Unprincipled Virtue: An Inquiry Into Moral Agency

214 Pages·2004·9.64 MB·English

by  Nomy Arpaly

UNPRINCIPLED VIRTUE
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UNPRINCIPLED VIRTUE
AN INQUIRY INTO MORAL AGENCY
Nomy Arpaly
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
2O03
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Copyright © 2003 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Arpaly, Nomy.
Unprincipled virtue : an inquiry into moral agency / Nomy Arpaly.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-19-515204-2
1. Ethics. 2. Psychology and philosophy. I. Title.
BJ45 .A76 2002
170—dc21 2002025754
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 42
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To my friends, who make life worthwhile
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank a number of people for their help with this work:
Kimberlee Kane-Maguire, for igniting the first spark for this project, and
for being such a wonderful friend and person. Timothy Schroeder, my
one-in-a-million philosophical collaborator, friend, muse, coach, and
editor, for endless support, long philosophical discussions, and the rest.
George Sher, for philosophy, friendship, support, secretarial help, faith,
hope, loyalty, and Pilsner Urquell, all invaluable. Russell Hardin, for in-
creasing overall utility. My Stanford teachers, especially Michael Brat-
man, Rachel Cohon, Ariela Lazar, Peter Godfrey-Smith, and Julius
Moravcsik, and my unofficial mentors, David Copp, Stephen Darwall,
Harry Frankfurt, Barbara Herman, Thomas Hill, Rosalind Hursthouse,
Peter Railton, Thomas Scanlon, and David Velleman: their help, good
will, and wisdom have been simply invaluable to me at various stages of
developing these ideas, and I am forever in their debt. Andrew Conway,
Maureen Kelly, Simon May, David Mills, Jonathan Schaffer, Erica
Stephan, Asya Takken, Todd Takken, and Penny Tucker have all pro-
vided invaluable emotional support. I am deeply indebted to my great
colleagues at Rice University, one and all; to the people of the philoso-
phy department at the University of Michigan, one and all; and to the
faculty and the fellows at Harvard University's Center for Ethics and the
Professions. Thanks also to the people who looked at drafts and provided
very helpful comments, sometimes enduring the groans with which I
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
greet astute criticism: Elizabeth Anderson, Arthur Applbaum, Sarah
Buss, Ruth Chang, John Martin Fischer, Lori Gruen, Gilbert Harman,
James Joyce, Angella Keckler, Shua Knobe, Janet Malek, Mary
MacLeod, Alfred Mele, Rob Shaver, Heda Sedvic, Andrea Westlund,
and various anonymous referees. I must also mention the following stu-
dents, who kept me honest with fresh intuitions and uninhibited objec-
tions: Maud Barriquand, D. J. Braisier, Grace Chu, Andrew Court-
wright, Brad Lega, and Philip Mayor. Thanks are due to Louisa and
Paulo Orizio of Dolce & Freddo, purveyors of splendid gelato and cof-
fee, for allowing me to pace back and forth on the premises like some
madwoman for hours on end while I was writing this book in my mind,
and to Ann Pinchak, who can motivate very well. To all the people of
whom fictionalized versions appear in my examples: I do hope you for-
give me.
I wish to thank Rice University, the University of Michigan, and the
Center for Ethics and the Professions at Harvard University for support
during the writing of this book. Thanks are also owed to various publish-
ers for permission to reprint previous work. An earlier version of chapter
2 appeared in Ethics no (2000); some of the ideas presented in chapter 3
are due to appear in a shorter form in the Journal of Philosophy; a section
of chapter 4 was presented at the Inland Northwest Philosophy Confer-
ence in Spring 2001 and is due to appear in a volume edited by Joseph
Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke, and David Shier for Seven Bridges
Press; and some of the cases discussed in chapter 5 appeared in Philo-
sophical Studies 93 (1998).
CONTENTS
1 The Complexity of Moral Psychology 3
2 On Acting Rationally against One's
Best Judgment 33
3 Moral Worth 67
4 Varieties of Autonomy 117
5 Blame, Autonomy, and
Problem Cases 149
Notes 181
References 191
Index 197