The moral nexus, by R. Jay Wallace. [Book Review]

Lewis, James H.P. 2019. The moral nexus, by R. Jay Wallace. [Book Review]. European Journal of Philosophy 27 (4) , pp. 1093-1096. 10.1111/ejop.12506

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Abstract

Moral obligations can often be spotted together with claims that people can make on one another. Such as, for example, your obligation not to bully me, on the one hand, and on the other my claim against you not to bully me. That claim could be expressed by my protest directed at you at the time of the bullying, or later by my blame, your apology to me, or the special standing that I have to forgive you. What, though, is the connection between the obligations and the interpersonal claims that accompany them? In this book, R. Jay Wallace advances the view that it is a constitutive connection. That is, he argues that any given moral obligation is constituted by the legitimate claim of the person to whom the obligation is owed. As such, it is because you owe it to me not to bully me that you have an obligation to refrain from doing so, and it is because you violated your obligation that I am entitled to blame you. On this view, all moral obligations share the fundamental character of this bullying scenario in that they must always feature pairs of agents: one who is constrained by the obligation, and another to whom the obligation is owed.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Publisher:	Wiley
ISSN:	0966-8373
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	4 October 2023
Date of Acceptance:	30 August 2019
Last Modified:	21 Nov 2024 17:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/162929

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