Acing Under the "Guise of the Bad"? Practical Rationality and Evil Action

Location:
MAY 15, 2014: AULA CAMPUS, UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA (ALTES AKH)
MAY 16 AND MAY 17, 2014: DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA
(NEUES INSTITUTSGEBÄUDE NIG, HS 2i.)

ORGANIZERS:
Prof. Herlinde Pauer-Studer (ERC-Project “Distortions of Normativity”,
Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna).
Prof. Hans Bernhard Schmid (Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna)

It is often claimed that all action is guided by the agent's conception of
what is worthwhile pursuing, or "good", however skewed the agent's notion
of the good may be. Yet according to many, this view is overly optimistic.
It is faced with a moderate and a more radical challenge. The moderate
challenge is widely accepted: sometimes, agents perform an action against
their own better judgment. The radical challenge claims that it is
possible - in principle, at least – that agents act under the guise of the
bad rather than under the guise of the good. According to this account
(defended among others by Augustine and Kant) evil agents do not act even
though they know the action is bad. Rather, they do so because they know
that the action is bad. In that case, the agent's belief that the action
is bad is part of the reason why it is performed. This conception is more
controversial: it raises the question of how bad reasons for action can
function as practical reasons. The conference aims at revisiting the idea
of radical evil in the context of the current debate on evil and bad
action.

Confirmed Speakers:

Ben Bramble, Vienna
Claudia Card, Madison, Wisconsin
Christoph Halbig, Giessen
Arto Laitinen, Tampere
Herlinde Pauer-Studer, Vienna
Fabienne Peter, Warwick
Joseph Raz, Oxford/New York
Sebastian Rödl, Leipzig
Hans Bernhard Schmid, Vienna
Sergio Tenenbaum, Toronto
Mark Timmons, Tucson, Arizona

We would gladly welcome you to attend the conference. In case you have any
further questions, please contact [email protected]