Events
Faculty of Arts: Faculty Colloquium (Term 2, 2017-18) – Professor Teresa Kuan on “The problem of moral luck, anthropologically speaking”
20 Apr 2018
4:00pm-6:00pm
Arts & Humanities Hub, G24, Fung King Hey Building
Professor Teresa Kuan Department of Anthropology
Tel: 3943 7107 (Ms Sonia Yip)
Why do people take personal blame for consequences for which they were not responsible? How do they come to see themselves as responsible for things they clearly could not have controlled? This talk explores answers to this question with reference to literature, cross-cultural research, and the work of the philosopher Bernard Williams. “Moral luck” and “agent-regret,” concepts developed by Williams, refer to human problems and experiences that may be universal. They relate to how blame and responsibility get distributed in the face of misfortune, and how, I will argue, the moral actor participates in the larger web of life that constitutes one’s history.
