\u201cUnconditional Commitments, Integrity, and the Polity\u201d By Shmulik Nili (Northwestern\/ANU)<\/p>\n
Date: Friday 14 December, 2018
\nTime: 1100-1230
\nPlace: H-232<\/p>\n
Abstract: An important philosophical position holds that an agent\u2019s moral integrity is entirely parasitic upon morality\u2019s overall requirements. According to this \u201cintegrity skepticism,\u201d we can only know what our moral integrity requires once we know how, all things considered, we morally ought to act. In this essay\u2019s opening part, focused on individual ethics, I present two main arguments against integrity skepticism. The first argument is that since agents have important moral reasons to incorporate certain unconditional commitments into their self-conception, it is unfair to criticize agents who go on to treat these commitments as an independent factor in their moral deliberation. The second argument links agents\u2019 unconditional moral commitments to their duty to sustain self-respect. In the essay\u2019s latter part, I seek to show that parallel versions of these two arguments provide even stronger grounds for resisting integrity skepticism regarding collective affairs. Specifically, I contend that integrity skepticism fails when it comes to liberal-democratic polities as collective agents: such polities have their own morally important integrity, which is not parasitic upon them \u201cdoing the right thing.\u201d Rather, a liberal polity\u2019s moral integrity is an independent moral factor informing the analysis of what the polity ought to do.<\/p>\n
About the speaker: Dr Nili\u2019s current work focuses on three related themes. First, how we should think about the collective agency of \u201cthe sovereign people,\u201d both as a matter of abstract philosophy and as a matter of concrete public policy (see The People\u2019s Duty, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press). Second, what political philosophy can contribute when facing obvious moral failures in public policy. Finally, the moral value of integrity, whether applied to ordinary people, to authoritarian demagogues, or to collective institutions. Dr Nili\u2019s inquiries into these three themes started with a focus on corruption issues. In particular, global corruption related to the \u201cresource curse\u201d and in philosophical questions that this \u201ccurse\u201d raises about public property and democracy, as well as about the practical tasks of political philosophy. More recently, Dr Nili ha sought to connect his global theory arguments to domestic politics, paying special attention to morally fraught dynamics in various developing countries, in the United States, and in his native Israel. Dr Nili has publications in a number of journals including, Ethics, Journal of Politics, American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Journal of Political Philosophy and History of Political Thought.<\/p>\n
Web: www.phil.bilkent.edu.tr
\nFacebook: www.facebook.com\/bilkent.philosophy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cUnconditional Commitments, Integrity, and the Polity\u201d By Shmulik Nili (Northwestern\/ANU) Date: Friday 14 December, 2018 Time: 1100-1230 Place: H-232 Abstract: An important philosophical position holds that an agent\u2019s moral integrity is entirely parasitic upon morality\u2019s overall requirements. According to this \u201cintegrity skepticism,\u201d we can only know what our moral integrity [\u2026] <\/p>\n