Alexander Pruss's Blog

Kant says that a virtuous persons has the happiness of others as an end. Note that this is not an end in the sense of a goal which we try t...

Intuitively: It is permissible to deliberately have children. But there is a powerful Kantian antinatalist argument against (1). To deci...

Suppose that, as some theories of motivation hold, that all our actions are done in pursuit of our flourishing. But the Scriptures tell us t...

I’ve been thinking of this way of putting one of Kant’s “20 thalers” objection to Anselm’s ontological argument: 1, When we say “ x is gre...

Here's a thought I had that might have theodical applications. Agents tend to be more responsible when they choose rightly than when whe...

Start with this thought: If I have on-balance stronger reasons to do A than to do B, and I am choosing between A and B, then it is better th...

Perhaps the deepest question about human beings is about the source of our dignity. What feature of us is it that grounds our dignity, gives...

The pursuit of perfect virtue should be central to my life. Necessarily, a virtue that does not completely guarantee acting rightly ...

Helga is well known to be perfectly virtuous. Her best friend Kurt is accused of conspiring to peacefully overthrow a tyrannical ...

Kant (on one reading) holds that the initial conditions of the universe and the laws of nature depend on us (noumenally speaking)....

Consider: We cannot permissibly intend to produce a person for reasons that do not include the specific person's own good. We ca...

A colleague alerted me that Laurie Paul has a piece on deciding whether to have children (in a position where one does not have any yet). ...

It has often struck me as perverse to be putting effort into making products one sells be less flexible and useful. There is a ...

Kant famously argued that we had a duty to believe in God, as this was necessary for us to fulfill the duty to give thanks for the universe....

Suppose you promise me to do something and suppose I should trust you. Then I have a moral reason not to check whether you did w...

Spinoza writes ( Ethics , Scholium to 4P72): The question may be asked: "What if a man could by deception free himself from imminent ...

Consider this argument: A desire to be morally perfect is morally required for humans. If naturalism is correct, a desire to be ...

We have special duties, independent of communal enactments, to take care of our siblings, precisely because they are siblings. ...

It seems to me that our attitudes to the pain of animals are three-fold: It is important for humans not to cause severe pain to non-...

The virtues support each other in two ways: (i) having one helps gain another; (ii) each helps to achieve the ends of the others....