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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Ethical Reasons And Political Commitments, Lisa Rivera
Ethical Reasons And Political Commitments, Lisa Rivera
Lisa Rivera
Political commitments to resist oppression play a central role in the moral lives of many people. Such commitments are also a source of ethical reasons. They influence and organize ethical beliefs, emotions and reasons in an ongoing way. Political commitments to address oppression often contain a concern for the dignity and well-being of others and the objects of political commitments often have value, according to ideal moral theories, such as Kantian and utilitarian theory. However, ideal moral theories do not fully explain the ethical reasons political commitments engender. First, ideal moral theories do not explain the normative priority that agents …
Harmful Beneficence, Lisa Rivera
Harmful Beneficence, Lisa Rivera
Lisa Rivera
Beneficence can be significant to moral action but criteria for good beneficence is rarely discussed. Much work has focused on how extensive the demands are on agents to be beneficent and on agents’ motivations for beneficence. There has been little direct attention to the relationship between benefactor and beneficiary. The argument here is that serious deficiencies exist in the view that benefactors should focus primarily on satisfying another’s self-chosen ends. A narrow focus on the attempt to help someone satisfy her ends misses the harmful effects that benefactors can have on a dependent beneficiary's ability to choose freely from her …
Citizen Responsibility For War In Imperfect Democracies, Lisa Rivera
Citizen Responsibility For War In Imperfect Democracies, Lisa Rivera
Lisa Rivera
Are individual citizens of imperfect democracies morally responsible for unjust wars waged by their state? Moral responsibility for unjust wars involves both retrospective and social responsibility. Citizens of imperfect democracies are retrospectively responsible when they choose to vote for a leader they know will wage an unjust war. This situation may occur very rarely. For example, US citizens did not have this political option at the outset of the Vietnam and Iraq Wars. However, even when citizens are not retrospectively responsible they have the social responsibility to engage in collective action to address the harms unjust war causes.
Sacrifices, Aspirations And Morality: Williams Reconsidered, Lisa Rivera
Sacrifices, Aspirations And Morality: Williams Reconsidered, Lisa Rivera
Lisa Rivera
When a person gives up an end of crucial importance to her in order to promote a moral aim, we regard her as having made a moral sacrifice. The paper analyzes these sacrifices in light of some of Bernard Williams’ objections to Kantian and Utilitarian accounts of them. Williams argues that an implausible consequence of these theories is that that we are expected to sacrifice projects that make our lives worth living and contribute to our integrity. Williams’ arguments about integrity and meaning are shown to be unconvincing when the content of projects is left open. However, a look at …