The Limits of Moral Authority

The Limits of Moral Authority
Author: Dale Dorsey
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2016-04-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191044725

Dale Dorsey considers one of the most fundamental questions in philosophical ethics: to what extent do the demands of morality have normative authority over us and our lives? Must we conform to moral requirements? Most who have addressed this question have treated the normative significance of morality as simply a fact to be explained. But Dorsey argues that this traditional assumption is misguided. According to Dorsey, not only are we not required to conform to moral demands, conforming to morality's demands will not always even be normatively permissible---moral behavior can be (quite literally) wrong. This view is significant not only for understanding the content and force of the moral point of view, but also for understanding the basic elements of how one ought to live.

The Second-Person Standpoint

The Second-Person Standpoint
Author: Stephen Darwall
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2009-09-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674034627

Why should we avoid doing moral wrong? The inability of philosophy to answer this question in a compelling manner—along with the moral skepticism and ethical confusion that ensue—result, Stephen Darwall argues, from our failure to appreciate the essentially interpersonal character of moral obligation. After showing how attempts to vindicate morality have tended to change the subject—falling back on non-moral values or practical, first-person considerations—Darwall elaborates the interpersonal nature of moral obligations: their inherent link to our responsibilities to one another as members of the moral community. As Darwall defines it, the concept of moral obligation has an irreducibly second-person aspect; it presupposes our authority to make claims and demands on one another. And so too do many other central notions, including those of rights, the dignity of and respect for persons, and the very concept of person itself. The result is nothing less than a fundamental reorientation of moral theory that enables it at last to account for morality’s supreme authority—an account that Darwall carries from the realm of theory to the practical world of second-person attitudes, emotions, and actions.

Morality, Authority, and Law

Morality, Authority, and Law
Author: Stephen Darwall
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2013-03-21
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0191639583

Stephen Darwall presents a series of essays that explore and extend the Second-Person Standpoints argument that central moral concepts are irreducibly second personal, entailing mutual accountability and the authority to address demands to one another (and ourselves). He illustrates the second-personal frameworks power to illuminate a wide variety of issues in moral, political, and legal philosophy. Section I concerns morality: its distinctiveness among normative concepts, the metaethics of bipolar obligations (owed to someone); the relation between moral obligations form and the substance of our obligations; whether the fact that an action is wrong is itself a reason against action (as opposed to simply entailing that sufficient moral reasons independently exist); and whether morality requires general principles or might be irreducibly particularistic. Section II consists of two essays on autonomy: one discussing the relation between Kants autonomy of the will and the right to autonomy, and another arguing that what makes an agents desires and will reason-giving is not the basis of internal practical reasons in desire, but the dignity of persons and shared second-personal authority. Section III focuses on the nature of authority and the law. Two essays take up Joseph Razs influential normal justification thesis and argue that it fails to capture authoritys second-personal nature, without which authority cannot create exclusionaryand preemptivereasons.The final two essays concern law.The first sketches the insights that a second-personal approach can provide into the nature of law and the grounds of distinctions between different parts of law.The second shows how a second-personal framework can be used to develop the civil recourse theory in the law of torts.

Model Rules of Professional Conduct

Model Rules of Professional Conduct
Author: American Bar Association. House of Delegates
Publisher: American Bar Association
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2007
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9781590318737

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

Moral Imagination

Moral Imagination
Author: Mark Johnson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2014-12-10
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 022622323X

Using path-breaking discoveries of cognitive science, Mark Johnson argues that humans are fundamentally imaginative moral animals, challenging the view that morality is simply a system of universal laws dictated by reason. According to the Western moral tradition, we make ethical decisions by applying universal laws to concrete situations. But Johnson shows how research in cognitive science undermines this view and reveals that imagination has an essential role in ethical deliberation. Expanding his innovative studies of human reason in Metaphors We Live By and The Body in the Mind, Johnson provides the tools for more practical, realistic, and constructive moral reflection.

The Mystery of Moral Authority

The Mystery of Moral Authority
Author: Russell Blackford
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2016-04-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1137562706

The Mystery of Moral Authority argues for a sceptical and pragmatic view of morality as an all-too-human institution. Searching, intellectually rigorous, and always fair to rival views, it represents the state of the art in a tradition of moral philosophy that includes Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, and J.L. Mackie.