Erin I. Kelly

Doing without desert

The idea of ‘moral responsibility’ is typically linked with praise and blame, and with the notion of ‘the voluntary’. It is often thought that if we are free, in the relevant sense, we may “deserve” praise or blame; otherwise, we do not. But when we look at whether and why we need the notions of praise and blame, we find that they are not as intimately connected with desert as many philosophers have thought. In particular, this paper challenges the idea that forms of evaluation and behavior tied to our “reactive attitudes” (especially resentment) best further morality’s aims, properly understood.

Moral Agency and Free Choice: Clarke's Unlikely Success against Hume

Abstract Hume argued against claims about the role of reasoning in moral thought that had been defended by moral rationalists. In doing so, he criticized the doctrines of the rational intuitionist Samuel Clarke (1675–1729). Clarke has not received much attention from contemporary moral philosophers, and given that rational intuitionism has long fallen out of favor, he may seem an unlikely thinker to defend. Nevertheless, attention to his writings reveals some interesting arguments. By considering how Clarke could respond to Humes attacks, I believe we can make progress in understanding the nature of moral agency and what it is for reasons to have a justifying as well as an explanatory role.

The Historical Injustice Problem for Political Liberalism

Liberal political philosophers have underestimated the philosophical relevance of historical injustice. For some groups, injustices from the past—particularly surrounding race, ethnicity, or religion—are a source of entrenched social inequality decades or even hundreds of years later. Rawls does not advocate the importance of redressing historical injustice, yet political liberalism needs a principle of historical redress. Rawls’s principle of fair equality of opportunity, which is designed to prevent the leveraging of class privilege, could be paired with a supporting principle of historical redress that would contend with partiality and bias in open access to positions.