Distributive Energy Justice and the Common Good

Recently, philosophers and social scientists have shown increased interest in questions of social, global, and intergenerational distributive justice related to energy production and consumption. However, so far there have been only a few attempts to analyse questions of distributive energy justice from a religious point of view, which should be considered a lack since religions are an important basis of morality for a large part of the world’s population. In this article, I analyse issues of distributive energy justice from a Christian theological viewpoint by employing the Catholic common good tradition as a theoretical framework. First, I present and argue for a global and ecological interpretation of the Catholic common good tradition. Then I analyse the implications of such an interpretation on questions of distributive energy justice, focusing on the view of property rights within the Catholic common good tradition. I conclude that, in comparison with Nussbaum’s liberal capabilities approach, the common good tradition provides stronger reasons for individuals and groups in more economically developed countries to share their resources and knowledge with individuals and groups in less economically developed countries.

Violence, Shame, and Moral Agency – An Exploration of Krista K. Thomason’s Position

Krista Thomason’s account of shame explains the link between shame and violence as something that arises out of a tension between our identity and our self-conception: those things about which we feel shame are part of our identities, but they are not part of our self-conception. She sees violence as an attempt to regain agency and control and overcome shame. Although this is an important trait in shame, to explain violence as a response to the loss of agency is not sufficient. Furthermore, it cannot explain serious self-harm as the result of shame, since such reactions undermined the agency she holds that violence attempts to reclaim. Hence, these features need to be incorporated into a wider account of shame that sees it as a response to the interruption of intentional projects and attempts for coherent agency.

On Some Moral Implications of Linguistic Narrativism Theory

In this essay we consider the moral claims of one branch of non-realist theory known as linguistic narrativism theory. By highlighting the moral implications of linguistic narrativism theory, we argue that the “moral vision” expressed by this theory can entail, at worst, undesirable moral agnosticism if not related to a transcendental and supra-personal normativity in our moral life. With its appeal to volitionism and intuitionism, the ethical sensitivity of this theory enters into difficulties brought about by several internal tensions as to what morality and moral judgements involve. We contend that the proponents of linguistic narrativism theory must strongly recognize and take responsibility for the “moral vison” their theory professes, in so far as they want to think of their theory as a morally responsible one.

‘What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?’ Betrayal and the Feminist Ethics of Aesthetic Involvement

The #MeToo movement has put a spotlight on sexual harassment and abuse in a number of industries, notably the arts. It has raised a set of questions about how to receive the artistic works of the accused, particularly when such work has been beloved or formative for an individual, and collectively when it has cultural significance and influence. Claire Dederer, writing in The Paris Review, posed the question bluntly in her piece, “What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?” This question, and the range of (often perplexed) responses to it, reveal the lack of adequate resources to evaluate responses to an artist’s actions that may bear on our aesthetic valuations of the artist’s work and that may be experienced as quite intimately personal. What do we do with the sense of betrayal that may follow on the discovery of an artist’s bad behavior? What are the implications of consuming of such art? What concepts and norms might help to guide reflection? These questions bear on the ethical significance of love and appreciation for artworks and artists, and, more broadly, the ethical consumption of artworks. This paper responds to these questions in two ways: first, it develops an account of “aesthetic involvement” to elaborate the sense of betrayal that may follow accusations or revelations of sexual harassment and abuse. Second, it proposes a feminist ethics of aesthetic involvement in response to such betrayals and to dilemmas about the individual and collective ethical consumption of artworks.

Moral agency without responsibility? Analysis of three ethical models of human-computer interaction in times of artificial intelligence (AI)

Philosophical and sociological approaches in technology have increasingly shifted toward describing AI (artificial intelligence) systems as ‘(moral) agents,’ while also attributing ‘agency’ to them. It is only in this way – so their principal argument goes – that the effects of technological components in a complex human-computer interaction can be understood sufficiently in phenomenological-descriptive and ethical-normative respects. By contrast, this article aims to demonstrate that an explanatory model only achieves a descriptively and normatively satisfactory result if the concepts of ‘(moral) agent’ and ‘(moral) agency’ are exclusively related to human agents. Initially, the division between symbolic and sub-symbolic AI, the black box character of (deep) machine learning, and the complex relationship network in the provision and application of machine learning are outlined. Next, the ontological and action-theoretical basic assumptions of an ‘agency’ attribution regarding both the current teleology-naturalism debate and the explanatory model of actor network theory are examined. On this basis, the technical-philosophical approaches of Luciano Floridi, Deborah G. Johnson, and Peter-Paul Verbeek will all be critically discussed. Despite their different approaches, they tend to fully integrate computational behavior into their concept of ‘(moral) agency.’ By contrast, this essay recommends distinguishing conceptually between the different entities, causalities, and relationships in a human-computer interaction, arguing that this is the only way to do justice to both human responsibility and the moral significance and causality of computational behavior.

From the Editors

No abstract available.

Political Decay and Political Arcadianism

An account of evil in classical political theory is the concept of evil government. The notion of political decay from good to evil government or to anarchy, the absence of government, among classical political theorists represents both a moral and a political problem. This essay argues that political decay remains a perennial problem because the political condition itself involves the seeds to its own destruction. Moreover, it is claimed that the nostalgic longing to a glorious past for nations or peoples risks turning into what is here labelled ‘political arcadianism’, fostering futile attempts to return to past conditions. The argument is that political arcadianism when focusing on the imagined past rather than the present is a possible cause of political decay.

From the Editors: De Ethica. A Journal of Philosophical, Theological and Applied Ethics

No abstract available.

On the Relevance of the Concept of Intrinsic Evil: Francisco Suárez and Contemporary Catholic Virtue Ethics Approaches

The article explores the relevancy of the concept of intrinsic evil/intrinsically evil acts in contemporary Catholic theological ethics as a particular way of giving an account of (moral) evil. The argument proceeds in two steps. In the first step the author turns to Francisco Suárez as one of the first theologians who tried to deal with the concept of intrinsic evil in an extensive and systematic way. The point of this historical exploration is to determine the meanings of this concept as it started to appear more frequently in the ethical discourse. In the next step the author presents two contemporary positions within Catholic theological ethics, those of Joseph Selling and Dana Dillon. Although both authors are proponents of virtue ethics, they disagree fundamentally on the role of the concept of intrinsic evil within this approach. While Joseph Selling argues in favour of eliminating this concept from theological ethics, Dana Dillon posits that theological ethics cannot function without it. In the rest of the article, the author explores this disagreement through various ways in which the concept can be used, while taking into account the aforementioned meanings of the concept. In the end, the author sides with Joseph Selling, since the concept of intrinsic evil does not seem to be able to fulfil the role it was assigned within Catholic theological ethics.

Evil as a Distortion of Communication: On Hegel’s account of Evil as Subjectivism

The early Hegel’s conception of evil draws on a very different paradigm than the current philosophical discourse on evil and therefore challenges received assumptions and can give us fresh impulses. In this paper, I first present Hegel’s conception of evil through a close reading of the Jenaer Realphilosophie’s, prima facie, obscure claim that evil is the ’internal actual, absolute certainty of itself, the pure night of being for itself‘. Hegel discusses evil because he worries how Romanticism and the romantic ideal of authenticity impact the possibility of communication. I then develop the idea that evil is a distortion of communication. I argue that this account of evil helps us to distinguish between evil and mere moral badness. Finally, I address two problems for this account, and discuss its limits.