Speaker
Description
Title: Moral Conflicts: Do they exist? And can they be resolved?
Description: This workshop with review the debate in English-speaking ethics about the nature and status of moral dilemmas. Tracking the discussion from the seminal contribution of Bernard Williams in 1965, it will consider whether moral conflicts are genuine and whether their existence poses significant theoretical problems for historically dominant paradigms of normative ethics such as Kantian deontology and Utilitarian consequentialism. The workshop will also consider several philosophical insights on significant occasions of moral choice advanced by ancient thinkers, specifically Aristotle and Cicero. The presentation will conclude by comparing and contrasting ‘modern’ characterizations of dilemmas with ‘ancient’ perspectives on moral conflicts. It will argue that the ancient characterization of the highly contingent nature of decision-making in cases of duress is much more faithful to the reality of our lived experience, than the more rigid conceptions of moral choice advanced by many modern moral philosophers.
Speaker: Mr. Stone studied classics, biblical languages, and philosophy at the universities of Cambridge, Paris and London. He also holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of London. He has taught philosophy, ethics and classics at EEB1 since 2011.
