On the Limits of Rights and Representation

This essay explores the degree to which public reason can sustain political liberalism's commitment to justice and pluralism without attending to the role of what Jeffrey Stout calls “cultural inheritance” in shaping and justifying political commitments. At issue is whether public reason is the best resource for guiding conversations on political matters that are enmeshed in religious commitments and moral beliefs. Unless public reason can account for cultural inheritance, and foster a deliberative context in which political actors might grapple with the relationship between overlapping political claims and comprehensive doctrines, public reason will remain narrow and inadequate in a contemporary world where epistemic diversity is increasingly at odds with political liberalism's normative model of social cooperation and public deliberation.     

Medieval Consideration and Moral Pace

This essay examines the relationship between virtue and understandings of time through a comparative examination of two medieval Christian writers, Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas. By locating temporal dimensions of virtue primarily in discussions of prudence, this essay compares Thomas's account of the virtue of counsel as preparatory to prudent judgment with Bernard's earlier account of consideration as an integrating virtue that coordinates an examination of physical surroundings and social responsibilities with an examination of one's own inner life and history of moral decisions. The essay argues that accounts of virtue ethics focusing on tradition‐specific views of the human good and practical reasoning are insufficient if they do not also examine how practical reasoning interprets and responds to religious interpretations of time that disclose the distinctive kinds of moral problems arising in each historical period.     

The Virtues of Metaphysics: A Review of Iris Murdoch's Philosophical Writings

Iris Murdoch's moral philosophy has long influenced contemporary ethics, yet it has not, in general, received the kind of sustained critical attention that it deserves. Existentialists and Mystics and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals provide new access to most of Murdoch's philosophical writings and make possible a deeper appreciation of her contribution to current thought. After assessing the recent critical reception of Murdoch's thought, this review places her moral philosophy in the context of contemporary trends in ethics by tracing her influence on the work of Charles Taylor, highlights the distinctive features of her moral philosophy (especially her analysis of consciousness), and suggests future directions for Murdochian ethics.     

Seeing Through the Fog: Love and Injustice in Bleak House

The author takes up a provocative question poised by Charles Taylor about the relationship between our commitments to a good such as neighbor love and the possibilities of achieving and sustaining social justice. Taylor's concern is not only that we make such a commitment but that we make it in such a way that we avoid its ability to lead us towards injustice rather than justice. After articulating conceptions of love, justice, and injustice, the author turns to Charles Dickens's treatment of love and injustice in Bleak House , to explore more fully how love can lead to injustice, and also its potential role in promoting justice. Dickens's view, profoundly shaped by his own sense of Christian virtues, helps us see the inner workings of love, justice, and injustice, so that we can appreciate their interconnectedness anew and understand better the urgency of Taylor's question for our time.     

EGO-LESS AGENCY: DHARMA-RESPONSIVENESS WITHOUT KANTIAN AUTONOMY

My critical focus in this article is on Rick Repetti's compatibilist conception of free will, and his apparent commitment to a Kantian conception of autonomy, which I argue is in direct conflict with the Buddhist doctrine of no-self. As an alternative, I defend a conception of ego-less agency that I believe better coheres with core Buddhist teachings. In the course of the argument, I discuss the competing conceptions of free agency and autonomy defended by Harry Frankfurt, John Martin Fischer, Christine Korsgaard, and David Velleman.     

《周易》与"白马非马"--试论易学的对象和研究方法

《易》相传有三个版本《连山》、《归藏》和《周易》.秦汉以来,学界主流向以《周易》为《易》,"白马即马",结果常使易学研究偏离《易》的本来--卦爻画."周易学"主要是在卦爻辞的基础上以"象"的方式解《易》     

儿童道德义愤的发展及其对第三方公正行为的影响

为了探讨儿童道德义愤的发展及其对第三方公正行为的影响，实验1考察106名幼儿园大班、小学2年级和4年级儿童的道德义愤在年级以及数目和价值不公平分配上的差异；实验2考察57名小学儿童在有无代价条件下，其道德义愤对第三方公正行为的影响。结果表明：儿童的道德义愤呈现随年级增长而不断增强的趋势；儿童由数目不公平分配引发的道德义愤得分显著高于价值不公平分配；幼儿园大班和2年级儿童在数目不公平分配中的道德义愤得分均显著高于价值不公平分配，而4年级儿童在数目和价值不公平分配中的道德义愤得分不存在显著差异；诱发道德义愤的儿童更多地做出第三方公正行为，并且更愿意选择补偿受害者；在不同诱发道德义愤条件下，是否需要付出代价都不会影响儿童的第三方公正行为。研究说明儿童的道德义愤随年级增长而发展，并影响第三方公正行为。     

More important and surprising actions of a moral exemplar trigger stronger admiration and inspiration

ABSTRACT

Admiring a moral role model has been found to inspire people to become better persons themselves. But what are the antecedents that trigger admiration and thus make inspiration more likely? In three studies, we tested the effect of perceived importance and perceived surprisingness of the moral action on resulting admiration and inspiration. Study 1 finds that perceived importance, and to a lesser extent, the perceived surprisingness of a moral action, are related to stronger admiration. Manipulating the perceived importance of the same moral action by only providing a little more detail about the moral action, could increase the admiration and inspiration the role models elicit (Studies 2 and 3). Our findings help the understanding of how moral exemplars trigger inspiration and provide valuable insights into further investigation toward the causes of admiration.     

Another Defense of Naturalized Ethics

This essay argues against Richard Joyce, using him as an exemplar of a number of writers who purport to show that the best a naturalized ethics can provide are demands that we can hold only as moral agnostics; that is, that no moral claims can be shown to be epistemically warranted, hence no moral claims have the property of “inescapable authority” necessary for real moral discourse or deliberation. The prudent (and “dignified”) course of action is therefore to act as if moral claims had categorical standing, knowing full well that we cannot, in principle, know this. The essay proposes instead that a fully naturalized account of moral reasoning and sentiments, compatible with the commitment to understanding human beings as products of evolutionary processes, can provide “existence imperatives” necessarily implicated in our being social animals. It argues that, on the one hand, we're mistaken in believing that real moral discourse must include imperatives that hold with inescapable authority as a foundation and, on the other, that a naturalistic perspective can offer demands that are authoritative enough to make moral judgment sound.