POSITIVE MORAL PHILOSOPHY

Co-edited by Cheshire Calhoun, Jules Holroyd, and Karen Stohr

The series is devoted to cutting edge scholarly monographs and cross-over texts of 50,000 to 70,000 words and welcomes diversity of research methods and scholarly traditions.

Potential topics include: 

• constructive accounts of how individual moral performance and character can be improved, and how social moral norms and attitudes can be improved;

• the nature and function of positively valenced moral attitudes, such as gratitude, appreciation, praise, empathy, sympathy, benevolence, faith in humanity, and hope;

• alternatives to blaming and punitive responses to wrongdoers, such as restorative justice, truth and reconciliation processes, forgiveness, and scaffolding improved moral agency; 

• the attractiveness of morality, expressed, for example, in moral aspirations and ideals, admiration of moral exemplars, moral striving, and routine compliance with social moral norms;

• actions that exceed what is morally required, from saintliness and heroism to ordinary volunteerism, the taking on of responsibilities, and philanthropy;

• positive duties of beneficence, care, or supportiveness, rather than negative duties of restraint;

• positive virtues, such as hope, compassion, reverence, kindness, trustworthiness, integrity, reverence, cheerfulness, and neighborliness;

• the social infrastructure of morality, including ordinary social practices of politeness, generosity, and helpfulness; childhood moral education; good moral communities; creating cultures of giving; social supports of virtue; and solidarity relations;

• models of the moral agent that challenge the homo economicus model of the self-interest-maximizing agent;

• models of moral communities that exemplify moral ideals and aspirations, or that articulate pathways for collective moral improvement; 

• theories of collective moral progress and moral revolution.

Contact the editors:

cheshire.calhoun@asu.edu

j.d.holroyd@sheffield.ac.uk

Karen.Stohr@georgetown.edu