Moral Failure: On the Impossible Demands of MoralityMoral Failure: On the Impossible Demands of Morality asks what happens when the sense that "I must" collides with the realization that "I can't." Bringing together philosophical and empirical work in moral psychology, Lisa Tessman here examines moral requirements that are non-negotiable and that contravene the principle that "ought implies can." In some cases, it is because two non-negotiable requirements conflict that one of them becomes impossible to satisfy, and yet remains binding. In other cases, performing a particular action may be non-negotiably required -- even if it is impossible -- because not performing the action is unthinkable. After offering both conceptual and empirical explanations of the experience of impossible moral requirements and the ensuing failures to fulfill them, Tessman considers what to make of such experience, and in particular, what role such experience has in the construction of value and of moral authority. According to the constructivist account that the book proposes, some moral requirements can be authoritative even when they are impossible to fulfill. Tessman points out a tendency to not acknowledge the difficulties that impossible moral requirements and unavoidable moral failures create in moral life, and traces this tendency through several different literatures, from scholarship on Holocaust testimony to discussions of ideal and nonideal theory, from theories of supererogation to debates about moral demandingness and to feminist care ethics. |
Contents
| 1 | |
I Are There Impossible Moral Requirements? | 9 |
II Evasions | 151 |
III Endless Demands | 205 |
Conclusion | 253 |
| 257 | |
| 273 | |
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Common terms and phrases
action action-guiding actual alief all-things-considered argue automatic believe Bernard Williams capabilities approach chapter choice claim cognitive consequentialist consider constructivist critique Cushman decision demands deontic logic deontological dependency discussion duty emotions ethics evaluative judgments experience fact feminist Frankfurt Gendler Goodin Gowans Haidt Heyd Heyd’s Holocaust human ideal theory implies impossible moral requirements instance intuitive judgments intuitive moral judgments intuitive process irreplaceable judg Kittay Langer ments metaethical constructivism moral agent moral conflict moral dilemmas moral luck moral practices moral values moral wrongdoing non-action-guiding non-negotiable moral requirements nonideal theory Nussbaum 2000b obligation obligatory one’s options overridden people’s person plurality possible prescriptive sentiment principle question rational Rawls reasoning process reflective equilibrium reject response sacralized sacred value Schwartzman sense situations social someone sort Street supererogationist supererogatory tion tive trolley problem unavoidable moral failure unthinkable Urmson violation virtue ethics volitional necessity vulnerability model vulnerability-responsive moral requirements Walker Williams’s