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Strawson or Straw Man? More on Moral Responsibility and the Moral Community

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Abstract

In a recent article in this journal, I argued against the popular twofold Strawsonian claim that there can be no moral responsibility without a moral community and that, as a result, moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal. Benjamin De Mesel has offered a number of objections to my argument, including in particular the objection that I mischaracterized Strawson’s view. In this article, I respond to De Mesel’s criticisms.

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Notes

  1. There is of course a famous puzzle—the “paradox” of analysis—regarding how it can nonetheless be the case that the analysans is conceptually prior to the analysandum, but I will not investigate that puzzle here.

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Ish Haji and, especially, Benjamin De Mesel for comments on a previous draft.

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Correspondence to Michael J. Zimmerman.

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Zimmerman, M.J. Strawson or Straw Man? More on Moral Responsibility and the Moral Community. J Ethics 21, 251–262 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-017-9255-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-017-9255-z

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