This paper explores the relationship between anger and flourishing in light of structural injustice. Even when anger is an appropriate response to structural injustice, it can carry significant personal cost. In non-ideal circumstances, anger may be morally required even though it detracts from personal flourishing. Drawing on Lisa Tessman’s work, I argue that anger at structural injustice, even if we are not among those against whom the injustice is directed, can be a burdened virtue. I extend Tessman’s analysis to show how burdened virtues can arise in response to particularly structural injustices, and explicitly note additional burdens that can arise in such instances.
In our lives we regularly give and rely on testimony about other’s moral characters. We might, for example, chat about a visitor’s kindness, or commiserate with friends by admonishing a deceitful politician. In this essay, I provide an account of this social practice which I call moral gatekeeping. The analogy of a gatekeeper highlights how we both bar others from and invite them into the moral community when we gatekeep. I define moral gatekeeping as follows: Communication to at least one member of the moral community of a reason—or reasons—to reconsider or reaffirm their view of the moral character of an individual, group of individuals, or social group, in the moral community. Moral gatekeeping has three fundamental components: a shared reason, a recipient, and a gatekeeper. After describing them, I defend moral gatekeeping against the concern that it stymies moral progress by: (1) highlighting gatekeeping’s intrinsic and instrumental moral value, and (2) arguing that abandoning gatekeeping entails abandoning forgiveness. Moral gatekeeping is a fundamental social practice that cannot be rejected; its ethic concerns not whether, but when and how we gatekeep. I conclude with a brief discussion of when and how we should gatekeep.
This paper develops an Arendtian-inspired notion of “civic care” that offers an alternative normative account of what should bring citizens together politically. Unlike consensual approaches, “civic care” stresses that a proper political bond should be able to get citizens to collaborate to solve collective action problems, but without marginalizing the conflictive character of politics. At the same time, “civic care” differs from accounts of the political bond that rely on appeals to patriotism, compassion, or love of a “people.” By building on Arendt’s notions of amor mundi and “civic friendship,” this paper argues that “civic care” does not involve any direct or natural connection to fellow citizens. Instead, it entails a worldly type of bond. Likewise, it argues that addressing the question of how we can be bonded across our political differences is crucial in our polarized times because modern democracies face what Arendt understood as the greatest threat: “worldlessness.” In the last section, the paper addresses the motivational challenge regarding how citizens can be brought to show “civic care.” It argues that the task of reconstituting agonistic polities requires taking into consideration the interdependencies in our behaviors, and specifically, the sources of motivation related to our social nature.
Several philosophical accounts of homelessness have emerged in recent years. These include care-based approaches and liberal approaches. Bart van Leeuwen (2018) has argued liberal approaches face what has been called the “minimalist charge,” which holds such accounts will fail to justify robust policy responses aimed at addressing homelessness. Katy Wells (2022) raises concerns with care-based approaches, arguing that they fail to respect the autonomy of people experiencing homelessness by assimilating them into a category of people with diminished autonomy. To address the issues with care-based approaches, and to avoid the minimalist concern, Wells introduces her own autonomy-based approach. In this paper, I argue that Wells’s account is subject to the same worries she raises against care-based approaches: ultimately, it fails to properly respect the autonomy of people experiencing homelessness. Because Wells’s view is externalist in nature—meaning that it makes external conditions necessary for autonomy ascription—those who lack the required conditions will have diminished autonomy. To support this claim, I draw on recent criticisms of some feminist relational accounts of autonomy, especially ones that incorporate external conditions as necessary for autonomy. I introduce an alternative conception of autonomy that overcomes the theoretical problems with Wells’s account and offers some practical benefits.
Many theories of moral responsibility include some sort of knowledge condition. If an agent lacks full knowledge of what they are doing, the harm it is causing, or that what they are doing is wrong, that agent is either excused or in some way less responsible for their wrongdoing. In this paper, I argue that this kind of knowledge condition is not only mistaken but also importantly problematic: it overlooks the ways in which society’s expectations and demands of attention and knowledge are gendered.
