Moral Failure: On the Impossible Demands of Morality
Lisa Tessman
Abstract
Moral Failure: On the Impossible Demands of Morality asks what happens when the sense that “I must” collides with the realization that “I can’t.” Bringing together philosophical and empirical work in moral psychology, it examines moral requirements that are non-negotiable and that contravene the principle that “ought implies can.” In some cases, it is because two non-negotiable requirements conflict in a dilemma that one of them becomes impossible to satisfy yet that remains binding. In other cases, performing a particular action may be non-negotiably required—even if it is impossible—because ... More
Moral Failure: On the Impossible Demands of Morality asks what happens when the sense that “I must” collides with the realization that “I can’t.” Bringing together philosophical and empirical work in moral psychology, it examines moral requirements that are non-negotiable and that contravene the principle that “ought implies can.” In some cases, it is because two non-negotiable requirements conflict in a dilemma that one of them becomes impossible to satisfy yet that remains binding. In other cases, performing a particular action may be non-negotiably required—even if it is impossible—because not performing the action is unthinkable. After offering both conceptual and empirical explanations of the experience of impossible moral requirements and the ensuing failures to fulfill them, the book considers what to make of such experience and, in particular, what role such experience has in the construction of value and of moral authority. According to the constructivist account that the book proposes, some moral requirements can be authoritative even when they are impossible to fulfill. The book points out a tendency to not acknowledge the difficulties that impossible moral requirements and unavoidable moral failures create in moral life, and traces this tendency through several different literatures, from scholarship on Holocaust testimony to discussions of ideal and nonideal theory, from theories of supererogation to debates about moral demandingness, and to feminist care ethics.
Keywords:
Book,
moral dilemma,
moral failure,
moral experience,
moral psychology,
ought implies can,
moral requirement,
nonideal theory,
moral demandingness,
care ethics,
feminist ethics
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2014 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199396146 |
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2014 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199396146.001.0001 |