phlogma

In this classic paper in the literature on the idea of supererogation (acts above and beyond moral duty), Urmson argues for recognition of a special class of moral acts that, while clearly moral, cannot be required—at least not generally. In the course of his argument, he makes explicit a masculine assumption about the feminine relation to morality. Susan Wolf reacts to this paper. Together, Urmson’s seemingly off-handed remark and Wolf’s response, are symptomatic of the deep rift in moral perspective between women and men. The underlying clash of principles were first clearly examined by Otto Weininger a century ago. Luno picks up where Weininger left off, using Urmson and Wolf as philosophical occasions.

Notes on Cheshire Calhoun,“Standing for Something.”
[Against the background of some contemporary conceptions of integrity as a virtue, Calhoun will argue that this virtue, whatever private merit it may have, is in the end a “master” social virtue not only because of its deployment of so many other virtues but because of its critical role in […]

Notes on Immanuel Kant, The Philosophy of Law (1796)
There are, however, two crimes worthy of death, in respect of which it still remains doubtful whether the Legislature have the Right to deal with them capitally.
And since they cannot be dealt with “capitally,” they cannot, on Kantian terms, quite be seen as murder.
It is the sentiment […]

Bedau argues that opposition to the death penalty cannot be utterly unconditional.1 He asks us to imagine a world where the execution of a murderer would miraculously bring back to life the innocent victim. Could we still oppose the penalty on principle?
I don’t know, could we? I find it somehow easier to imagine a world […]

If you are going to have capital punishment, this is how the logic of retributivism requires it should be done.

Capital punishment and barbarization

To live a comfortable, even luxurious life it is not necessary to kill anyone; but it is necessary to allow some to die whom we might have saved…
[Peter Singer, Practical Ethics]
If only morality’s demands could be so modest. Rather, to live at all … and then moreover in the realization of a biological imperative to […]

Rawls reminds us in a footnote to his classic paper, “Two Concepts of Rules”:
It is important to remember that those whom I have called the classical utilitarians were largely interested in social institutions. They were among the leading economists and political theorists of their day, and they were not infrequently reformers interested in practical affairs. […]

Mill and I gloss Bentham’s dictum, “everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one”:
All persons are deemed to have a right to equality of treatment, except when some recognized social expediency requires the reverse. And hence all social inequalities which have ceased to be considered expedient, assume the character not of simple inexpediency, […]

The important rank, among human evils and wrongs, of the disappointment of expectation, is shown in the fact that it constitutes the principal criminality of two such highly immoral acts as a breach of friendship and a breach of promise. Few hurts which human beings can sustain are greater, and none wound more, than when […]