Relative Justice : : Cultural Diversity, Free Will, and Moral Responsibility / / Tamler Sommers.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Sommers, Tamler,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2011]; ©2012
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Edition: Course Book
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (248 p.)

When can we be morally responsible for our behavior? Is it fair to blame people for actions that are determined by heredity and environment? Can we be responsible for the actions of relatives or members of our community? In this provocative book, Tamler Sommers concludes that there are no objectively correct answers to these questions. Drawing on research in anthropology, psychology, and a host of other disciplines, Sommers argues that cross-cultural variation raises serious problems for theories that propose universally applicable conditions for moral responsibility. He then develops a new way of thinking about responsibility that takes cultural diversity into account. Relative Justice is a novel and accessible contribution to the ancient debate over free will and moral responsibility. Sommers provides a thorough examination of the methodology employed by contemporary philosophers in the debate and a challenge to Western assumptions about individual autonomy and its connection to moral desert.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I. Metaskepticism about Moral Responsibility -- Chapter One. The Appeal to Intuition -- Chapter Two. Moral Responsibility and the Culture of Honor -- Chapter Three. Shame Cultures, Collectivist Societies, Original Sin, And Pharaoh's Hardened Heart -- Chapter Four. Can the Variation Be Explained Away? -- Part II. The Implications of Metaskepticism -- Chapter Five. Where Do We Go from Here? -- Chapter Six. A Metaskeptical Analysis of Libertarianism and Compatibilism -- Chapter Seven. A Very Tentative Metaskeptical Endorsement of Eliminativism about Moral Responsibility -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index