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My first book, Responsibility & Luck: A Defense of Praise and Blame, is available for purchase in paperback, as well as for Kindle and Nook.

Does the pervasive influence of luck in life mean that people cannot be held responsible for their choices? Do people lack the control required to justify moral praise and blame? In his famous article "Moral Luck," philosopher Thomas Nagel casts doubt on our ordinary moral judgments of persons. He claims that we intuitively accept that moral responsibility requires control, yet we praise and blame people for their actions, the outcomes of those actions, and their characters – even though shaped by forces beyond their control, i.e., by luck. This is the "problem of moral luck."

In Responsibility & Luck, I argue that this attack on moral judgment rests on a faulty view of control, as well as other errors. By developing Aristotle's theory of moral responsibility, I explain the sources and limits of a person's responsibility for what he does, what he produces, and who he is. Ultimately, I show that moral judgments are not undermined by luck. In addition, this book explores the nature of moral agency and free will, the purpose of moral judgment, causation in tort and criminal law, the process of character development, and more.

Responsibility & Luck is scholarly but accessible to active-minded people interested in philosophy. You can preview the book by reading Chapter One and Chapter Three as PDFs – or by listening to my reading of Chapter One.

• What "bleeding heart libertarianism" (BHL)-- or rawlsekianism, liberaltarianism, new libertarianism – is
• why BHL matters
• What's new about BHL, as a form of libertarianism
• The meaning of "social justice"
• The seeming incompatibility of libertarianism and social justice
• Why BHLs want to reconcile libertarianism and social justice
• How BHLs attempt to reconcile libertarianism and social justice: Friedrich Hayek
• Hayek's views
• Hayek + Rawls = BHL
• BHL verus altruistic defenses of libertarianism
• The moral assessment of BHL
• The need to develop a better defense of a win-win world
• How to talk about how capitalism helps the poor: benefits versus goals
• The success of BHL
• The potential effect of BHL on American politics
• Silver linings and take-home points
• Rawls' conception of justice

• John McCaskey's Web Site
• Bleeding Heart Libertarians, including its about us
• Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know by Jason Brennan
• Free Market Fairness by John Tomasi

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