Ethics for the Imperfect: Hypocrisy, Slacking Off, and Getting Off the Hook

Abstract

It is often foreseeable that we will fail to do what we ought to do, individually and collectively. This dissertation explores a delicate balance which normative theories are accordingly forced to strike. On the one hand, these theories are meant to provide a demanding standard by which to measure our conduct and characters. When we point out what an agent ought to have done, we are marking how short she has fallen – how she could have done, or been, better. On the other hand, these theories are meant to provide practical guidance – to say something about what we ought to do in our actual, non-ideal situation, given our imperfect characters. This seems to require taking certain of our moral failings for granted.This dissertation consists of three papers which probe the tension between these two facets of “ought,” the one uncompromising, the other concessive. Chapter I, “Hypocrisy as Two-Faced,” provides an original theory of hypocrisy. Chapter II, “Why Plan-Expressivists Can’t Pick Up the Moral Slack,” raises new objections to plan-expressivism as well as a new problem about the meaning of normative judgments concerning multiple agents. Chapter III, “Blameworthy Required Acts,” argues that some acts are both required and wrong, and proposes that whether an agent is blameworthy for performing such an act depends on whether it is her fault that this act is both required and wrong.