Speaker Series: Zoë Johnson King (Harvard)

Title: Aretaic Injustice Abstract

Abstract:  Philosophers have had a lot to say about blame and blameworthiness (and excuses, and exemptions, and punishment, and the standing to blame, and...), but much less to say about praise and praiseworthiness. This talk counteracts that trend by summarizing the account of praiseworthiness developed in my book manuscript and drawing out some of its implications. I offer views about the conditions under which people are praiseworthy for what we care about, for what we try to do, and for what we actually do, and I explain what these views jointly imply about how to deliberately increase one's own praiseworthiness. I then describe my account's implications regarding positive moral luck; in brief, on my account positive constitutive, circumstantial, and resultant luck are each somewhat mitigated but by no means eliminated. I end with some sobering reflections on the ways in which background injustices affect the distribution of positive moral luck, thus placing limits on how praiseworthy it is possible for someone to become.

Zoë Johnson King is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. She works on ethical, metaethical, and epistemological issues to do with motivation, agency, and responsibility. Her first book, Praiseworthiness, is under contract with Oxford University Press and will be published Open Access sometime in the near future.