WHEN TO BE A HERO

I’m writing a book, When To Be a Hero, about actions above and beyond what morality requires.

I argue that some of these actions are such that we should perform them, so we’d be making a moral mistake if we failed to perform them, though we wouldn’t be doing anything morally wrong. Recognizing that there are things we should do for moral reasons that aren’t morally required and that there are morally permissible moral mistakes illuminates our moral lives in a number of ways.

I introduce these ideas in “Morally Permissible Moral Mistakes” and “Morality Within the Realm of the Morally Permissible.” I explore two views that these ideas make it possible for us to recognize in “Eating Meat as a Morally Permissible Moral Mistake” and “Gamete Donation as a Laudable Moral Mistake.” In “There is No Moral Ought and No Prudential Ought,” I argue that there is no moral ought such that one ought to do the morally best thing one could do, and that there is no moral ought that conflicts with a prudential ought.

“Morally Permissible Moral Mistakes,” Ethics, 2016. (Abstract)

“Morality Within the Realm of the Morally Permissible,” Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, 2015. (Abstract)

“Eating Meat as a Morally Permissible Moral Mistake,” in Philosophy Comes to Dinner, in Philosophy Comes to Dinner, Andrew Chignell, Terence Cuneo, and Matt Halteman, eds., Routledge, 2015. (Abstract) 

“Gamete Donation as a Laudable Moral Mistake,” in Oxford Handbook of Population Ethics, Gustaf Arrhenius, Krister Bykvist, Tim Campbell, and Elizabeth Finneron-Burns, eds., Oxford, forthcoming. (Abstract)

“There is No Moral Ought and No Prudential Ought,” in Routledge Handbook of Practical Reason, Ruth Change and Kurt Sylvan, eds. Routledge, 2021. (Abstract)