The Journal of Ethics

ISSNs: 1382-4554, 1572-8609

37 found

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  1.  10
    Political Violence: The Problem of Dirty Hands.Christopher J. Finlay - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (4):561-583.
    This paper argues that the reason why political leadership often involves dirty hands is because of its relationship with violence. To make the case, it maintains that violent means create and assert a form of dominating power that is in tension with the proper ends of political action. This power casts a wide shadow, frequently dominating large numbers of non-targets and empowering unscrupulous agents. On the other side of the balance, characteristically political justifications for violence are ‘supra-moral,’ meaning that they (...)
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  2.  2
    Machiavellian Variations, or When Moral Convictions and Political Duties Collide.Giovanni Giorgini - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (4):461-475.
    Commenting on Michael Walzer’s essay, the author adopts a perspective that traces back to Machiavelli. In this view, ‘dirty hands’ is a true problem faced by politicians, not a philosophical fiction or a moral quandary resulting from wrong reasoning. ‘Dirty hands’ results from the collision of two spheres of human action -morality and politics- which entail different duties; it concerns actions which have extremely serious public consequences and therefore applies eminently to politicians and the public sphere. The author examines different (...)
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  3.  11
    The Institutional Laundry: How the Public May Keep Their Hands Clean.Nikolas Kirby - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (4):539-560.
    A number of recent authors have argued for the problem of ‘democratic dirty hands’. At least within a democracy, public officers can be rightly said to act in the name of the public; and thus, as agents to principals, the dirty hands of public officers are, ultimately attributable to that public. Even more troubling, so the argument goes, since dirty hands are necessary for public officers in any stable political order, then such democratic dirty hands are necessary for any stable (...)
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  4.  4
    Targeted Killing, Assassination, and the Problem of Dirty Hands.Tamar Meisels - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (4):585-599.
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  5.  6
    50 Years of Dirty Hands: An Overview.Christina Nick & Stephen de Wijze - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (4):415-439.
    This chapter introduces the Special Issue and offers an overview of the corpus of work on the topic since the publication of Michael Walzer’s seminal article, ‘Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands’.
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  6.  11
    When the Heavens Fall: The Unintelligible and the Unthinkable.Lisa Tessman - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (4):495-514.
    Moral dilemmas are a feature of moral life that make us vulnerable to tragic failures. But while all moral dilemmas involve unavoidable moral failure and leave a moral remainder, they do not all involve dirty hands. Recognizing that Thomas Nagel’s ideas about the availability of both agent-relative and agent-neutral perspectives from which to ask moral questions formed the backdrop to Michael Walzer’s work on dirty hands fifty years ago, this paper tries to explain why, when we must take both perspectives—thus (...)
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  7.  4
    Dirty Hands as a ‘Weapon of the Weak’: ‘Heroism’, ‘Aristocratism’, and the Ambiguities of Everyday Resistance.Demetris Tillyris - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (4):601-623.
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  8.  17
    Dirty Hands Revisited.Michael Walzer - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (4):441-460.
    This paper revisits many of the key ideas I explored in my earlier 1973 article “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands”. I respond to some of the criticisms made over the last 50 years and emphasis certain key ideas that I believe are central to understanding this particular difficult problem for politicians.
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  9.  2
    Dirty Virtue.Joseph Wiinikka-Lydon - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (4):515-537.
    Michael Walzer’s foundational essay on dirty hands raises the very possibility of a good person in politics. Dilemmas in the context of high stakes situations sometimes require politicians to compromise their morality and character for the sake of the greater good by choosing the lesser evil. Much has been written about dirty hands, but little has been said about Walzer’s implicit virtue ethics. This essay sketches this implicit virtue ethics, which is central to Walzer’s argument. These are “dirty” virtues, however, (...)
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  10.  7
    The Non-Political Foundations of the Problem of Dirty Hands.Leo Zaibert - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (4):477-494.
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  11.  10
    The Expressive Function of Healthcare.Johann Go - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (3):329-353.
    This paper aims to square our considered judgements about the moral significance of healthcare with various empirical and conceptual challenges about its role in a theory of justice. I do so by defending the moral significance of healthcare by reference to a central but neglected dimension – healthcare’s expressive function. Over and above its influence on health outcomes and other metrics of justice (such as opportunity or welfare), and despite its relatively limited impact on population health outcomes, healthcare expresses respect (...)
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  12.  24
    Redefining Ability, Saving Educational Meritocracy.Tammy Harel Ben Shahar - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (3):263-283.
    The meritocratic principle of educational justice maintains that it is unfair that individuals with similar ability who invest equal effort, have unequal educational prospects. In this paper I argue that the conception of ability that meritocracy assumes, namely as an innate trait, is critically flawed. Absent a coherent conception of ability, meritocracy loses its ability to morally evaluate educational practices and policies, rendering it an unworkable principle of educational justice. Replacing innate ability with an alternative conception of ability is, therefore, (...)
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  13. The Interpersonal Comparative View of Welfare: Its Merits and Flaws.Jonas Harney - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (3):369-391.
    According to the person-affecting view, the ethics of welfare should be cashed out in terms of how the individuals are affected. While the narrow version fails to solve the non-identity problem, the wide version is subject to the repugnant conclusion. A middle view promises to do better – the Interpersonal Comparative View of Welfare (ICV). It modifies the narrow view by abstracting away from individuals’ identities to account for interpersonal gains and losses. The paper assesses ICV’s merits and flaws. ICV (...)
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  14.  8
    Difficulty and the Reasonable Expectation Account of Exculpating Ignorance.Matthew Lamb - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (3):233-243.
    A plausible view about the epistemic condition of blameworthiness holds the following. Reasonable Expectation (RE): S's state of ignorance excuses iff S could not have been reasonably expected to have corrected or avoided the ignorance. An important, yet underexplored issue for RE concerns cases where an agent had the capacities and opportunities to have corrected or avoided the state of ignorance yet failed to do because of the difficulty involved. When does the fact that it was difficult for the agent (...)
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  15. To Believe or not to Believe - That is not the (Only) Question: the Hybrid View of Privacy.Lauritz Munch & Jakob Mainz - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (3):245-261.
    In this paper, we defend what we call the ‘Hybrid View’ of privacy. According to this view, an individual has privacy if, and only if, no one else forms an epistemically warranted belief about the individual’s personal matters, nor perceives them. We contrast the Hybrid View with what seems to be the most common view of what it means to access someone’s personal matters, namely the Belief-Based View. We offer a range of examples that demonstrate why the Hybrid View is (...)
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  16.  13
    To Believe, or Not to Believe – That is Not the (Only) Question: The Hybrid View of Privacy.Lauritz Munch & Jakob Mainz - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (3):245-261.
    In this paper, we defend what we call the ‘Hybrid View’ of privacy. According to this view, an individual has privacy if, and only if, no one else forms an epistemically warranted belief about the individual’s personal matters, nor perceives them. We contrast the Hybrid View with what seems to be the most common view of what it means to access someone’s personal matters, namely the Belief-Based View. We offer a range of examples that demonstrate why the Hybrid View is (...)
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  17.  8
    The Accessibility of Moral Virtue in the Context of Depressive Episodes.Mara Neijzen - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (3):393-414.
    Despite efforts to make virtue-acquisition more accessible, neo-Aristotelian accounts of virtue currently exclude those who occasionally experience depressive episodes from potentially possessing moral virtue. This problem of accessibility is especially relevant given the increased prevalence of depression due to, e.g., the COVID19 pandemic. Through an interdisciplinary analysis, I argue that one’s ability to adequately recognise and respond to virtuous possibilities for action is impoverished during a depressive episode. This is illustrated through the depressed agent’s field of affordances: the collection of (...)
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  18.  6
    Desert Retributivism: A Deweyan Critique.Andrei Poama - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (3):285-303.
    In this article, I argue that Michael Moore’s (1997), and other similar formulations of desert retributivism – viz., the theory that holds punishment to be justified because of the deserved suffering it imposes on guilty offenders – are epistemically problematic. The argument draws on John Dewey’s inchoate critique of retribution, and on Dewey’s more general contention that the justification of ethical judgments and principles proceeds ex post – viz., that it depends on the experiences elicited by acting on those judgments (...)
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  19.  25
    Rule Utilitarianism and Rational Acceptance.Evan G. Williams - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (3):305-328.
    This article presents a rule-utilitarian theory which lies much closer to the social contract tradition than most other forms of consequentialism do: calculated-rates rule preference utilitarianism. Being preference-utilitarian allows the theory to be grounded in instrumental rationality and the equality of agents, as opposed to teleological assumptions about impartial goodness. The calculated-rates approach, judging rules’ consequences by what would happen if they were accepted by whatever number of people is realistic rather than by what would happen if they were accepted (...)
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  20.  11
    A Defense of Weak Moralism: A Reply to Sher.D. Justin Coates - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (2):131-140.
    George Sher’s recent book A Wild West of the Mind offers a sustained argument against moralism: the view that private mental states are not subject to the authority of moral obligation. In developing this argument, Sher first argues that leading normative theories cannot account for the wrongness of private mental states like beliefs, desires, or emotions. He then offers an argument that the countervailing value of moral freedom is itself a positive reason to reject moralism. Against Sher, I argue for (...)
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  21.  8
    Editorial to Book Symposium.Wim Dubbink & Noah Lemos - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (2):117-117.
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  22.  12
    Present Risks, Future Lives: Social Freedom and Environmental Sustainability Policies.Maria Paola Ferretti - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (2):173-190.
    One topic of growing interest in the debate on intergenerational justice is the duty to respect the freedom of future generations. One consideration in favor of such a duty is that the decisions of present generations will affect the range of decisions that will be available to future people. As a consequence, future generations’ freedom to direct their lives may be importantly restricted such that present generations can be seen as taking future people’s lives into their hands and disempowering them. (...)
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  23.  6
    Correction: The Conversational Practicality of Value Judgement.Stephen Finlay - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (2):231-232.
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  24.  10
    A Lockean Theory of Climate Justice for Food Security.Akira Inoue - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (2):151-172.
    This paper argues that the Lockean proviso can be utilized as a relevant principle of justice for food security under global climate change. Since reducing GHG emissions is key to enhancing food security, we suggest a global food security scheme that systematically allots, among all people, access to GHG sinks in food systems impacted by global climate change. For consideration of the scheme, it is important to have a principle of justice. Furthermore, it should incorporate the value of fairness. A (...)
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  25.  16
    Structural Injustice and Ethical Consumption.Mark Peacock - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (2):191-210.
    This paper examines the role played by consumers in producing what Iris Marion Young calls structural injustice. Through their consumption of a commodity, consumers can contribute to injustice, often as a result of their ignorance toward the ethical footprint of the commodity in question. After establishing that consumers are routinely implicated in structural injustice (Section I), I defend Young’s scepticism towards attributing blame to those who contribute to injustice through acts of consumption, whether their contribution to injustice result from a (...)
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  26.  9
    Correction to: How Wild the West? Reply to Coates and Swenson.George Sher - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (2):149-149.
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  27.  18
    Precis of A Wild West of the Mind.George Sher - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (2):119-121.
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  28.  6
    How Wild the West? Reply to Coates and Swenson.George Sher - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (2):141-148.
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  29.  57
    Risky Thoughts.Philip Swenson - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (2):123-130.
    I respond to George Sher's A Wild West of the Mind. Sher argues that the mind is a “morality-free zone.” I respond that some thoughts are too risky to think. As a result, there are some moral limits on our mental lives. But these moral limits need not be overly burdensome. Many somewhat risky thoughts are nonetheless permissible.
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  30.  25
    Fear, Fanaticism, and Fragile Identities.Ruth Rebecca Tietjen - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (2):211-230.
    In this article, I provide a philosophical analysis of the nature and role of perceived identity threats in the genesis and maintenance of fanaticism. First, I offer a preliminary definition of fanaticism as the social identity-defining devotion to a sacred value that demands universal recognition and is complemented by a hostile antagonism toward people who dissent from one’s group’s values. The fanatic’s hostility toward dissent thereby takes the threefold form of outgroup hostility, ingroup hostility, and self-hostility. Second, I provide a (...)
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  31.  50
    Are Adults and Children One Another’s Moral Equals?Giacomo Floris - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (1):31-50.
    The question of the basis of human equality has recently gained increasing attention. However, much of the literature has focused on whether persons—understood as fully competent adults—have equal moral status, while relatively less attention has been devoted to the analysis of what grounds the equal moral status of those human beings who are not fully competent adults. This paper contributes to this debate by addressing the question of the equality of moral status between adults and children. Specifically, this paper has (...)
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  32.  6
    How to Protect Children? A Pragmatic Approach: On State Intervention and Children’s Welfare.Rebecca Gutwald & Michael Reder - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (1):77-95.
    If a child’s well-being is at risk of considerable harm within their own family, state institutions usually intervene. In severe cases, the parents’ right to rear is suspended. Cases of risk assessment and potential state intervention are decided within a conflict between parents’ rights and claims of children for protection. There is, we argue, a standard model of normative assessment underlying these decisions: It rests on premises rooted in classic liberal political philosophy, which is prevalent in many Western societies, such (...)
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  33.  19
    Self-respect & Childhood.Nanette Ryan - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (1):51-76.
    When we raise children what we are typically aiming for is a kind of flourishing; we want childrento live well as children, and to grow to become adults who live well too. Undoubtedly, part of what we are aiming forwhen we aim for a child’s flourishing is that they meet their developmental milestones well, and that they succeedamong their peers. We are also generally interested in how a child regards themselves; we want children tobelieve that they have value, and that (...)
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  34.  14
    Introduction: Ethics of Childhood.Gottfried Schweiger - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (1):1-5.
    This introduction provides a brief overview of the field of childhood ethics. It briefly outlines current debates about children’s autonomy and vulnerability, children’s rights, the relationship between children and parents, and (social and global) justice for children.
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  35.  44
    The Normative Connection Between Paternalism and Belief.Stephanie Sheintul - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (1):97-114.
    This paper aims to answer the following question: what is the normative connection between paternalism and the paternalist’s belief about the recipient’s agency? I consider the following two views. _The Robust View_ says that paternalism is _pro tanto_ wrong insofar as the paternalist’s belief about the recipient’s agency is always disrespectful. _The Less Robust View_ says that whenever the paternalist’s belief about the recipient’s agency is disrespectful, paternalism is _pro tanto_ wrong. I interpret the major motive-based theories of paternalism as (...)
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  36.  15
    State Authority, Parental Authority, and the Rights of Mature Minors.Mark Tunick - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics 27 (1):7-29.
    When mature minors face a decision with important consequences, such as whether to undergo a risky but potentially life-saving medical procedure, who should decide? Relying on liberal political theory’s account of the importance of decisional autonomy for adults, and given the scalar nature of the capacities needed to exercise decisional autonomy, I argue that mature minors with the requisite capacities and commitments have a right to decisional autonomy though they are not yet 18. I argue for this right using a (...)
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  37.  14
    The Argument from Good Friendship to Character Realism.Anne Jeffrey - 2023 - The Journal of Ethics (3):1-14.
    Character realism is the view that many people have and act from character. This short paper attempts to articulate and draw attention to the underappreciated connection between our commonplaces about good friendship and character realism.
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