Wanting Others to Fare Well: The Structure of Benevolence
31. Januar 2013
Zukunftskolleg Lecture
Prof. Christoph Fehige (Senior Fellow, Zukunftskolleg, Philosophy, Saarbrücken)
People's concern for other people's well-being is a mighty issue. The absence or presence, the weakness or strength of that attitude shape our private and public lives so significantly that many disciplines make a point of studying it. Biologists and psychologists are deeply involved, and so are economists, moral philosophers, and others.
While the object of this talk is of interdisciplinary interest, the approach will be fairly philosophical. Acknowledging that they must leave it to other disciplines to answer the factual question to what extent people are benevolent or altruistic, philosophers can shed light on what we could reasonably mean by such a question or by answers to it. The plan is to articulate and partly answer some, by no means all, questions about the concept of benevolence. For instance, how should we think of the relation between a person's benevolence and her preferences concerning specific situations? And what should go into the judgement that one person is altogether more benevolent than another? What can such comparisons mean if, in principle, they depend on infinitely many data? How does the strength of a person's benevolence correlate with its partiality or impartiality, and how with her willingness to make sacrifices?
All these questions about benevolence hang together. A general framework will be presented that may help us make headway with them, and also with similar questions about other attitudes.
Thu, 31 January 2013, 4–5 pm
University of Konstanz, lecture hall A 702
Contact
Sigrid Elmer, Zukunftskolleg sigrid.elmer[at]uni-konstanz.de