Saints, heroes, sages, and villains
This essay explores the question of how to be good. My starting point is a thesis about moral worth that I’ve defended in the past: roughly, that an action is morally worthy if and only it is performed for the reasons why it is right. While I think that account gets at one important sense of mora...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Springer Science + Business Media B.V.
2013
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/76301 |
| _version_ | 1811080457341632512 |
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| author | Markovits, Julia |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Markovits, Julia |
| author_sort | Markovits, Julia |
| collection | MIT |
| description | This essay explores the question of how to be good. My starting point is
a thesis about moral worth that I’ve defended in the past: roughly, that an action is
morally worthy if and only it is performed for the reasons why it is right. While I
think that account gets at one important sense of moral goodness, I argue here that it
fails to capture several ways of being worthy of admiration on moral grounds. Moral
goodness is more multi-faceted. My title is intended to capture that multi-facetedness:
the essay examines saintliness, heroism, and sagacity. The variety of our
common-sense moral ideals underscores the inadequacy of any one account of
moral admirableness, and I hope to illuminate the distinct roles these ideals play in
our everyday understanding of goodness. Along the way, I give an account of what
makes actions heroic, of whether such actions are supererogatory, and of what, if
anything, is wrong with moral deference. At the close of the essay, I begin to
explore the flipside of these ideals: villainy. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:32:00Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/76301 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:32:00Z |
| publishDate | 2013 |
| publisher | Springer Science + Business Media B.V. |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/763012022-09-27T20:10:02Z Saints, heroes, sages, and villains Markovits, Julia Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Markovits, Julia Markovits, Julia This essay explores the question of how to be good. My starting point is a thesis about moral worth that I’ve defended in the past: roughly, that an action is morally worthy if and only it is performed for the reasons why it is right. While I think that account gets at one important sense of moral goodness, I argue here that it fails to capture several ways of being worthy of admiration on moral grounds. Moral goodness is more multi-faceted. My title is intended to capture that multi-facetedness: the essay examines saintliness, heroism, and sagacity. The variety of our common-sense moral ideals underscores the inadequacy of any one account of moral admirableness, and I hope to illuminate the distinct roles these ideals play in our everyday understanding of goodness. Along the way, I give an account of what makes actions heroic, of whether such actions are supererogatory, and of what, if anything, is wrong with moral deference. At the close of the essay, I begin to explore the flipside of these ideals: villainy. 2013-01-18T15:45:24Z 2013-01-18T15:45:24Z 2012-03 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0031-8116 1573-0883 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/76301 Markovits, Julia. “Saints, Heroes, Sages, and Villains.” Philosophical Studies 158.2 (2012): 289–311. Web. en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9883-x Philosophical Studies Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ application/pdf Springer Science + Business Media B.V. Markovits via Michelle Baildon |
| spellingShingle | Markovits, Julia Saints, heroes, sages, and villains |
| title | Saints, heroes, sages, and villains |
| title_full | Saints, heroes, sages, and villains |
| title_fullStr | Saints, heroes, sages, and villains |
| title_full_unstemmed | Saints, heroes, sages, and villains |
| title_short | Saints, heroes, sages, and villains |
| title_sort | saints heroes sages and villains |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/76301 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT markovitsjulia saintsheroessagesandvillains |