Morality has a public as well as a private sphere. Private morality is about obligations\, virtues\, and so \;on\, of individual agents\, whereas public morality is concerned with collective obligations\, the \;assessment of institutions\, policies\, and so on. This workshop aims to shed light on the relation \;between public and private morality by focusing on questions such as the following.
(1) Which theories should be understood as being about private or public morality\, respectively\, and \;how well do these theories cohere with each other? To illustrate\, consequentialism has often been \;understood first and foremost as a theory of public morality (by the classic utilitarians as well as by \;some contemporary philosophers). Is consequentialism more convincing when understood in this \;way? How should other theories be understood in this regard? Also\, if one restricts a moral theory to\,
say\, the private sphere\, what does it take for this theory to cohere with a moral theory about the \;private sphere? Can one\, for example\, be a virtue ethicist with respect to private morality but a \;consequentialist as far as the assessment of institutions and policies is concerned?
(2) There are questions about a possible hierarchy of public and private morality. Is one type of \;morality more fundamental in the sense that the obligations of the other type can be derived from it? \;Rule-consequentialism and contractualism\, for example\, can be interpreted as implying a primacy of \;public morality. For on rule-consequentialism\, it is the consequences of our collective adherence to \;(or acceptance of) a set of rules that determines individual obligations. And on contractualism\, what \;it is right or wrong to do for an individual agent is determined by what could be justified to others \;on grounds that they could not reasonably reject. Other moral theories\, however\, can be understood \;as implying a primacy of private morality. Virtue ethics\, for example\, is at a fundamental level \;concerned with what kind of person individual agents ought to be. As a virtue ethicist\, one might
propose that we ought to implement those institutions and policies that tend to make people more \;virtuous\, whereby private virtue ethics is more fundamental in that it states what it takes for people \;to be virtuous. Do other moral theories also imply a hierarchy of public or private morality\, \;respectively? Should they?
(3) If one accepts a primacy of public or private morality in some sense\, how exactly can one derive \;judgements of the other type of morality? There are\, of course\, many alternatives to the examples \;given in the previous paragraph.
(4) The final type of questions concerns the so-called publicity condition\, which can be understood \;as a necessary condition for the truth of moral theories according to which moral theories must be \;publicly teachable without violations of their own requirements. If the publicity condition holds\, then \;act-consequentialism is arguably false because it sanctions moral elitism. Is the publicity condition a \;problem only for act-consequentialism or also for other moral theories? Can the publicity condition
be justified? How should it be formulated? Is it a principle that concerns all of morality or only \;obligations of justice?
vuko_andric@yahoo.de
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