Philosophers have debated for millennia about whether moral requirements are always rational to follow. The background for these debates is often what I shall call “the self-interest model.” The guiding assumption here is that the basic demand of reason, to each person, is that one must, above all, advance one's self-interest. Alternatively, debate may be framed by a related, but significantly different, assumption: the idea that the basic rational requirement is to develop and pursue a set of personal ends in an informed, efficient, and coherent way, whether one's choice of ends is based on self-interested desires or not. For brevity I refer to this as “the coherence-and-efficiency model.” Advocates of both models tend to think that, while it is sufficiently clear in principle what the rational thing to do is, what remains in doubt is whether it is always rational to be moral. They typically assume that morality is concerned, entirely or primarily, with our relations to others, especially with obligations that appear to require some sacrifice or compromise with the pursuit of self-interest.

Richard Rorty is one of the principal architects of a new way of thinking about liberalism. He calls his way “liberal ironism”: it is a postmodern liberalism, without Enlightenment rationalism, without the hopeless and finally enervating aspiration to discover an a historical philosophical foundation (“natural rights”) for liberal principles and practices. The postmodern liberal ironist, unlike the classical liberal rationalist, “faces up to the contingency of his or her own most central beliefs and desires,” says Rorty, including the characteristic liberal belief that “cruelty is the worst thing we do.” Such postmodern liberals frankly admit the apparently unhappy consequence of that essential “contingency,” that “there is no neutral, noncircular way to defend” liberal ways, no good argument to deploy against “Nazi and Marxist enemies of liberalism”; but no such argument is needed, says Rorty, since loyalty to one's own community is morality enough, even where that loyalty is without foundation. Here, I begin with a few words about Rorty's postmodern liberalism, as preface to a discussion of the effects of postmodern doctrines on liberal moral psychology.

Is it possible for a person to understand that what he proposes to do is morally wrong and yet prefer to do it nonetheless? I shall argue that wickedness consists in a defect of character that results in one's often having just such preferences. Yet many philosophers think that wickedness so conceived is impossible, because, for them, having such a preference is incompatible with believing, or at least knowing, that the act would be wrong.

This paper seeks to examine two conflicting strands in the United States Supreme Court's treatment of “freedom of association,” by exploring some aspects of the historical development of the doctrine. It suggests that there are two conceptions of “freedom of association,” an older, traditional one, that eschews forcing odious contact on members of associations, and a newer one which privileges antidiscrimination doctrines over “freedom from association.” These two conceptions still exist on the Court, resulting in irreconcilable decisions such as those permitting the Boy Scouts to exclude gay scoutmasters, but forcing the Jaycees to accept women. The preference of one conception over the other is also evident in the work of different scholars, whose doctrinal approaches are similarly irreconcilable. The Supreme Court has explained the discontinuities in the doctrine by seeking to characterize it in terms of the First Amendment's “freedom of speech” clause, but the paper argues that it makes more sense, in the context of these two cases, to regard them as related to the First Amendment's “freedom of religion” clauses.

Constitutional law in the United States is, for most practical purposes, the product of ‘judicial review’, the power of judges to disallow policy choices made by other officials or institutions of government, ostensibly because those choices are prohibited by the Constitution. This extraordinary and unprecedented power, America's dubious contribution to the science of government, has made American judges the most powerful in the world, not only legislators but super-legislators, legislators with virtually the last word. Because lawmaking power divorced from popular will is tyranny, most states have attempted to reconcile the lawmaking power of judges with representative self-government by subjecting all or some judges to some form of popular election. In all but four such states, judges, encouraged and supported by their fellow lawyers in the organized bar—would-be judges and beneficiaries of judicial power—have responded by adopting codes of judicial ethics that limit what candidates for election to judicial office are permitted to say. The effect is to undermine elections as a control on judicial power by limiting criticism of judicial activism, the misuse of judicial power.

I argue that agent-centered options to favor and sacrifice one’s own interests are grounded in a particular aspect of self-ownership. Because you own your interests, you are entitled to a say over how they are used. That is, whether those interests count for or against some action is, at least in part, to be determined by your choice. This is not the only plausible argument for agent-centered options. But it has some virtues that other arguments lack.

The threat of terrorism once again raises some of the classic questions about constitutionalism: is it possible for constitutions to do what they aim to do—channel and control political power in such a way as to make it safe and beneficent for those under its rule but also competent to govern? Does not terrorism reraise the Schmittian problem of “the exception”, i.e., the situation of emergency that necessarily escapes all constitutional limitations? Although they did not face the problem of terrorism as we know it, the American founders developed three different models of constitutionalism, embodying three different ways of responding to emergent circumstances and yet remaining bound to the constitutionalist aspiration. We develop the main outlines of the three models both conceptually and historically and show how they continue to be relevant to current discussions of constitutionalism in the age of terror. Finally, we make a tentative effort to judge which of the three models is most able to do what constitutions should do in difficult times.

In this essay I argue that contemporary accounts of virtue ought to incorporate methods ancient virtue ethicists used in addressing an audience whose members were interested in improving their behavior. Ancient examples of these methods, I argue, model how to represent practical rationality in ethical arguments. They show us that when we argue for virtue we ought to address common claims, refer to moral reasoning as a stepwise process, and focus on norms when making recommendations. Our own ethical arguments will be improved if we do these things. To the extent that these methods are incorporated into our contemporary accounts of virtue, we will make important points of contact with the account of practical rationality that forms the very basis of the view.

The world's aging populations face novel health challenges never experienced before in human history. The moral landscape thus needs to adapt to reflect this novel empirical reality. In this paper I take for granted one basic moral principle advanced by Peter Singer — a principle of preventing bad occurrences — and explore the implications that empirical considerations from demography, evolutionary biology, and biogerontology have for the way we conceive of fulfilling this principle at the operational level. After bringing to the fore a number of considerations that Singer ignores, such as the probability that nonintervention will result in harm and the likelihood that different kinds of extrinsic and intrinsic harms can be prevented, I argue that the aspiration to extend the human biological warranty period (by retarding the rate of aging) is a pressing moral imperative for the twenty-first century. In the final sections I briefly address some standard objections raised against life extension and conclude that, while there may be some legitimate concerns worth addressing, they are not compelling enough to provide a rational basis for forfeiting the potential health and economic benefits that could be realized by extending the biological warranty period.

Free speech has been treated as a preeminent constitutional right in the United States for more than half a century. The rights of property owners, on the other hand, have received little constitutional protection since the New Deal period of the 1930s. This modern dichotomy is particularly striking because it obscures an older constitutional tradition that equated economic liberty and freedom of expression. This tradition saw both property rights and speech rights as essential to the protection of personal freedom by restraining the power of government.

Aggregation in moral philosophy calls for the summing or averaging of values or utilities as a guide to individual behavior. But morality, it is argued, needs to be individualistic, in view of the evident separateness of persons, especially given the great disparities among individuals who nevertheless interact with each other in social life. The most plausible general moral program is the classical liberal (or “libertarian”) one calling for mutual noninterference rather than treating others as equal to oneself in point of demands on our action. Why, then, would we ever aggregate? The reason is that we are affected by behavior that has general effects, especially unintended side effects, on all sorts of people among whom we ourselves are often to be found. When we are randomly situated among such groups—as we sometimes are and often are not—minimizing aggregate harm is the plausible strategy, and sometimes promoting aggregate benefit as well.