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At the heart of one major approach to ethics—an approach counting among its proponents Plato, Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas—is the conviction that ethics is fundamentally related to what kind of persons we are. Many of Plato’s dialogues, for example, focus on what kind of persons we ought to be and begin with examinations of particular virtues: What is the nature of justice? Republic) What is the nature of piety? Euthyphro) What is the nature of temperance? Charmides) What is the nature (...) of courage? Laches) On the assumption that what kind of person one is is constituted by one’scharacter, the link betweenmoralcharacter and virtue is clear. We can think of one’smoralcharacter as primarily a function of whether she has or lacks variousmoral virtues and vices. The virtues and vices that comprise one’smoralcharacter are typically understood as dispositions to behave in certain ways in certain sorts of circumstances. For instance, an honest person is disposed to telling the truth when asked. These dispositions are typically understood as relatively stable and long-term. Further, they are also typically understood to be robust, that is, consistent across a wide-spectrum of conditions. We are unlikely, for example, to think that an individual who tells the truth to her friends but consistently lies to her parents and teachers possesses the virtue of honesty.Moralcharacter, like most issues inmoral psychology, stands at the intersection of issues in both normative ethics and empirical psychology. This suggests that there are conceivably two general approaches one could take when elucidating the nature ofmoralcharacter. One could approachmoralcharacter primarily by focusing on standards set by normative ethics ; whether people can or do live up to these standards is irrelevant. Alternatively, one could approachmoralcharacter under the guideline that normative ethics ought to be constrained by psychology. On this second approach, it’s not that the normative/descriptive distinction disappears; instead, it is just that a theory ofmoralcharacter ought to be appropriately constrained by what social psychology tells usmoral agents are in fact like.. (shrink)

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In this paper, we describe a semiotic programme that proposes an alternative conceptual framework to understand themoral positionalities that people have in socio-material space. The study amalgamatesmoralcharacter and signs and signification through a discussion ofmoral choice and value acts in an existential semiotic framework, as laid out by Eero Tarasti. The programme was triggered by a lived experience in a non-place, yielding the concept of semiotic space awareness – i.e., the value acts (...) that work as signs ofmoralcharacter in people’s socio-material space. It is themoral positioning of a subject in the socio-material and semiotic space in relation to other subjects. People’s positionalities primarily take place in the socio-material space, and the dimensions we discuss focus on how value acts are produced and interpreted in space and place. Our aim is to take the approach used in, e.g., proxemics to a universal metalevel in terms of its key, undivided semiotic ingredients irrespective of cultural variation. We then extrapolate by discussing how these value acts trigger potential tensions and conflicts that can be approached using semiotics as a foundation for analysis. More specifically, themoralcharacter that people portray in their value acts is theorized and applied as an explanatory tool to understand the semiosis and its repercussions in Dasein. We also introduce affordance as an additional dimension in the interplay and modalizations betweenmoralcharacter andmoral choice to understand value acts and semiotic space awareness in subjects’ Dasein and Umwelt. (shrink)

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The goal of this book is to develop a new framework for thinking about whatmoralcharacter looks like today. My central claim will be that most people havemoralcharacter traits, but at the same time they do not have either the traditional  ...

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"[This book is] focused on the place ofcharacter and virtue in professional practice. Professional practices usually have codes of conduct designed to ensure good conduct; but while such codes may be necessary and useful, they appear far from sufficient, since many recent public scandals in professional life seem to have been attributable to failures of personalmoralcharacter. This book argues that there is a pressing need to devote more attention in professional education to the cultivation (...) or development of suchmoral qualities as integrity, courage, self-control, service and selflessness... [This] volume looks beyond traditional professions to explore the ethical dimensions of a broad range of important professional practices. Inspired by a successful international and interdisciplinary conference on the topic, the book examines various ways of promotingmoralcharacter and virtue in professional life from the general ethical perspective of contemporary neo-Aristotelian virtue theory."--. (shrink)

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Moralcharacter judgments pervade our everyday social interactions. But are these judgments epistemically reliable? In this paper, I discuss a challenge to the reliability of ordinary virtue and vice attribution that emerges from Christian Miller’s Mixed Traits theory ofmoralcharacter, which entails that the majority of our ordinarymoralcharacter judgments are false. In response to this challenge, I argue that a key prediction of this theory is not borne out by the available (...) evidence; this evidence further suggests that ourmoralcharacter judgments do converge upon real psychological properties of individuals. I go on to argue that this is because the evidence for the Mixed Traits Theory does not capture the kind of compassionate behaviors that ordinary folk really care about. Ultimately, I suggest that our ordinary standards for virtue and vice have a restricted social scope, which reflects the parochial nature of our characterologicalmoral psychology. (shrink)

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In order the combat the growing apathy, cynicism, and indifference observed among students, the author developed a course designed to make the study of philosophy relevant, applicable, and personal for students. This paper is a detailed exposition of the structure and content of this course. Build around the theme “ExploringMoralCharacter,” this course focuses on the role ofmoralcharacter in ethical decision making and the nature of students’ ownmoralcharacter. The course (...) is divided into four units. Designed as a voyage of personal discovery for students, each unit concludes with a non-traditional writing assignment (themoral reasoning unit, for example, concludes with students writing letters to the Admiralty as witnesses to the conviction and sentencing of Billy Budd). The author discusses why the course structure and paper assignments facilitate students’ ability to make explicit and to reflect on their ownmoral values. Appended to the article is a list of the course’s non-traditional paper assignments. (shrink)

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I defend the epistemic thesis that evaluations of people in terms of theirmoralcharacter as good, bad, or intermediate are almost always epistemically unjustified. (1) Because most people are fragmented (they would behave deplorably in many and admirably in many other situations), one's prior probability that any given person is fragmented should be high. (2) Because one's information about specific people does not reliably distinguish those who are fragmented from those who are not, one's posterior probability that (...) any given person is fragmented should be close to one's prior—and thus should also be high. (3) Because being fragmented entails being indeterminate (neither good nor bad nor intermediate), one's posterior probability that any given person is indeterminate should also be high—and the epistemic thesis follows. (1) and (3) rely on previous work; here I support (2) by using a mathematical result together with empirical evidence from personality psychology. (shrink)

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In everyday life we assume substantial behavioural reliability in others, and on the basis of it we talk of people as acting “incharacter” and “out ofcharacter”. This common assumption seems intuitively well founded. But recent experiments in social psychology have generated philosophical controversy around it. In the context of this debate, John Doris challenges Aristotle’s well known and influential view that people’s behavioural reliability with respect to acting virtuously is underpinned bycharacter traits, understood as (...) settled and integrated dispositions of the agent to have appropriate judgment and appropriate feelings toward what she is called upon to do in a given situation. In this paper I will take John Doris’ challenge at face value, and argue in response that Aristotle’s position is not undermined by it. In fact, rethinking Aristotle’s realism aboutcharacter andmoral virtues in light of Doris’ criticism has important and hitherto unexplored heuristic value for Aristotelian scholars and situationist philosophers alike. (shrink)

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Gilbert Harman and John Doris (among others) have maintained that experimental studies of human behaviour give good grounds for denying the very existence ofmoralcharacter. This research, according to Harman and Doris, shows human behaviour to be dependent not oncharacter but mainly on one's ‘situation.’ My paper develops a number of criticisms of this view, among them that social science experiments are ill-suited to studycharacter, insofar as they do not estimate the role of (...)character in continuously shaping the direction of one's life—including what situations one is apt to get into in the first place. (shrink)

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The paper considers the problematic relation between a person and her action as it is expressed in the problem of blame andmoral judgement. I argue that blaming someone for her action does affect ourmoral judgement of her, but does not imply condemnation of hermoralcharacter. I use the example of Dmitri Karamazov to show that a response to a particular situation, although shaped by the previouscharacter of the person, does not follow (...) from it and can in turn affect and change the person'scharacter by changing the way in which she perceives what is valuable. (shrink)

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Moralcharacter and ascetic practice have not been major themes in contemporary analytic religious epistemology, but they have been major themes in the religious epistemologies of several influential historical figures, including the medieval Islamic philosopher al-Ghazalı. This article will be concerned with the place ofmoralcharacter and ascetic practice in both al-Ghazalı’s religious epistemology and in contemporary analytic religious epistemology. By reading al-Ghazalı alongside contemporary work, I aim to highlight some fruitful ideas about how (...) class='Hi'>moralcharacter and ascetic practice could play important roles in religious epistemology. I argue that the exploration of these ideas may be enriched via engagement with recent developments in mainstream epistemology and virtue theory, pointing toward future avenues for such work. (shrink)

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The turn of the century saw a significant increase in the amount of attention being paid by philosophers to empirical issues aboutmoralcharacter. Dating back at least to Plato and Aristotle in the West, and Confucius in the East, philosophers have traditionally drawn on empirical data to some extent in their theorizing aboutcharacter. One of the main differences in recent years has been the source of this empirical data, namely the work of social and personality (...) psychologists on morally relevant thought and action. -/- This entry briefly examines four recent empirical approaches tomoralcharacter. It will draw on the psychology literature where appropriate, but the main focus will be on the significance of that work for philosophers interested in better understandingmoralcharacter. The four areas are situationism, the CAPS model, the Big Five model, and the VIA. The remainder of this entry devotes a section to each of them. (shrink)

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This article analyzes themoral and political implications of strongmoralcharacter for political action. The treatment provides reason to hold that strongmoralcharacter should play a role in a robust normative account of political leadership. The case is supported by empirical findings oncharacter dispositions and the political viability of the account’s normative prescriptions.

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In the following paper, I wish to examine a problem for the theist libertarian. On the one hand, libertarians insist that freedom requires possible alternatives open to the agent. On the other hand, God’s perfectly formedmoralcharacter implies that He always does the morally best. Give Hismoralcharacter, then, it appears that there are no possible alternatives open to God. We thus get a dilemma for the theist libertarian: either a) God is not libertarian (...) free – because Hismoralcharacter rules out possible alternatives; or b) God’scharacter is not perfectly formed – because libertarian freedom requires that it is possible for God to act out ofcharacter. In the present paper, I argue that Thomas Reid, a paradigmatic libertarian, has the theoretical tools to retain a robust account of libertarian freedom without compromising a robust account of perfectly formed characters. In sum, it is necessary that agents with fully formed characters always act incharacter (read de dicto), but it is possible that agents with fully formed characters act out ofcharacter (read de re). The former claim captures the robustness of perfectly formedmoral characters and the latter claim captures the robustness of libertarian freedom. (shrink)

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In recent years,character traits in general and virtue-related concepts in particular have been of considerable interest to philosophers, psychological researchers, and practitioners in the business ethics field. Three approaches tocharacter traits can be used to incorporate ethics into organizations: virtues,character strengths, and competencies. The aim of this article is to clarify the concept ofcharacter traits, or virtues, and provide a unified operational version of it for incorporation into management. To this end, we (...) first discuss the analogy among virtues,character strengths, and competencies. Then, we propose a list ofmoral competencies that can be implemented in competency-based human resource management. (shrink)

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Evaluating other people'smoralcharacter is a crucial social cognitive task. However, the cognitive processes by which people seek out, prioritize, and integrate multiple pieces ofcharacter‐relevant information have not been studied empirically. The first aim of this research was to examine whichcharacter traits are considered most important when forming an impression of a person's overallmoralcharacter. The second aim was to understand how differing levels of trait expression affect overallcharacter (...) judgments. Four preregistered studies and one supplemental study (total N = 720), using five different measures of importance and sampling undergraduates, online workers, and community members, found that our participants placed the most importance on the traits honest, helpful, compassionate, loyal, and responsible. Also, when integrating the information that they have learned, our participants seemed to engage in a simple averaging process in which all available, relevant information is combined in a linear fashion to form an overall evaluation ofmoralcharacter. This research provides new insights into the cognitive processes by which evaluations ofmoralcharacter are formed. (shrink)

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Moral evaluation is concerned with the attribution of values whose distinction into two broad groups has become familiar. On the one hand, there are the most generalmoral values of lightness, wrongness, goodness, badness, and what ought to be or to be done. On the other, there is a great diversity of more specificmoral values which these objects can have: of being a theft, for instance, or a thief; of honesty, reliability or callousness. Within the recent (...) body of work attempting to restore to the virtues a central place in ethical thinking, two claims stand out. One is that, of these two kinds of values, the specific ones are explanatorily prior to the general – that if an action is wrong, it is because it is wrong in one of those specific respects. A second claim, though, is now standardly made definitive of ‘Virtue ethics’: that amongst the specific values, the value ofcharacter is explanatorily prior to that of action – that if an action is callous, say, it is because it expresses callousness ofcharacter – and that in this sense, themoral value of action derives from that ofcharacter. This second claim has been widely attacked; in what follows, I present a reason for believing that, at least in the case of callousness, it is right. (shrink)

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Interactionism has emerged as a promising approach tomoralcharacter in the wake of the situationist challenge and thecharacter-situation debate. This paper will consider whether interactionism is troubled by a familiar problem from the philosophy of mind: the coupling-constitution or causal-constitution fallacy. In relation tocharacter, this issue pertains to whether the external factors featured in interactionist models are partly constitutive of the agent’scharacter, or whether they merely play a causal role. In contrast (...) to some other interactionist theorists, I argue that interactionism doesn’t need to make distinctions regarding causation and constitution, and would be better off without attempting to do so. Making such claims would only add metaphysical baggage to interactionism that won’t aid in its goal of providing an empirically adequatemoral psychology ofcharacter. Interactionists are thus better off evading the C-C fallacy challenge, rather than attempting to meet it head-on. (shrink)

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While qualities of goodcharacter are of great significance and value in human social and professional affairs—and conduct which at least conforms to such qualities is invariably required for public service employment—they cannot be a requirement of the private lives of citizens in free societies. That said, there seems more of a case for the personal possession of such qualities in the case of those human professions and services for whichmoral exemplification to others may be considered an (...) inherent part of the professional role. After some consideration of arguments for and against suchmoralcharacter exemplification in relation to such professional roles as religious ministry and teaching, this paper proceeds to make some case for politics as professional role of this exemplificatory kind. (shrink)

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Universally acknowledged for his role in the development of modern liberalism, John Stuart Mill has fallen out of favor with today’smoral and political philosophers who fail to read beyond his works _Utilitarianism_ and_ On Liberty_. This collection of essays seeks to reestablish Mill as an important thinker for our time by stressing themoral basis of liberal democracy in a wide range of his writings These essays examine the full range of Mill’s work—including letters, diaries, and speeches—to (...) show that he was more interested in issues ofcharacter and leading a good life than in rules of obligation. They show how Mill sought to introduce historical consciousness and social responsibility into all aspects of hismoral and political philosophy, and they contrast his vision of a liberal society with current theories of liberal democracy. The volume also includes three earlier studies that provide grounds for rethinking how the history of modern liberal philosophy might be written. Together, all of the contributions situate Mill at the boundary of the liberal-communitarian divide, revealing his reflections on the limits of democracy, the role of the family, and the relationship of economic resources and their distribution to self-development and sociality. This collection shows how Mill can light the way out of the darkening maze of rights and identity discourse in which liberalmoral and political philosophy now finds itself. It provides an alternative to the Rawlsian model of liberalism and seeks to infuse academic disciplines and cultural communities with a morally responsible commitment to liberal democratic society. Contributors are Richard Ashcraft, Peter Berkowitz, Clark W. Bouton, Nicholas Capaldi, Janice Carlisle, Robert Devigne, Wendy Donner, Eldon Eisenach, Richard B. Friedman, A. D. Megill, Bernard Semmel, and Richard Vernon. (shrink)

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Current frameworks on ethical decision-making process have some limitations. This paper argues that the consideration ofmoral competencies, understood asmoral virtues in the workplace, can enhance our understanding of whymoralcharacter contributes to ethical decision-making. After discussing the universal nature of fourmoral competencies (prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance), we analyse their influence on the various stages of the ethical decision-making process. We conclude by considering the managerial implications of our findings and proposing (...) further research. (shrink)

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Why are people trustworthy? I argue for two theses. First, we cannot explain many socially important forms of trustworthiness solely in terms of the instrumentally rational seeking of one’s interests, in response to external sanctions or rewards. A richer psychology is required. So, second, possession ofmoralcharacter is a plausible explanation of some socially important instances when people are trustworthy. I defend this conclusion against the influential account of trust as ‘encapsulated interest’, given by Russell Hardin, on (...) which most trustworthiness is explained by the interest of continuing relationship. (shrink)

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Currently fashionable among critics of enlightenment thought is the charge that Kant's ethics fails to provide an adequate account ofcharacter and its formation inmoral and political life. G. Felicitas Munzel challenges this reading of Kant's thought, claiming not only that Kant has a very rich notion ofmoralcharacter, but also that it is a conception of systematic importance for his thought, linking the formalmoral with the critical, aesthetic, anthropological, and biological aspects (...) of his philosophy. The first book to focus oncharacter formation in Kant'smoral philosophy, it builds on important recent work on Kant's aesthetics and anthropology, and brings these to bear onmoral issues. Munzel traces Kant's multifaceted definition ofcharacter through the broad range of his writings, and then explores the structure ofcharacter, its actual exercise in the world, and its cultivation. An outstanding work of original textual analysis and interpretation, _Kant's Conception ofMoral Character_ is a major contribution to Kant studies andmoral philosophy in general. (shrink)

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This article is an investigation of two apparently contradictory impulses in Oakeshott's writings about liberal education. On the one hand, he implied that it was primarily ‘aesthetic’, something undertaken for its own sake with no practical consequences. On the other hand, he often implied that a student might undergo amoral transformation in the process of becoming educated. This article attempts to reconcile both these ideas in Oakeshott's thought, and to show that they are coherent within the German Bildung (...) tradition. (shrink)

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The mad scientist stories of fiction and film are exercises in antirationalism, particularly its Gothic horror variant. As such, they convey the argument that rationalist secular science is dangerous, and their principal device for doing so is to invest the evil of science in the personality of the scientist. To understand this cultural critique of science, it is necessary to understand how the symbols of the scientist's personality are manipulated. This article argues that mad scientists become increasingly amoral as nineteenth-century (...) texts are adapted to twentieth-century films. The consequence is that this cultural critique is becoming even more severe, due to external reasons independent of the glories or the crimes of real scientists. (shrink)

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Prior research has unveiled a pathologization effect where individuals perceived as having badmoralcharacter are more likely to have their conditions labeled as diseases and are less often considered healthy compared to those viewed as having a goodmoralcharacter. Moreover, these individuals are perceived as less unlucky in their affliction and more deserving of it. This study explores the broader impacts ofmoralcharacter on such judgments, hypothesizing that these effects reach deeper (...) and extend to both negative and positivemoral evaluations. The pathologization effect also raises concerns about potential discrimination and the overmedicalization of normal health variations, so we also examine whether providing more detailed descriptions of conditions mitigates the influence of judgments ofmoralcharacter. The methodology and broader implications of our findings are discussed, emphasizing the need for a deeper understanding of howmoral judgments might influence patient care. (shrink)

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Reformed theology is often thought to be antipathetic to virtue theory. However, Jonathan Edwards is a counterexample to this way of thinking. In this article, I offer an account of Edwards’smoral thought as a case study of Reformed theology that is also a species of virtue theory, focusing on what he says about the formation ofcharacter. I argue that key doctrinal commitments drive hismoral theology, and generate some interesting problems for his ethics. Although his (...) work is not without shortcomings, Edwards is a thinker whosemoral theology might be usefully repaired and retrieved by contemporary theologians in the Reformed tradition for whom ‘duties are founded on doctrines’. (shrink)

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In recent years, there has been considerable debate in the literature concerning the existence ofmoralcharacter. One lesson we should take away from these debates is that the concept ofcharacter, and the role it plays in guiding our actions, is far more complex than most of us initially took it to be. Just as Gilbert Harman, for example, makes a serious mistake in insisting, plainly and simply, that ther is no such thing ascharacter, (...) defenders ofcharacter also make a mistake to the extent that they imply there is no problem raised by the psychological literature for either the concept ofcharacter or the nature ofcharacter-based ethics. My hope for this paper is to avoid both of these mistakes by first, exploring exactly what is the concept ofcharacter that is so firmly rooted in our philosophical and everyday thinking; and second, exploring the implications of the psychological literature for this appropriately understood concept ofcharacter. In so doing, I will come to a resolution that vindicates the existence ofcharacter, while at the same time calls attention to the real and serious problem suggested by the psychological evidence. This, we will see, is a problem ofmoral motivation. (shrink)

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“MoralCharacter: An Empirical Theory” and “Character andMoral Psychology” represent part of the research output of the Templeton-fundedCharacter Project, which was headed by Christian Miller. In ‘MoralCharacter’, Miller develops his “mixed trait” account ofcharacter. The first two parts consist in conceptual background and the empirical grounding for his account . In part three Miller develops and describes his account, before showing the extent of its application in part four (...) . In ‘Character andMoral Psychology”, he gives the reader more details about the metaphysics of his view , places it in relation to other accounts ofcharacter and personality , shows the normative and meta-ethical implications of his account , and opens a discussion of what could follow from his account in terms of improvingcharacter .The first thing to note about these books is the impressive rang .. (shrink)

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I examine Kant’s claim in part one ofReligion within the Boundaries of Mere Reasonthatmoral reform requires both a ‘change of heart’ and gradual reformation of one’s sense (R,6: 47). I argue that Kant’s conception ofmoral reform is neither fundamentally obscure nor is it as vulnerable to serious objections as several commentators have suggested. I defend Kant by explaining how he can maintain both that we can choose ourmoral disposition via an intelligible choice and that (...) we become good through a continuous struggle. I then provide an interpretation of howmoral reform occurs in the phenomenal realm. (shrink)

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The ethics of virtue made the problem ofmoralcharacter topical. Due to concentrating rather on the question "How should we live?" instead of the question "What should we do?" attention became to be paid also to such questions as "What ourcharacter should be? ", "To what extent is man responsible for his owncharacter?", "Can he change it?", "What is the connection between thecharacter and habits?" The examination of the problem of (...) class='Hi'>moralcharacter led to further question, such as "Is themoralcharacter, as the incentive for action sufficient to explain the action?", "What is the relationship betweenmoralcharacter andmoral rules in action?", "Is it sufficient inmoral assessment to resort to themoralcharacter of the agent, or are there also other determining elements?" The author outlines the discussions of these question in contemporarymoral theory. (shrink)

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Currently fashionable among critics of enlightenment thought is the charge that Kant's ethics fails to provide an adequate account ofcharacter and its formation inmoral and political life. G. Felicitas Munzel challenges this reading of Kant's thought, claiming not only that Kant has a very rich notion ofmoralcharacter, but also that it is a conception of systematic importance for his thought, linking the formalmoral with the critical, aesthetic, anthropological, and biological aspects (...) of his philosophy. The first book to focus oncharacter formation in Kant'smoral philosophy, it builds on important recent work on Kant's aesthetics and anthropology, and brings these to bear onmoral issues. Munzel traces Kant's multifaceted definition ofcharacter through the broad range of his writings, and then explores the structure ofcharacter, its actual exercise in the world, and its cultivation. An outstanding work of original textual analysis and interpretation, _Kant's Conception ofMoral Character_ is a major contribution to Kant studies andmoral philosophy in general. (shrink)

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The ethical crisis in business and information technology is very real. Countering this crisis by creating organizational cultures grounded inmoralcharacter is the challenge people face as leaders if they are to regain the respect and confidence of the public. As educators of future business and information technology leaders, how can educators prepare their students to understand, appreciate, and contribute to the establishment of cultures ofcharacter in the organizations which employ them—and which they may ultimately (...) lead? In this article the authors distinguish among four corporate cultures with respect to ethics —cultures of defiance, compliance, neglect, andcharacter—and present a blueprint for constructing an organizational culture grounded inmoralcharacter. With respect to showing students how to contribute to such a culture, the authors then describe how to establish an effective learning context for teaching about ethics, proffer a number of practical suggestions for student assignments and experiences that can empower students to understand, appreciate, and contribute to organizational cultures ofcharacter, and explain how to enhance experiential learning by conducting an effective debriefing session. The authors conclude the article by providing three examples from their own experience illustrating how these ideas can be incorporated into programs designed to show business and information technology students how to contribute to organizational cultures grounded inmoralcharacter. (shrink)

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Over the past decade, scholarship on Kant’s practical philosophy has developed from a one-dimensional focus on his objective normative doctrines toward a more richly textured engagement with his views ofcharacter, virtue, and subjectivemoral consciousness. A significant contribution to this trend is made by G. Felicitas Munzel’s new study of the formal notion ofcharacter running throughout Kant’s mature works. As Munzel notes, the exhaustive attention that has long been focused on the Groundwork’s justification of fundamental (...)moral principles has obscured the equally crucial issue “of what it means for the human subject concretely to actualize suchmoral insight”. In Kant’s Conception ofMoralCharacter, she provides a meticulously detailed and multi-dimensional answer to this question. Her book argues “not only that [Kant] has a very rich notion ofmoralcharacter, but also that it is a conception of systematic importance for his thought, linking the formalmoral with the critical, aesthetic, anthropological, and biological aspects of his philosophy”. While the book is almost entirely devoted to the latter exegetical aim, Munzel’s larger purpose is to highlight the gulf between Kant’s conception ofmoralcharacter and the Aristotelian conception that underlies much recent philosophical work in virtue theory. By demonstrating the possibility of a notion ofcharacter focusing on the principled, rigorously controlled conduct of thought, she wants to present the Kantian account as one capable of contributing to contemporary debates aboutcharacter, virtue, andmoral education. (shrink)

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Although the term “narrative” has been subject to very loose usage, it should be clear that scientific theories cannot be considered as such in the same sense as literary and artistic works. But this clearly calls the latter into serious epistemic question. On the one hand, we are often drawn to saying that agents have learned or come to know (morally or otherwise) something from literary or other artistic fictions; on the other hand, their fictional status seems to preclude regarding (...) this as knowledge. Drawing on insights from Plato’s Socratic and other dialogues, this paper argues that such learning from art and literature should be deemed genuine knowledge of an epistemically uncontroversial kind. (shrink)

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I distinguish two kinds of pleasures – value–based pleasures, which can be explained in terms of the values of those who experience them, and brute pleasures, which cannot be so explained. I apply this distinction to three related projects. First, I critically examine a recent discussion ofmoralcharacter by Colin McGinn, arguing that McGinn offers a distorted view of goodcharacter. Second, I try to elucidate certain remarks Aristotle makes about the relationships between pleasure and courage (...) and pleasure and temperance. Third, I appeal to the distinction to elucidate the topic ofmoral improvement. (shrink)

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A puzzling feature of paradigmatic cases of dehumanization is that the perpetrators often attribute uniquely human traits to their victims. This has become known as the “paradox of dehumanization.” We address the paradox by arguing that the perpetrators think of their victims as human in one sense, while denying that they are human in another sense. We do so by providing evidence that people harbor a dualcharacter concept of humanity. Research has found that dualcharacter concepts have (...) two independent sets of criteria for their application, one of which is descriptive and one of which is normative. Across four experiments, we found evidence that people deploy a descriptive criterion according to which being human is a matter of being a Homo sapiens; as well as a normative criterion according to which being human is a matter of possessing a deep-seated commitment to do the morally right thing. Importantly, we found that people are willing to affirm that someone is human in the descriptive sense, while denying that they are human in the normative sense, and vice versa. In addition to providing a solution to the paradox of dehumanization, these findings suggest that perceptions ofmoralcharacter have a central role to play in driving dehumanization. (shrink)

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I put equality at the center of John Stuart Mill's practical philosophy. His principle of "perfect equality" embodies a substantive relational ideal, which I call "equality as reciprocity." This ideal requires removing injustices due to domination and subjection in human associations, including the family. Justice grounded on perfect equality must be the basis of personal, social, and political life, because themoral sentiments, chief among human beings' "higher" faculties, find adequate channels only under equality. Genuine happiness, which involves the (...) exercise and development of these faculties, is open only to those who relate as equals. Thus, on my account, equality as reciprocity adds substance to Mill's liberalism. ;In The Subjection of Women, Mill appealed to his view of human progress to argue for perfect equality. He maintained that this ideal is not appropriate for all times, but required for human improvement and a part of everyone's good under conditions of "modernity." Modern democratic cultures embrace such "progressive" human interests as equal justice, sympathy, and cooperation. Replacing the archaic command and obedience ethic with the nonhierarchical pattern of reciprocity would bring out human beings' "true virtue": living as equals. Inequality, and the exercise of unjust power generally, corrupts everyone'smoralcharacter and thwarts human flourishing. All other things equal, egalitarian relations are a critical part of anyone's autonomously chosen plan of life. Given human sociability, any other choice would impoverish a person's life. ;It is clear from Mill's argument for perfect equality that Mill was not a classical utilitarian. He conceived of utility broadly, as concerning progressive human interests, and argued for educating the "moral part" of human nature through just institutions and social practices. He believed that strengthening equal justice, the chiefmoral sentiment, is a central requirement of utility, because of the importance of other-regarding sentiments to a good human life. Thus, on my account, Mill's "enlarged" account of utility supports his substantive egalitarianism. His defense of perfect equality is utilitarian only in his idiosyncratic sense. (shrink)

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