Whose responsibility? The marginalization of personal responsibility and moral character

Character and Virtue

Clean Hands ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190058692.003.0006 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 77-92

Author(s):

Jesse S. Summers ◽

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

Keyword(s):

Personal Responsibility ◽

Moral Virtue ◽

Moral Character ◽

Moral Behavior ◽

Stable Set ◽

Moral Issues ◽

Religious Devotion

Scrupulosity is not religious devotion or moral virtue. Those with Scrupulosity are concerned with moral behavior primarily as a way to reduce their underlying doubts and anxiety. Moral character requires attention to, concern for, and responsiveness to the morally relevant features of situations, acts, and people. Moral character also requires a stable set of underlying traits and beliefs that noncoincidentally lead to the appropriate motivations and endorsements. Some with Scrupulosity are ego-dystonic, rejecting their scrupulous symptoms, but one might also reject one’s own character. Those whose Scrupulosity is ego-syntonic—who endorse their scrupulous symptoms—also differ from those with moral character because those with Scrupulosity display fixation on certain issues to the exclusion of others, are inflexible with respect to circumstances, are overly concerned with merely possible—not probable—events, have an inflated sense of personal responsibility, and care about moral issues for the wrong reasons.

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Monitoring the self: François-Marc-Louis Naville and his moral tables

History of Science ◽

10.1177/0073275319876851 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 58 (2) ◽

pp. 117-141

Author(s):

Harro Maas

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Personal Responsibility ◽

Moral Character ◽

Moral Worth ◽

Detailed Examination ◽

The Self ◽

Reform Movement ◽

Early Nineteenth Century ◽

Pedagogical Reform

This paper examines the self-measurement and self-tracking practices of a turn-of-the-nineteenth-century Genevese pastor and pedagogical innovator, François-Marc-Louis Naville, who extensively used Benjamin Franklin’s tools of moral calculation and a lesser known tool, Marc-Antoine Jullien’s moral thermometer, to set a direction to his life and to monitor and improve his moral character. My contribution sheds light on how technologies of quantification molded notions of personal responsibility and character within an emerging utilitarian context. I situate Naville’s use of these tools within his work as a pastor in a parish of the (then occupied) Republic of Geneva and within the Genevese and Swiss pedagogical reform movement of the early nineteenth century. I provide a detailed examination of how Naville used and adapted Franklin’s and Jullien’s tools of moral accounting for his own moral and religious purposes. Time, God’s most precious gift to man, served Naville as the ultimate measure of his moral worth.

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Differentiating between different forms of moral obligations

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x19002589 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 43 ◽

Author(s):

Rajen A. Anderson ◽

Benjamin C. Ruisch ◽

David A. Pizarro

Keyword(s):

Moral Character ◽

Moral Obligations ◽

Different Types

Abstract We argue that Tomasello's account overlooks important psychological distinctions between how humans judge different types of moral obligations, such as prescriptive obligations (i.e., what one should do) and proscriptive obligations (i.e., what one should not do). Specifically, evaluating these different types of obligations rests on different psychological inputs and has distinct downstream consequences for judgments of moral character.

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My Culture Made Me Do It

Social Psychology ◽

10.1027/1864-9335/a000089 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 43 (2) ◽

pp. 108-113 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Eric Luis Uhlmann ◽

Brian A. Nosek

Keyword(s):

Personal Responsibility ◽

Cultural Socialization ◽

Racial Biases

The present research examined the effects of egocentric motivations on individuals’ explanations for how their automatic racial prejudices came into being. The majority of participants reported experiencing biased thoughts, feelings, and gut reactions toward minorities which they found difficult to consciously control, and they attributed such biases to cultural socialization. Of particular interest, ego-threatened participants were significantly more likely to attribute their automatic racial biases to their culture and significantly less likely to attribute such biases to themselves. Results suggest that attributing one’s racial biases to cultural socialization can be a defensive, motivated process aimed at diminishing personal responsibility.

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