The Faculty is delighted to welcome Professor Richard Pettigrew as the John Locke lecturer of 2025. Richard is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bristol.
Lecture 6: 'On the units of moral concern: persons, selves, and ethics'
In Lecture 6, I begin with a puzzle: it is possible to treat yourself in a way that is morally wrong, just as it’s possible to treat others in ways that are morally wrong; however, interpersonal morality, which governs your treatment of others, is more demanding than intrapersonal morality, which governs your treatment of yourself; but why should that be? I suggest this is best answered by taking the fundamental unit of morality—the moral subject—to be a person occupying a particular point of view, rather than a person taken as a whole: so, you, occupying your current point of view, can treat yourself, occupying a different point of view, in a way that is morally wrong. I draw on justifications of very limited institutions of private property to explain the asymmetry between the demands of interpersonal and intrapersonal morality.
Further information about the John Locke Lectures can be found on the John Locke Lectures page
