In defense of the mirror thesis
Philosophical Studies 155 (2):199-205 (2011)
| Abstract | In this journal, Luke Russell defends a sophisticated dispositional account of evil personhood according to which a person is evil just in case she is strongly and highly fixedly disposed to perform evil actions in conditions that favour her autonomy. While I am generally sympathetic with this account, I argue that Russell wrongly dismisses the mirror thesis—roughly, the thesis that evil people are the mirror images of the morally best sort of persons—which I have defended elsewhere. Russell’s rejection of the mirror thesis depends upon an independently implausible account of moral sainthood, one that is implausible for reasons that Russell himself suggests in another context. Indeed, an account of moral sainthood that parallels Russell’s account of evil personhood is plausible for the same reasons that his account of evil personhood is, and that suggests that Russell himself is actually committed to the mirror thesis | |||||||||
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Similar books and articlesLuke Russell (2007). Is Evil Action Qualitatively Distinct From Ordinary Wrongdoing? Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (4):659 – 677.
Luke Russell (2010). Evil, Monsters and Dualism. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 13 (1).
Todd Calder (forthcoming). Is Evil Just Very Wrong? Philosophical Studies.
Peter Brian Barry (2011). Saving Strawson: Evil and Strawsonian Accounts of Moral Responsibility. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 14 (1):5-21.
Peter Brian Barry (2010). Extremity of Vice and the Character of Evil. Journal of Philosophical Research 35:25-42.
Luke Russell (forthcoming). Dispositional Accounts of Evil Personhood. Philosophical Studies.
Peter Brian Barry (2009). Moral Saints, Moral Monsters, and the Mirror Thesis. American Philosophical Quarterly 46 (2).
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