The Ethical Dimensions of Self-Control

• Applicant: Dr. Hannah Altehenger
• Subject Area: Practical Philosophy
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 493685388

The main objective of the project is to provide an in-depth account of the ethical dimensions of self-control. More specifically, the project seeks to develop a comprehensive ethical perspective on self-control by discussing both its evaluative and normative dimensions. Three questions will be at the center of the project: (i) Is self-control valuable and if so, why exactly? (ii) Can one have ‘too much’ self-control? (iii) Are our ordinary moral practices of ‘self-control praise and blame’, i.e., of praising ourselves and others for the successful exercise of self-control and, even more importantly, of blaming ourselves and others for failures of self-control, justified or are they rather in need of reform? In discussing these questions, the project will both close a crucial gap in the contemporary philosophical debate on self-control and provide a valuable impetus for the debate’s future development. Moreover, it is to be expected that the project’s results will also prove fruitful for further debates in philosophical moral psychology, most notably, the debates on weakness of will and moral responsibility. The project will proceed in a genuinely interdisciplinary manner, and, in addition to using the toolkit of (analytic) philosophy, rely on empirical findings concerning self-control at various key junctures.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants