Morality, Moral Luck and Responsibility Fortune's Web

by Athanassoulis, Nafsika

• ISBN13: 9780230245532
• ISBN10: 0230245536
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-04-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Is it possible to make sense of moral praise and blame when a person's life is a tangled web of factors outside of his control? Cases of moral luck bring to the forefront the perplexing idea that we can be held responsible for what is, essentially, a matter of chance. This book offers a systematic and in-depth account of two major normative theories and their responses to the possibility of moral luck. Aristotle attempts to recognize the vulnerability of the good life and reconcile morality with luck, whereas the Kantian ambition is to make morality immune to luck while maintaining a plausible understanding of human nature. Using the questions raised by the problem of moral luck, this book critically assesses the most recent developments by virtue ethicists and neo-Kantians, and examines how these different theories understand concepts such as 'character' and 'virtue'.

Author Biography

NAFSIKA ATHANASSOULIS is Lecturer in Ethics at Keele University, UK. Her research interests include the problem of moral luck, virtue ethics, Aristotle and Kant. She has published in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Res Publica, is editor of Philosophical Reflections on Medical Ethics, and co-editor, with Samantha Vice, of The Moral Life: Essays in Honour of John Cottingham.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations, Sources and Translations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Moral Luck
Aristotle on Constitutive Luck
Aristotle on Developmental, Situational and Resultant Luck
Aristotle and Reason
The Stoics
Kant on Luck
Kant on Virtue
Virtue Ethics and Neo-Kantians: Slote, Hursthouse and Herman
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index