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How does moral change happen? What leads to the overthrow or gradual transformation of moral beliefs, ideals, and values? Change is one of the most striking features of morality, yet it is poorly understood. In this book, Cecilie Eriksen provides an illuminating map of the dynamics, structure, and normativity of moral change. Through eight narratives inspired by the legal domain and in dialogue with modern moral philosophy, Eriksen discusses moral bias, conflict, progress, and revolutions. She develops a context-sensitive understanding of ethics and shows how we can harvest a knowledge of the past that will enable us to build a better future.
This volume bridges contemporary philosophical conceptions of risk and responsibility and offers an extensive examination of the topic. It shows that risk and responsibility combine in ways that give rise to new philosophical questions and problems. Philosophical interest in the relationship between risk and responsibility continues to rise, due in no small part due to environmental crises, emerging technologies, legal developments, and new medical advances. Despite such interest, scholars are just now working out how to conceive of the links between risk and responsibility, the implications that risks may have to conceptions of responsibility (and vice versa), as well as how such theorizing...
This book provides a philosophical assessment of the idea of personhood advanced in popular self-help literature. It also traces, within academic philosophy and philosophical scholarship, a self-help culture where the self is brought forth as an object of improvement and a key to meaning, progress, and profundity. Unlike other academic treatments of the topic of self-help, this book is not primarily concerned with providing a critique of popular self-help and self-transformative practices. Rather, it is concerned with how they work to shape contemporary forms and ideals of moral personhood and are conducive to moral renegotiation and change. The book consists of two parts with somewhat diffe...
Agent Relative Ethics asks what the world would look like if we adopted agent relativity wholeheartedly, clinging to no shred of absolute morality. Alastair MacIntyre’s haunting image of a post-apocalyptic world, in which our knowledge of ethics has been fragmented, poses a contrast between modern morality and ancient ethics. The two stand divided along the fault line of the nature of the good. Modern ethics has placed its stake in the absolute good, while ancient ethics rests upon the foundation of the relative good. Following the lead of Bernard Williams, Agent Relative Ethics identifies alienation as a disturbing symptom of the present focus upon absolute goods. It then completes the di...
This volume examines the nature and significance of transformative experiences as they occur across a variety of contexts in human life. By treating these events as social as well as individual phenomena, the essays bring to light the various ways in which cultural and institutional forces influence narratives of personal change. The ease with which we identify transformative experiences shows their importance for our sense of the potentialities inherent in human life, even while their disruptive character threatens confidence in our capability to make rational decisions concerning our future well-being. Yet, narratives of transformation are not just individual artefacts, but are also given ...
This is the first book to trace the doctrine of the guise of the good throughout the history of Western philosophy. It offers a chronological narrative exploring how the doctrine was formulated, the arguments for and against it, and the broader role it played in the thought of different philosophers. In recent years there has been a rich debate about whether value judgment or value perception must form an essential part of mental states such as emotions and desires, and whether intentional actions must always be done for reasons that seem good to the agent. This has sparked new theoretical interest in the classical doctrine of the guise of the good: whenever we desire (to do) something, we s...
Contemporary Asian societies present a variety of contrasting experiences and afterlives of colonialism, revolutionary socialism, religion and secular nationalism. Asian Lives in Anthropological Perspective draws together essays that demonstrate how modernity has shaped two Asian settings in particular – India and Vietnam. It traces historical and contemporary realities through a variety of compelling topics such as the experience of the Indian caste system and the ethical challenges faced by Vietnamese working women.
Anthropologists have long explained social behaviour as if people always do what they think is best. But what if most of these explanations only work because they are premised upon ignoring what philosophers call 'akrasia' – that is, the possibility that people might act against their better judgment? The contributors to this volume turn an ethnographic lens upon situations in which people seem to act out of line with what they judge, desire and intend. The result is a robust examination of how people around the world experience weaknesses of will, which speaks to debates in both the anthropology of ethics and moral philosophy.
Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen presents a new account of the role of moral philosophy and its relationship to our ordinary moral lives. She challenges the idea that moral theories have an authoritative explanatory or action-guiding role, and develops instead a descriptive, pluralistic, and elucidatory conception of moral philosophy.
This book brings together leading interdisciplinary scholars to broaden and deepen the conversation about moral injury. In the original chapters, the contributors present new research to show how the humanities are crucial for understanding the expressions, meaning, and significance of moral injury. Moral injury is the disorientation we suffer when we are complicit in some moral transgression. Most existing works address moral injury from a clinical or neuroscientific perspective. The chapters in this volume show how the humanities are crucial for understanding the meaning and significance of moral injury as well as suggesting how to grapple with its lived challenges. The chapters address th...