This book brings together leading interdisciplinary scholars to broaden and deepen the conversation about moral injury. In original essays, 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 work addresses moral injury from a clinical or neuroscientific perspective. The essays 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 the conceptual, sociological, historical, and ritualistic dimensions of moral injury across three thematic sections. Section 1 explores how tools of the humanities provide new lenses for understanding conceptual and genealogical themes about moral injury. Section 2 highlights the experiences of moral injury in combat soldiers, law enforcement, and noncombatants such as photojournalists. These chapters examine the power and limits to theorizing moral phenomena by appeals to lived experience. Section 3 considers how humanistic inquiry illuminates important dimensions of the aftermath of moral injury beyond the scope of clinical research. These chapters consider how ritual, relationship repair, and atonement might shape the ways people navigate moral injury and consider how such responses shape our understandings of what we owe to one another. Moral Injury and the Humanities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives is an essential resource for researchers and advanced students in philosophy, religious studies, literature, journalism, and the arts who are interested in moral injury. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Why Do We Date? A Brief History of Dating Calculated Relationship Initiation and Maintenance All “Perfect” Dating Relationships Stumble, but Not in the Same Way Dating as a Particular Genre of Friendship Against Unconditional Love Conclusion.

This book argues that justice often governs apologies. Drawing on examples from literature, politics, and current events, Cohen presents a theory of apology as corrective offers. Many leading accounts of apology say much about what apologies do and why they are important. They stop short of exploring whether and how justice governs apologies. Cohen argues that corrective justice may require apologies as offers of reparation. Individuals, corporations, and states may then have rights or duties regarding apology. Exercising rights (...) to apology or fulfilling duties to provide them are ways of holding one another mutually accountable. By casting rights and duties of apology as justifiable to free and equal persons, the book advances conversations about how liberalism may respond to historic injustice. Apologies and Moral Repair will be of interest to scholars and advanced students in ethics, political philosophy, and social philosophy. (shrink)

abstract Contractarianism roots moral standing in an agreement among rational agents in the circumstances of justice. Critics have argued that the theory must exclude nonhuman animals from the protection of justice. I argue that contractarianism can consistently accommodate the notion that nonhuman animals are owed direct moral consideration. They can acquire their moral status indirectly, but their claims to justice can be as stringent as those among able‐bodied rational adult humans. Any remaining criticisms of contractarianism likely rest on a disputable (...) moral realism; contractarianism can underwrite the direct moral considerability of nonhuman animals by appealing to a projectivist quasi‐realism. (shrink)

This paper considers the relation of corrective to distributive justice. I discuss the shortfalls of one sort of account that holds these are independent domains of justice. To support a more modest claim that these are sometimes independent domains of justice, I focus instead on the case of apologies. Apologies are sometimes among the measures specified by corrective justice. I argue that the sorts of injustices that apologies can help to correct need not always be departures from ideals specified by (...) distributive justice. Apologies and the moral relations they engage might thus be parts of a domain of justice that is neither distributive nor dependent on distributive justice. (shrink)

In this essay I describe how contractarianism might approach interspecies welfare conflicts. I start by discussing a contractarian account of the moral status of nonhuman animals. I argue that contractors can agree to norms that would acknowledge the “moral standing” of some animals. I then discuss how the norms emerging from contractarian agreement might constrain any comparison of welfare between humans and animals. Contractarian agreement is likely to express some partiality to humans in a way that discounts the welfare of (...) some or all animals. While the norms emerging from the contract might be silent or inconsistent in some tragic or catastrophic cases, in most ordinary conflicts of welfare, contractors will agree to norms that produce some determinate resolution. What the agreement says can evolve depending upon how the contractors or the circumstances change. I close with some remarks on contractarian indeterminacy. (shrink)

Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics features pairs of newly commissioned essays by some of the leading theorists working in the field today. Brings together fresh debates on eleven of the most controversial issues in applied ethics Topics addressed include abortion, affirmative action, animals, capital punishment, cloning, euthanasia, immigration, pornography, privacy in civil society, values in nature, and world hunger. Lively debate format sharply defines the issues, and paves the way for further discussion. Will serve as an accessible introduction to the (...) major topics in applied ethics, whilst also capturing the imagination of professional philosophers. (shrink)

What makes a policy work? What should policies attempt to do, and what ought they not do? These questions are at the heart of both policy-making and ethics. Philosophy, Ethics and Public Policy: An Introduction examines these questions and more. Andrew I. Cohen uses contemporary examples and controversies, mainly drawn from policy in a North American context, to illustrate important flashpoints in ethics and public policy, such as: public policy and globalization: sweatshops; medicine and the developing world; immigration (...) marriage, family and education: same-sex marriage; women and the family; education and Intelligent Design justifying and responding to state coercion: torture; reparations and restorative justice the ethics of the body and commodification: the human organ trade, and factory farming of animals. Each chapter illustrates how ethics offers ways of prioritizing some policy alternatives and imagining new ones. Reflecting on various themes in globalization, markets, and privacy, the chapters are windows to enduring significant debates about what states may do to shape our behavior. Overall, the book will help readers understand how ethics can frame policymaking, while also suggesting that sometimes the best policy is no policy. Including annotated further reading, this is an excellent introduction to a fast-growing subject for students in Philosophy, Public Policy, and related disciplines. (shrink)

This paper argues against an individualist challenge to the possibility of corporate apologies. According to this challenge, corporations always and only act through their members; thus they are not the sorts of entities that can apologize. Consequently there can be no corporate apologies. Against this challenge, this paper argues that even if corporate acts can be analyzed as acts by individuals within certain relationships, there can still be corporate apologies. This paper offers a noneliminative individualist account of such apologies. The (...) paper also responds to various substantive objections to the possibility of such apologies. (shrink)

The article criticizes arguments by Henry Shue, Cass Sunstein, and Stephen Holmes that rights entail enforceable positive duties.

This book provides rigorous but accessible scholarship, ideal for students in philosophy and public policy. It includes twelve original essays by world-renowned scholars, each examining a key topic in philosophy and public policy and demonstrating how policy debates can be advanced by employing the tools and concepts of philosophy.

This essay explores whether dependent relationships might justify extending direct moral consideration to nonhuman animals. After setting out a formal conception of moral standing as relational, scalar, and unilateral, I consider whether and how an appeal to dependencies might be the basis for an animal’s moral standing. If dependencies generate reasons for extending direct moral consideration, such reasons will admit of significant variations in scope and stringency.

I focus particularly on the case of the glory seekers. Driven by a foolhardy overestimation of their worth, seekers of glory do not value peace as others do. They may not even value peace at all. Their quest for glory then often obstructs peace, which is perhaps why Hobbes condemns vainglory as irrational. But once we clarify what it is that glory seekers seek, it becomes uncertain that gratifying appetites for glory is necessarily against right reason. If Hobbes is then (...) to say that the laws of nature are the dictates of right reason, he must either show that glory seeking is against right reason, or he must explain why the right reason of glory seekers, which argues against the laws of nature, does not count against the normative force of such laws. (shrink)

Hobbes claims that the sovereign's absolute authority is consistent with the subjects' retaining liberties to resist certain commands. In this essay, I explore what it means for subject to authorize a sovereign with a right to command. I show how retained rights are compatible with sovereignty. Though any given subject does not authorize the sovereign to do anything, I argue that the sovereign power is absolute. The sovereign has the most power anyone could command.

Apologies are key components of moral repair. They can identify a wrong, express regret, and accept culpability for some transgression. Apologies can vindicate a victim's value as someone who was due different treatment. This paper explores whether acts with vicarious elements may serve as apologies. I offer a functionalist account of apologies: acts are apologies not so much by having correct ingredients but by serving certain apologetic functions. Those functions can be realized in multiple ways. Whether the offenders are individuals (...) or collectives, they can sometimes fulfill such functions through third party agents. Having vicarious elements does not necessarily undermine the reparative reasons offenders hope to provide. (shrink)

Introduction to the symposium on the 25th anniversary of the publication of Rawls's Political Liberalism, including overviews of the contributions to the special issue.

Higher education provides crucial public and private goods. Especially in the United States, however, higher education reflects and sometimes compounds enduring inequities and inefficiencies. Higher education, critics argue, inefficiently provides a credential that is often crucial for career advancement but whose value is mainly to signal skills one already had. This paper explores the moral significance of an oversupply of higher education, especially for persons disadvantaged because of uncorrected historic injustice. I review the moral costs of credentials inflation. Focusing on (...) those who already have independent claims to reparation for historic injustice, I set out whether and how some such persons might have additional claims to repair for the increased credential demands for work. I close by considering what sorts of repair corrective justice might prescribe. (shrink)

The dynamic qualities of friendship sometimes require friends to assess their relationship in light of reasons of reciprocity or moral considerations. Friends sustain their relationship partly by assessing the terms of reciprocity. Sometimes friends must also consider how moral reasons bear on their friendship; friends need to resolve occasional clashes between the demands of friendship and rival moral considerations, and friends must sometimes serve as a moral stewards for each other. I discuss how friends may monitor their relationship without undermining (...) the trust and mutual regard appropriate to friends. (shrink)

Besides commanding coercive power, a political authority is supposed to offer directives which ought to exclude private judgment. Any defense of inalienable rights or limited rights of resistance suggests some legitimate residual private judgment. Such retained rights threaten to undermine the binding force of authoritative directives. ;The case of Hobbesian sovereignty typifies this problem. Hobbes claims agents must establish permanent and absolute political authorities, and they can do so only by completely submitting themselves to a sovereign power whose public will (...) stand for their own. Hobbesian political obligation consists in being bound not to act on one's own judgment, but even Hobbes allows for limited rights of resistance. ;Building on the work of Joseph Raz, I show how political authority binds our conduct by providing special reasons not to act on our private judgment. I explain how there can be scope and jurisdictional limitations on political authority, indeed, Hobbesian political authority. Any given subject might not completely authorize political power, but such power can still be absolute. Since private judgment endures in a civil society, subjects are in some position to evaluate the legitimacy of authoritative directives. To the extent authority binds and neither merely advises nor merely coerces, subjects must have reasons why they should not act on their private judgments. (shrink)

Critics often note that our choices may support wrongdoing such as by fostering climate change, perpetuating oppression in the developing world, or benefiting from the avoidable suffering of nonhuman animals. It is unclear what sort of reasons these remote consequences present, especially in conditions of uncertainty. Ethicists commonly warn that ignorance does not necessarily exculpate or release from compensatory burdens for wrongdoing. Moreover at least sometimes, the demandingness of justice might not cancel or defeat the reasons it provides. Sorting out (...) how to forbear or repair injustice (and even how to begin to do these) may be daunting. After discussing how ignorance of moral or empirical considerations bears on blame or praise, I explore whether and how performing or being disposed to provide moral repair might address the demands of justice in light of uncertain remote causes and consequences. I reject the claim that morally conscientious persons must always seek to prevent injustice. (shrink)

Contractarianism is more inclusive than critics (and, indeed, Gauthier) sometimes suggest. Contractarianism can justify equal moral standing for human persons (in some respects) and provide sufficient moral standing for many nonhuman animals to require what we commonly call decent treatment. Moreover, contractarianism may allow that some entities have more moral standing than others do. This does not necessarily license the oppression that liberal egalitarians rightly fear. Instead, it shows that contractarianism may support a nuanced account of moral status.

Friendships are voluntary relationships founded and sustained on reciprocated good will and mutual caring. Individuals in end friendships exhibit a mutual regard that is characteristic of those dispositions by which they spontaneously treat one another as ends. But even the closest of friends face challenges that can pit reasons of reciprocity or considerations of morality against friendship. My focus here is to examine how friends may assess their relationships in light of such challenges. This inquiry may then illuminate how the (...) demands of friendship generate reasons. (shrink)

RésuméLes propriétés dynamiques de l'amitié requièrent parfois que les amis réévaluent leur relation à la lumière de raisons de réciprocité ou de considérations morales. Les amis maintiennent leur relation en partie en évaluant leurs rapports de réciprocité. Ils doivent aussi considérer parfois l'impact de raisons morales sur leur amidé; il leur faut résoudre d'occasionnelles tensions entre les exigences de l'amitié et certaines considérations rivales d'ordre moral, et ils doivent agir parfois comme surveillants l'un pour l'autre dans l'ordre moral. Je discute (...) ici la façon dont les amis peuvent gérer leur relation sans compromettre la confiance et le respect mutuels qui sont appropriés entre amis. (shrink)

New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. 436. $90.00 (cloth).

Whether Social Media Companies (hereafter, SMCs) such as Twitter and Facebook limit speech is an empirical question. No one disputes that they do. Whether they “censor” speech is a conceptual question, the answer to which is a matter of dispute. Whether they may do so is a moral question, also a matter of dispute. We address both of these latter questions and hope to illuminate whether it is morally permissible for SMCs to restrict speech on their platforms. This could be (...) part of a larger argument, when we do not explicitly offer here, that states ought not to forbid SMCs from censoring. We do not focus on legal statutes or precedent. We argue that nonstate actors can (as a conceptual matter) and may (as a moral matter) impede the freedoms of others to express themselves. That is, barring rare emergencies, nonstate actors may censor individuals even when states may not. (shrink)

Statistics education at all levels includes data collected on human subjects. Thus, statistics educators have a responsibility to educate their students about the ethical aspects related to the collection of those data. The changing statistics education landscape has seen instruction moving from being formula-based to being focused on statistical reasoning. The widely implemented Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) Report has paved the way for instructors to present introductory statistics to students in a way that is both (...) approachable and engaging. However, with technological advancement and the increase in availability of real-world datasets, it is necessary that instruction also integrate the ethical aspects around data sources, such as privacy, how the data were obtained and whether participants consent to the use of their data. In this article, we propose incorporating ethics into established curricula and integrating ethics into undergraduate-level introductory statistics courses based on recommendations in the GAISE Report. We provide a few examples of how to prompt students to constructively think about their ethical responsibilities when working with data. (shrink)

We live in a market system with much economic inequality. This may not be an essential characteristic of market systems but seems historically inevitable. How we should evaluate it, on the other hand, is contentious. I propose that bleeding heart libertarianism provides the best diagnosis and prescription.

I defend a neo-Kantian view wherein we are capable of being completely autonomous and impartial and argue that this ability can ground normativity. As this view includes an existentialist conception of the self, I defend radical choice, a primary component of that conception, against arguments many take to be definitive. I call the ability to use radical choice “existentialist voluntarism” and bring it into a current debate in normative philosophy, arguing that it allows that we can be distanced from all (...) ends at once so as to be completely impartial. Finally, I indicate how this can be the source of normativity as it provides a purely impartial reason for being rational. (shrink)

Many social scientists think of exchange in terms far broader than philosophers. I defend the broader use of the term as well as the claim that meaningful human relationships are usefully understood as constituted by exchanges. I argue, though, that we must recognize that a great number of non-monetary and non-material goods are part of our daily lives and exchanges. Particularly important are emotional goods. I defend my view against the important objection that it demeans intimate relationships. As an addendum, (...) I also defend it against claims that economics cannot study such exchanges. (shrink)

In this paper I look at three versions of the charge that liberalism’s emphasis on individuals is detrimental to community—that it encourages a pernicious disregard of others by fostering a particular understanding of the individual and the relation she has with her society. According to that understanding, individuals are fundamentally independent entities who only enter into relations by choice and society is seen as nothing more than a venture voluntarily entered into in order to better oneself. Communitarian critics argue that (...) since liberals neglect the degree to which individuals are dependent upon their society for their self-understanding and understanding of the good, they encourage individuals to maintain a personal distance from others in their society. The detrimental effect this distancing is said to have on communities is often called “asocial individualism” or “asocialism.” I argue that all three versions of the charge fail against liberalism and that liberalism—with its insistence on the normative import of individuals—is not detrimental to communities, but can actually foster strong communities. (shrink)

Attempting to settle various debates from recent literature regarding its precise nature, I offer a detailed conceptual analysis of toleration. I begin by isolating toleration from other notions; this provides us some guidance by introducing the eight definitional conditions of toleration that I then explicate and defend. Together, these eight conditions indicate that toleration is an agent’s intentional and principled refraining from interfering with an opposed other (or their behavior, etc.) in situations of diversity, where the agent believes she has (...) the power to interfere. This non-normative definition can serve as a preliminary to normative discussions of toleration. (shrink)

Hugh LaFollette proposed parental licensing in 1980 (and 2010)--not as a requirement for pregnancy, but for raising a child. If you have a baby, are not licensed, and do not get licensed, the baby would be put up for adoption. Despite the intervention required in an extremely personal area of life, I argue that those who endorse the harm principle ought to endorse parental licensing of this sort. Put differently, I show how the harm principle strengthens the case for parental (...) licensing. (shrink)

Critics of liberalism in the past two decades have argued that the fact that we are necessarily "situated" or "embedded" means that we can not always choose our own ends (for example, our conceptions of the good or our loyalties to others). Some suggest that we simply discover ourselves with these "connections." If correct, this would argue against (Rawlsian) hypothetical contract models and liberalism more broadly, make true impartiality impossible, and give support to traditionalist views like those of Alasdair MacIntyre, (...) Charles Taylor, and Michael Sandel. These same critics argue that liberalism's rejection or neglect of this supposed fact of our moral life has pernicious anti-social affects. I argue that the critics are wrong in both cases, defending what I call "strong voluntarism." In contrast both to recent critics of liberalism and the dominant trend in recent liberal thought, my defense of strong voluntarism allows that we can always choose to accept or reject any end we happen to have but that this does not lead to any pernicious anti-social effects. (shrink)

Communitarians like Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and Michael Sandel, defend what we may call the ‘social constitution thesis.’ This is the view that participation in society makes us what we are. This claim, however, is ambiguous. In an attempt to shed some light on it and to better understand the impact its truth would have on our beliefs regarding autonomy, I offer four possible ways it could be understood and four corresponding senses of individual independence and autonomy. I also indicate (...) what senses liberals can accept that we are socially constituted and in what sense I take communitarians to argue we are socially constituted. (shrink)

Liberalism, historically, is closely associated with increased toleration, so it is unsurprising that a variety of contemporary authors (Hampton, Kukathas, Barry, Ten) consider toleration to be “the substantive heart of liberalism” (Hampton 1989, 802). The precise role of toleration in liberalism, though, is unclear; different liberals have different views. In this essay, I will discuss three sorts of liberal theories and indicate how they approach questions of toleration, arguing that one of them supports toleration of more sorts of activities (including (...) speech acts and lifestyles) than the others. While I think this is reason to favor that sort of theory, I will not defend that claim. Some reasonably think (and defend the view) that though toleration is of value, its limits should be drawn more narrowly. (shrink)

We live in a market system and witness much economic inequality. Although such inequality may not be an essential characteristic of market systems, it seems historically inevitable. How we should evaluate this inequality, on the other hand, is contentious. I propose that bleeding heart libertarians provide the best diagnosis and prescription.

In this paper, I first argue that waste is best understood as (a) any process wherein something useful becomes less useful and that produces less benefit than is lost—where benefit and usefulness are understood with reference to the same metric—or (b) the result of such a process. I next argue for the immorality of waste. My concluding suggestions are that (W1) if one person needs something for her preservation and a second person has it, is avoidably wasting it, and refuses (...) to allow the first to make some greater use of it, the second may be morally wrong and that (W2) if one person needs something for her preservation understood according to her metric and a second person has it, is avoidably wasting it according to his own metric, and refuses to allow the first to make some greater use of it, the second is morally wrong. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend what may seem a surprising view: that John Stuart Mill’s famous harm principle would, if taken to be what justifies government action, disallow the existence of corporations. My claim is not that harmful activities of currently existing corporations warrants their losing corporate status according to the harm principle. The claim, rather, is that taken strictly, the harm principle and the legal possibility of incorporation are mutually exclusive. This view may be surprising—and I do not at (...) all mean to attribute it to Mill—but if I am right, it should be obvious. It should also encourage us to think more about the nature of the markets within which business occurs. (shrink)

I aim in this paper to provide defense of one way to look at what should be regulated in the market place. In particular, I discuss what should be tolerated and argue against corporate welfare. I begin by endorsing John Stuart Mill’s harm principle as a normative principle of toleration. I call strict commitment to the harm principle when considering the regulatory structure of markets market libertarianism and oppose that to promotionism, the view that endorses government interference to promote business (...) interests. I next discuss the widespread use of promotionist policies, arguing against them and for market libertarianism. I also consider problems for my view, recognizing that one of my responses may leave some thinking the paper is a reductio of the market libertarian view because of the sort of slow-growth state it endorses. Others will recognize it as a view promoted by some of the U.S. founding fathers and find it attractive in its own right. (shrink)

Emily Chamlee-Wright is clearly right that self-censorship is an issue of concern within the academy. How much of a problem it is—how widespread and how bad it is when it occurs—is unclear and difficult to quantify. Administrators, faculty, and students all self-censor from time to time. Sometimes the self-censorship is just a matter of being polite or exercising pedagogical restraint, as Chamlee-Wright notes. The worry, of course, is that sometimes it prevents open and honest discussion about difficult topics and thus (...) stymies learning and truth-seeking. While I will keep these caveats in mind, I also want to help strengthen Chamlee-Wright’s case. I will also, though, point out a difficulty. (shrink)

Early in the history of liberalism, its most important proponents were concerned with freedom of religion. As polities and individuals now accept a dizzying array of religions, this has receded to the background for most theorists. It nonetheless remains a concern. Freedom of speech is a similar concern and very much in the foreground for theorists looking at the current state of academia. In this essay, I argue that inappropriate limits to freedom of religion and inappropriate limits to freedom of (...) speech—especially in the form of de-platforming on college campuses—both have, as one of their effects, what I call harms of silence. This means we ought not have those limits, so should seek to change them where they exist. (shrink)