The Moral Evaluation of Past Tragedies: A New Puzzle

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Abstract

The past is full of terrible tragedies, including slavery, World War I, and the Holocaust. Morality would clearly appear to support the preference that the victims of those calamities would have lived free and peaceful lives. And yet, a puzzle or even a paradox appears to be lurking here. Moral evaluation can be either personal or impersonal, yet neither one of these two perspectives, nor any other prevalent moral evaluation of events, appears to yield the morally expected conclusion. To the best of my knowledge this puzzle has not been discussed before. If there is no way to escape this surprising conclusion, then morality appears to be much more grim and unsympathetic than we normally think.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)188-201
Number of pages14
JournalJournal of Moral Philosophy
Volume17
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden.

Keywords

  • Nonidentity problem
  • moral paradoxes
  • philosophy of history

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Philosophy

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