Moral Impossibility

This volume provides a comprehensive picture of the significance of moral impossibility. It explores conceptual and applied questions through the moral psychology, meta-ethics, and politics of moral impossibility.

In every choice, action, and act of the imagination, what is possible for us is variously determined and delimited not only by physical and logical limits, but also by moral ones. These limits mark the domain of ‘moral impossibility’. Moral impossibilities limit what we conceive of, what we consider practically, and what we are capable of doing. They manifest in what is not-thought, unthinkable, undoable. They have individual and collective roots, change over time, and have significant consequences for the framing of problems, for the scope of deliberation, and for individual and social worldviews – as well as the conflicts that arise between them. This phenomenon is ubiquitous, yet scarcely discussed. This volume aims to open up and unify a field of inquiry by collecting original philosophical contributions exploring both conceptual and applied questions addressing the moral psychology, meta-ethics, and politics of moral impossibility.

Moral Impossibility will appeal to scholars and graduate students working in normative ethics, meta-ethics, moral psychology, philosophy of action, and social and political philosophy.