Hello everyone, sorry for the delay in this post: This Thursday, 30th January. Bill Ransome will be giving the Research Seminar and Philosophy Society talks. Open to everybody. Research Seminar 14:00-16:00 Central Committee Room, Maclaurin Building Self-Effacement in Pluralist Virtue Ethics An early complaint against virtue ethics was that, as a normative theory, it failed to be action-guiding, and an early claim in its favour was that it avoided the self-effacement that infected its deontological and consequentialist rivals. Much effort has since been expended in developing virtue ethical theories of right action and, more recently, much has been made of a new, virulent strain of self-effacement that appears especially to infect monist, reductive normative theories of virtue ethics. More recently still, pluralism has been suggested as a cure for virtue ethical self-effacement. In this paper I argue that self-effacement also infects pluralist virtue ethics, and explain why this constitutes a serious problem for the project of normative virtue ethics. Philosophy Society 16:30-17:30 Central Committee Room, Maclaurin Building Above the Sceptred Sway: The Quality of Mercy Mercy is often thought to be an especially praiseworthy characteristic of virtuous judges. However, the ethical quality of mercy is dubious. Since in criminal cases judges are obligated to administer justice – what wrongdoers deserve – and since mercy is conceptually exclusive of rights and obligations, it seems that mercy, in this context, does not qualify as a virtue at all. Further, merciful judges appear to be manifesting injustice, and, since the defining obligation of the judge is to be just, mercy seems to be a blameworthy judicial vice rather than a praiseworthy virtue. Can mercy be reconciled with justice, and re-emerge as a judicial virtue? The Maclaurin Building is part of the Business park opposite the Law Building and such. If you get unsure just follow a steady stream of people or post on here and we can get you better directions. See you all there!
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 02:24:18 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015