Reply to Professor Flew

In this paper I evaluate some recent virtue-ethical accounts of right action [Hursthouse 1999; Slote 2001; Swanton 2001]. I argue that all are vulnerable to what I call the insularity objection : evaluating action requires attention to worldly consequences external to the agent, whereas virtue ethics is primarily concerned with evaluating an agent's inner states. More specifically, I argue that insofar as these accounts are successful in meeting the insularity objection they invite the circularity objection : they end up relying upon putatively virtue-ethical considerations that themselves depend on unexplained judgments of rightness. Such accounts thus face a dilemma that is characteristic of virtue-ethical accounts of right action. They avoid the insularity objection only at the cost of inviting the circularity objection: they become intuitively plausible roughly to the extent that they lose their distinctively virtue-ethical character.     

Reply to Professor Baker

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

Reply to Kevin Carnahan and Erik A. Anderson

In my response to Kevin Carnahan, I explain the concept of religion that I have been working with in my writings on the place of religious reasons in public political discourse. While acknowledging that religion is often privatized, my concern has been with religion as a way of life. It is religion so understood that raises the most serious issues concerning the role of religion in public discourse. In my response to Erik A. Anderson, I go beyond what I have previously said about the role of religious reasons in public discourse. As an alternative to Rawlsian public reason, I argue that the essence of liberal democracy is that every citizen is to have equal political voice. I go on to consider what it is to exercise one’s equal political voice as a moral engagement.     

再论分配正义——答段忠桥教授

<正>我在《哲学研究》2011年第3期发表《分配正义:从弱势群体的观点看》一文(下引仅注页码),表达了关于分配正义问题的一些观点,特别是提出了分配正义的原则。这篇文章的论证逻辑如下:首先,一种分配只有得到弱势群体的同意,它才能是正义的;其次,分配正义的原则应该把弱势