Moral Perception and Particularity

This collection of Laurence Blum's essays examines the moral import of emotion, motivation, judgement, perception, and group identifications.

Most contemporary moral philosophy is concerned with issues of rationality, universality, impartiality, and principle. By contrast Laurence Blum is concerned with the psychology of moral agency. The essays in this collection examine the moral import of emotion, motivation, judgment, perception, and group identifications, and explore how all these psychic capacities contribute to a morally good life. Blum takes up the challenge of Iris Murdoch to articulate a vision of moral excellence that provides a worthy aspiration for human beings. Drawing on accounts of non-Jewish rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust Blum argues that impartial principle can mislead us about the variety of forms of moral excellence.

Part I. Particularity: 1. Introduction; 2. Iris Murdoch and the domain of the moral; 3. Moral perception and particularity; Part II. Moral Excellence: 4. Moral exemplars: reflections on Scindler, the Trocmes, and others; 5. Vocation, friendship, community: limitations of the personal/impersonal framework; 6. Altruism and the moral value of rescue: Resisting persecution, racism, and genocide; 7. Virtue and community; Part III. The Morality of Care: 8. Compassion; 9. Moral development and conceptions of morality; 10. Gilligan and Kohlberg: implications for moral theory; 11. Gilligan's two voices and the moral status of group identity.

Moral Perception and Particularity explores the moral import of emotions, motivation, perception, judgment, and group identifications as a corrective to moral philosophy's standard focus on impartiality and rational principle.