The Limits of Moral Responsibility

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i think a lot of thinking about moral responsibility construes all moral criticism as a kind of punishment, or has a kind of sanction. But certainly there are cases where we impose sanctions, three strikes and youre out, on people that aren't justified. What makes them unjustified isn't the fact that we lack free will. It's that they are grossly too large in relation to the thing they're trying to effect. And if i grow up in circumstances that make me undeterrable, that's something very bad for me, as well as for you. So one things we owe to people is to try as best we can to put them in situations where they will develop the

T. M. Scanlon, one of the world's preeminent moral philosophers, was Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity at Harvard University until his retirement. In his seminal work, What We Owe to Each Other, Scanlon gives a liberal account of how to reason through what it takes to act justly in matters of morality as well as politics.

In this week’s conversation, T. M. Scanlon and Yascha Mounk discuss the true meaning of tolerance, how to decide whether an action is morally right or wrong, and why the question of free will isn’t as important as you might think.

This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

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