Intro -- Contents -- 1. "The Angel Must Hang!": Inescapable Moral Wrongdoing in Melville's Billy Budd -- I. The Idea of Inescapable Moral Wrongdoing -- II. The Controversy about Billy Budd -- III. The Trial of Billy Budd -- IV. A Tragic Choice -- V. An Assessment of Vere -- VI. A Prospectus of Philosophical Issues -- 2. Methodological Issues: Reflective Intuitionism -- I. The Importance of Methodology -- II. Hare's Linguistic Method -- III. A Reformulation of Rawls: From Reflective Equilibrium to Reflective Intuitionism -- IV. A Defense of Reflective Intuitionism -- 3. Arguments for the Dilemmas Thesis -- I. The Dilemmas Thesis -- II. The Equality Argument -- III. The Incomparability Argument -- IV. The Phenomenological Argument -- V. Sinnott-Armstrong's Understanding of "Moral Dilemmas -- 4. A Prescriptivist Argument against the Dilemmas Thesis -- I. Prescriptivism and the Dilemmas Thesis -- II. Attempts to Reconcile the Dilemmas Thesis and Intention-Prescriptivism -- III. Intention-Prescriptivism and a Common Argument against the Dilemmas Thesis -- IV. The Kantian Principle -- V. The Agglomeration Principle -- VI. The Significance of the Argument against the Dilemmas Thesis -- 5. The Phenomenological Argument for the Remainders Thesis -- I. The Remainders Thesis -- II. The Phenomenological Argument Revisited -- III. The Phenomenological Argument and the Method of Reflective Intuitionism -- IV. The Status of Intuitions about Inescapable Moral Distress -- V. Some Common Explanations of Inescapable Moral Distress -- 6. Responsibilities to Persons: An Explanation of Inescapable Moral Distress -- I. Normative Issues in the Debate about the Remainders Thesis -- II. Responsibilities to Persons -- III. More on Responsibilities -- IV. Conflicting Responsibilities and Inescapable Moral Distress -- V. Wrongdoing and Objectivity.

VI. Pluralism and Incomparability -- 7. Utilitarian Critiques of the Phenomenological Argument -- I. Utilitarian and Kantian Explanations of Inescapable Moral Distress -- II. The Act-Utilitarian Rejection of Inescapable Moral Wrongdoing -- III. Mill's Critique of the Phenomenological Argument -- IV. Hare's Critique of the Phenomenological Argument -- V. The Utilitarian Account of Moral Rules -- VI. The Utilitarian Account of Inescapable Moral Distress -- 8. Kantian Critiques of the Phenomenological Argument -- I. Respect for Persons as Ends in Themselves -- II. The Impossibility of Conflicting Obligations -- III. The Displacement of Persons -- IV. Donagan on Conflicting Grounds of Obligation -- V. Herman on Conflicting Grounds of Obligation -- VI. Korsgaard on Resisting Evil -- 9. Innocence Lost -- I. The Ideal of Moral Innocence -- II. The Nature of Moral Tragedy -- III. The Problem of Dirty Hands -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- W -- Z.

Our lives are such that moral wrongdoing is sometimes inescapable for us. We have moral responsibilities to persons which may conflict and which it is wrong to violate even when they do conflict. Christopher W. Gowans argues that we must accept this conclusion if we are to make sense of our moral experience and the way in which persons are valuable to us. In defending this position, he critically examines the recent moral dilemmas debate. He maintains that what is important in this debate is not whether there are irresolvable moral conflicts, but whether there are moral conflicts in which wrongdoing is unavoidable. Though it would be incoherent to conclude moral deliberation by deciding to perform incompatible actions, he argues that there is nothing incoherent in supposing that we have conflicting moral responsibilities. In this way, he shows that it is possible to capture the intuitions of those who have defended the idea of moral dilemmas while meeting the objections of those who have rejected this idea. Gowans carefully evaluates utilitarian and Kantian analyses of moral dilemmas. He argues that these approaches eliminate genuine moral conflict only by displacing persons as direct objects of moral concern. As an alternative, he develops a more concrete account in which moral responsibilities to persons are central. The book also includes discussions of Melville's Billy Budd, methodology in moral philosophy, moral pluralism, moral tragedy, and "dirty hands" in politics.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2018. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.