• Contents


• Introduction


• Part I: Are There Impossible Moral Requirements?


• 1. Moral Dilemmas and Impossible Moral Requirements


• 2. Moral Intuition and Moral Reasoning


• 3. Risking Confidence


• Part II: Evasions


• 4. Witnessing Moral Failure


• 5. Idealizing Morality


• Part III: Endless Demands


• 6. Minimizing the Demands of Morality


• 7. On Having an Inexhaustible Source of Moral Requirements


• Conclusion


• References


• Index

Lisa Tessman is Professor of Philosophy at Binghamton University. Her previous publications have been in ethics, feminist philosophy, and related areas. Her more recent work integrates philosophical ethics with empirical moral psychology. She is the author of Burdened Virtues: Virtue Ethics for Liberatory Struggles.

Moral Failure: On the Impossible Demands of Morality asks what happens when the sense that "I must" collides with the realization that "I can't." Bringing together philosophical and empirical work in moral psychology, Lisa Tessman here examines moral requirements that are non-negotiable and that contravene the principle that "ought implies can." In some cases, it is because two non-negotiable requirements conflict that one of them becomes impossible to satisfy, and yet remains binding. In other cases, performing a particular action may be non-negotiably required -- even if it is impossible -- because not performing the action is unthinkable.