Moral Progress and Human Agency
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (1):153-168 (2017)
Abstract
The idea of moral progress is a necessary presupposition of action for beings like us. We must believe that moral progress is possible and that it might have been realized in human experience, if we are to be confident that continued human action can have any morally constructive point. I discuss the implications of this truth for moral psychology. I also show that once we understand the complex nature and the complicated social sources of moral progress, we will appreciate why we cannot construct a plausible comprehensive action-guiding theory of moral progress. Yet while the nature and sources of moral progress consistently thwart many theoretical hopes, the idea of moral progress is a plausible, critically important and morally constructive principle of historical interpretation.Author's Profile
DOI
10.1007/s10677-016-9748-z
My notes
Similar books and articles
Individual Moral Development and Moral Progress.Anders Schinkel & Doret J. Ruyter - 2017 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (1):121-136.
Individual Moral Development and Moral Progress.Anders Schinkel & Doret J. de Ruyter - 2017 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (1):121-136.
Achieving Moral Progress Despite Moral Regress.Ben Dixon - 2005 - Social Philosophy Today 21:157-172.
Locating Value in Moral Progress.Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen - 2017 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (1):137-52.
Gomte and the idea of progress.Leslie Sklair - 1968 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 11 (1-4):321 – 331.
Il progresso morale in Kant Impossibilità ontologica e necessità pratica.Federico Zuolo - 2009 - Rivista di Filosofia 100 (3):373-396.
Kant, History, and the Idea of Moral Development.Pauline Kleingeld - 1999 - History of Philosophy Quarterly 16 (1):59-80.
The Varieties of Moral Improvement, or why Metaethical Constructivism must Explain Moral Progress.Caroline Arruda - 2017 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (1):17-38.
Concerning an Objective Criterion of Moral Progress.M. A. Kamyshan - 1963 - Russian Studies in Philosophy 1 (4):58-63.
Kant: Moral Progress, Politics, and the Highest Good.David Paul Lindstedt - 1997 - Dissertation, Tulane University
Moral Perfection and the Demand for Human Enhancement.Adriana Warmbier - 2015 - Ethics in Progress 2015 (No.1).
Revitalizing the teaching of ethics and bioethics as one of the means of achieving moral progress.Lukáš Švaňa - 2012 - Ethics and Bioethics (in Central Europe) 2 (1-2):60-67.
The Limits of Evolutionary Explanations of Morality and Their Implications for Moral Progress.Allen Buchanan & Russell Powell - 2015 - Ethics 126 (1):37-67.
Analytics
Added to PP
2016-07-23
Downloads
139 (#92,240)
6 months
15 (#67,435)
2016-07-23
Downloads
139 (#92,240)
6 months
15 (#67,435)
Historical graph of downloads
Author's Profile
Citations of this work
Moral progress: Recent developments.Hanno Sauer, Charlie Blunden, Cecilie Eriksen & Paul Rehren - 2021 - Philosophy Compass 16 (10):e12769.
Review of The Evolution of Moral Progress: A Biocultural Theory by Allen Buchanan and Russell Powell. [REVIEW]Michael Brownstein & Daniel Kelly - 2019 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Review of Books 1:1-14.
The Dynamics of Moral Revolutions – Prelude to Future Investigations and Interventions.Cecilie Eriksen - 2019 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 22 (3):779-792.
Context, Intersubjectivism, and Value: Humean Constructivism Revisited.Jocelyn Maclure - 2020 - Dialogue 59 (3):377-401.
Moral Progress and Evolution: Knowledge Versus Understanding.Eleonora Severini - 2021 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24 (1):87-105.
References found in this work
Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing.Miranda Fricker - 2007 - Oxford University Press.
The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations.Robert King Merton - 1973 - University of Chicago Press.