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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主要作者: Markovits, Julia
其他作者: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
格式: Article
語言:en_US
出版: Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2013
在線閱讀:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/76301
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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.
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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
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