Vincent Moscardelli

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On failing other people: vindicating the varieties of moral residue

Human beings are quite vulnerable creatures. We are easily broken and can die unexpectedly. People that matter deeply to us can be torn away, and things that we value can be destroyed. Our greatest needs may go unmet. These are simply facts about the human condition. But we are also limited–and thus vulnerable–in another important way: we control too little about our own actions to ever be confident that we will not fail other people who are, after all, vulnerable tous. Due to factors outside of our own control, acting in ways that we take to be morally required may become either impossible or unreasonably demanding. These too are facts about the human condition. There is so much that matters to us, and so much that jeopardizes what matters to us, that relative to what would be required to take proper care of it all, there is little that we can actually do. We live at all times with this risk of failing others. It is this second kind of vulnerability on which I focus in this talk: our vulnerability to failing others and to experiencing an anguished sense of responsibility for what we take to be our failures, though in circumstances in which other people are right to refrain from holding us responsible or from even regarding us as having failed. This is the experience of moral residue. The experience can be not just explained but also vindicated if it turns out that our feelings of responsibility are fitting, in which case they establish a sense in which we really have failed and really are responsible. I identify the metaethical assumptions according to which the emotional experience of moral residue can be fitting, and I show how adopting these assumptions enables us to draw meaningful distinctions amongst a variety of kinds of moral residue.

Lisa Tessman is a Professor of Philosophy at Binghamton University in New York, and a Senior Researcher at the University of Oslo. In 2023-2024 she served as President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association. She works in ethics, moral psychology, and feminist philosophy, with a focus on how people experience morality under difficult conditions. Her books include When Doing the Right Thing Is Impossible (2017), Moral Failure: On the Impossible Demands of Morality (2015) and Burdened Virtues: Virtue Ethics for Liberatory Struggles (2005). She is currently doing collaborative work on moral residue.

The lecture and Q&A will be followed by a reception in the Widmer Wing atrium. Refreshments will be served. Please RSVP by April 17.

Menu

• Cheese and crackers
• Fruit Platter
• Pita Triangles
• Red Pepper Hummus
• Baba Ghanoush
• Tabbouleh
• Florentine Stuffed Crimini Mushroom Caps
• Vegetable Curry Samosas
• Caramelized French Onion Tartlet
• Brie and Raspberry Almond Phyllo
• Edamame Dumpling