Category Archives: Deontology and Moral Responsibility
Colin Bradley, ‘Accountability and Obligations Come Apart’
ABSTRACT Nicolas Cornell’s Wrongs and Rights Come Apart argues that accountability practices are rooted in wrongs, that obligations are rooted in rights, and that these are two distinct relations. Cornell’s argument convincingly pushes back against a widely held family of views in moral and legal philosophy according to which there is a necessary conceptual relation […]
Hong Wu, ‘The Duty-of-Care Dilemma of Companion AI in Mental Health: Care Ethics and Regulatory Responses under EU Law’
ABSTRACT Companion AI in mental health, anthropomorphic conversational systems providing emotional support across sustained periods of use, has moved from prototypes to mass-market products, and recent suicide cases in Europe and beyond have brought its risks to the centre of EU digital governance. This article argues that the EU’s regulatory framework, the AI Act, the […]
Aaron Salomon, ‘Moral Duties and Imperfect Social Norms’
ABSTRACT An influential and troubling objection to contractualism and rule consequentialism is that they cannot account for the fact that sometimes actual, imperfect social practices – such as, for example, our property conventions – can determine what we are morally required to do. My main aim in this paper is to argue that this objection […]
Good Faith (Theoretical Inquiries in Law, September 2026 )
Introduction (Andrew S Gold and Yifat Naftali Ben Zion) An anatomy of good faith (Lusina Ho) Good faith, the excluder (Nick Sage) Trust, good faith and contractual relations (Prince Saprai) Choosing versus having to be loyal (Avihay Dorfman) Finding loyalty in good faith (Andrew S Gold and Geneviève Helleringer) Good faith in corporate law: between […]
Albert Tan, ‘Law and Morality in Commercial Relationships’
ABSTRACT An adverse human rights audit can put a supplier’s business at risk long before a court examines the evidence. For workers at the same factory, even a sound audit may leave the question of compensation unresolved. This article examines the authority of ethical assessments in commercial relationships through these two disputes. I argue that […]
Jiahe Zed Zhang, ‘With Greater Causal Power Comes Greater Responsibility – Or Does It?’
ABSTRACT A popular view holds that an agent’s moral responsibility for an outcome is proportional to the causal contribution of their actions to that outcome, all else being equal. This paper challenges this view. I argue that there are counterexamples because some causal difference-makers (that is, factors that can influence the degree of causal contribution) […]
Howard Williams, ‘The Kantian Critique of Marx’s Property Theory’
ABSTRACT Although not explicitly a socialist, in his political philosophy Kant provides arguments that can be deployed by socialists to argue for radically different forms of social and economic organisation. In this article I contrast Karl Marx’s criticism of capitalist property relations with the general theory of property which Kant outlines in his Doctrine of […]
Pavlos Eleftheriadis, ‘Dignity and Virtue’
ABSTRACT Philosophers argue, following Kant, that dignity is an end beyond value, that is not something to be balanced against other ends or interests. Yet, pressing questions arise about the content of this claim. The very language of some person’s ‘equal’ status invites the thought of another’s ‘unequal’ status, a comparison which the Kantian approach, […]
Mihailis Diamantis, ‘Corporate Virtue and Vice’
ABSTRACT Authorities and academics primarily evaluate corporations through their behavior. But consumers, investors, and many corporate professionals implicitly evince an alternative perspective. For them, what matters is not just what corporations do, but also the deeper structures behind corporate behavior. While corporations might innovate, they can also be innovative. While they might lie, they can […]
Ryan Hanley, ‘Human Flourishing and the Wealth of Nations: Adam Smith on Character Development and Institutional Design’
ABSTRACT Students of Adam Smith’s views on virtue typically look to The Theory of Moral Sentiments. But in fact, the Wealth of Nations contains a strikingly robust theory of the relationship between virtues and institutions, one centered on the question of how the incentive systems created by various institutional structures encourage or impede the moral […]