Relational Agency: Yes—But How Far? Vulnerability and the Moral Self

From the immune self to moral agency Comments

The views I expressed almost 20 years ago have not significantly changed. I still believe that the self-metaphor governs the practice and theoretical orientation of most practicing immunologists, but the neat boundaries of “self” and “other” continue to be broken and replaced by a spectrum of functions based on a gradation of immune responses that do not neatly fit the self-other division. When...

Shaun Gallagher Moral Agency , Self - Consciousness , and Practical Wisdom 1

This paper argues that self-consciousness and moral agency depend crucially on both embodied and social aspects of human existence, and that the capacity for practical wisdom, phronesis, is central to moral personhood. The nature of practical wisdom is elucidated by drawing on rival analyses of expertise. Although ethical expertise and practical wisdom differ importantly, they are alike in that...

Agency and Moral Realism

Moral Agency in Mammalia

About the extent of moral agency in the animal kingdom, one view is that only humans are moral agents. Holding a different view, I argue that moral agency depends on the capacity for other-regard and the capacity to be attuned to significance—such that things matter to one. I derive a criterion where a creature is a moral agent if she performs an action that promotes others’ significant interes...

Relational Investing and Agency Theory

** Associate Professor, University of Maryland; National Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. We are grateful to Ron Gilson, Joe Grundfest, Alan Schwartz, and Eric Talley for helpful comments. Todd Cleary provided excellent research assistance. The support of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics at Stanford Law School and The Roberts Center for Law, Business, and Corporate ...