Ethical Pressures: Shaping Wills and Bending Time in Moral Address
In these lectures I will be exploring ways in which our familiar moral responses to wrongdoing, such as blaming or demanding apology, inevitably and quite properly involve the exertion of interpersonal pressures. Chief among these is the pressure we place on a wrongdoer to
acknowledge what they did and say sorry. A purist habit of mind in moral philosophy might have us imagine these pressures as, at least ideally, a matter of pressing purely moral reasons. But I shall argue that there is no place for such purism, even in an ideal situation of interpersonal moral address. On the contrary, the pressures we typically and even ideally exert are decidedly mixed pressures, for they involve the pressing of both moral reasons and plainly non-moral (carrot and stick) reasons into the bargain. When wronged parties seek moral address, then, they are active protagonists in a moral drama, attempting inevitably proleptic forms of social influence that aim to shape the wrongdoer’s will.
Lecture #1
September 30, 4:10-6 pm
Lecture #2
October 1, 4:10-6 pm
Lecture #3
October 2, 4:10-6 pm