Alexander Velichkov will give a self-contained talk at the higher seminar in practical philosopy. Here is his title and abstract:

 

The Internal Court of Guilt and Regret: Lorry Drivers, Gauguins, and Rational Plans of Life

 

Abstract: A guiding assumption in the contemporary responsibility literature is that the self-directed emotions of guilt and regret only target what is within an agent’s control. I defend an interpretation of Williams’s seminal “Moral Luck” against recent alternative interpretations and develop his insights in order to criticize this idea. Guilt is not only a deserved painful response following wrongdoing, but also motivates reflection and negotiation in morally ambiguous circumstances, which makes it appropriate before any wrongdoing has even been established. Furthermore, guilt is a noninstrumentally valuable acknowledgment of an agent’s moral fault even when that moral fault was outside of her control. However, I suggest that there is room for ambivalence: sometimes the guilt and regret that a person feels from realizing that she has done something wrong are tempered by the thought that she couldn’t have done better at the time with what was in her control. 

Welcome!

Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen