Everyday Ethics

In our last article, we clarified the challenges that the question of gun control presents for a liberal society.  We now move to another contentious topic for proponents of liberalism:  illegal drugs.  As we evaluate how a liberal ought to address the problem of illegal drug use, we will see that not only is it [...]

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In several previous articles, we discussed the theoretical principles that underlie our liberal system of government.  These principles include the values of autonomy, equality, and neutrality with regard to conceptions of the good life, as well as the role of the harm principle, paternalism, and legal moralism in limiting these values.  We now turn to [...]

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In the previous week, we have looked at the philosophically liberal foundations of our government, in order to better understand why we have the laws that we do.  We also evaluated the role of the harm principle in determining what sorts of activities we can rightly ban in a liberal society.  Before applying these considerations [...]

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In the previous article, we discussed the core principles of political liberalism, with the goal of using this framework to consider a variety of issues in applied moral problems.  But before we complete this task, there is another essential component of political liberalism that we ought to discuss.  The basis from which any act can [...]

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The word liberal is usually understood as a synonym for a Democrat in the United States.  Ironically, a liberal in the U.S. is more comparable to a conservative in the U.K.  Nonetheless, there is an important sense in which all Americans are political liberals.  This philosophical term has more to do with what we value [...]

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Now that your graduate school applications are in, it’s time to start thinking about how you are going to pay for all your expenses.  Most decent philosophy graduate programs will likely offer some kind of stipend or fellowship, with a tuition waiver, which helps but is tough to live on.  In my own program at [...]

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One of the core principles of everyday ethics and a principle purpose of this site is to help people to recognize ethical questions and revelations of ethical knowledge in their own everyday experiences. Sometimes this is harder than others. Recently, a great example of everyday ethics appeared in the news, when a story was published [...]

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