Abstracts
The following papers have been accepted for presentation at AAP 2013. If you've just submitted an abstract, it may take a few days to appear.
| Name: Dr. Sean McKenna |
| Institution: ACU |
| Title: Bespoke or Off The Rack: choosing roles that suit |
| Abstract: Those who fill certain important community roles can, at times, see themselves (and be seen by others) as bound to act in a fashion typical or consistent with those roles. They can believe that their freedom to choose how they will act is in some ways compromised by their responsibility to be faithful to the role they fill. This can then lead to an acceptance, by them, and an expectation, by others, that their actions in the role need not (or indeed should not) reflect their personal moral positions. A role based morality is then taken to supersede the moral actor's personal morality. Such a reduction in personal liberty and autonomy makes the possibility of the moral agent, in the role, acting authentically problematic. The paper considers the process by which the moral actor comes to be encased in a role that restricts her moral freedom, and questions the reasonableness of moral actors allowing themselves to be aligned to ill matched roles. As well, the paper puts forward claims concerning the necessity for those taking on roles to sincerely exercise their moral imagination in order to avoid future compromise. |
| Keywords: Morality, Roles, Freedom, Moral Imagination |
