuelled by increased focus on individual responsibility in political debates. Political philosophers, especially egalitarians, have responded to such developments by attempting to map out the proper place for responsibility in theories of justice. This book both reflects on these recent developments in normative political theory and moves the debate forwards.

The concept of luck has played an important role in debates concerning free will and moral responsibility, yet participants in these debates have relied upon an intuitive notion of what luck is. This book develops an account of luck, which is then applied to the free will debate. It argues that the standard luck objection succeeds against common accounts of libertarian free will, event-causal and agent-causal, but that it is possible to amend libertarian accounts so that they are no more vulnerable to luck than is compatibilism. But the book also argues that compatibilist accounts of luck are themselves vulnerable to a powerful luck objection. Historical compatibilisms cannot satisfactorily explain how agents can take responsibility for their constitutive luck. Non-historical compatibilisms run into insurmountable difficulties with the epistemic condition on control over action. Because a failure to satisfy the epistemic condition on control is excusing, the book argues, if there are any actions for which agents are responsible, they are akratic actions; for non-akratic actions, agents either fail to satisfy the epistemic condition on moral responsibility or lack control in some other way. But akratic actions are themselves unacceptably subject to luck. The book ends with a discussion of recent non-historical compatibilisms. Some of these new compatibilisms hold that agents are morally responsible for actions just in case these actions express the agent's attitudes. The book argues that accounts of this type do not offer a viable alternative to control-based compatibilisms. Finally, the book argues that other kinds of non-historical compatibilism have no resources to deploy against the hard luck view because the latter does not entail that instant agents have a different degree of moral responsibility than agents who have a history.