Moral Repair: Reconstructing Moral Relations after Wrongdoing

Description

Moral Repair examines the ethics and moral psychology of responses to wrongdoing. Explaining the emotional bonds and normative expectations that keep human beings responsive to moral standards and responsible to each other, Margaret Urban Walker uses realistic examples of both personal betrayal and political violence to analyze how moral bonds are damaged by serious wrongs and what must be done to repair the damage. Focusing on victims of wrong, their right to validation, and their sense of justice, Walker presents a unified and detailed philosophical account of hope, trust, resentment, forgiveness, and making amends - the emotions and practices that sustain moral relations. Moral Repair joins a multidisciplinary literature concerned with transitional and restorative justice, reparations, and restoring individual dignity and mutual trust in the wake of serious wrongs.

Margaret Urban Walker is professor of philosophy and Lincoln Professor of Ethics at Arizona State University. She is the author of Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics and Moral Contexts, and editor of Mother Time: Women, Aging and Ethics. She has published numerous articles in journals such as Ethics, Journal of Human Rights, Metaphilosophy, and Hypatia, among others.

"Walker presents a compelling picture of the interconnections between hope and trust and moral relations. "While our moral understandings are grounded on trust," she writes, "this trust is in turn dependent on hope." -Brad Wilburn, Chadron State College