| Popis: |
This chapter renders the analysis of moral agency by John Dewey, one of the founders of American pragmatism, as an account of pragmatist role ethics. For Dewey, moral obligations arise naturally in, and are constitutive of, the role relationships that are necessary to a society’s existence. The purpose of morality is regulation of the mutual reciprocal expectations that people have of one another’s conduct in their enactment of social roles. Dewey insists that acts with moral significance are enactments of the self. Thus, when making morally significant choices of role and performance, the agent is choosing the sort of person she is or wants to become. Deliberation over the choice is influenced by three independent sources of normativity, which often diverge in influence: the agent’s own judgement of the moral praiseworthiness of the choice; its socially recognized obligations; and whether the character trait it reveals will be approved by others. |
