Much attention has been devoted in the social sciences to the reorganisation of the moral order of society (Smart, 1999). This reorganisation means that responsibility for welfare is now located with the individual. In spite of the salience given to privately held responsibility for welfare in social policy, little work has been carried out on the discourses underpinning this way of distributing responsibility (Finch and Mason, 1993, Duncan and Edwards, 1999, Rowlingson, 2002). Work on this issue is especially timely as New Labour continues the privatisation of responsibility for welfare in a way that, many people believe, neglects a moral dimension. Instead, New Labour favours a more ethical construction that exhorts the individual to do her duty by which they mean she should work for her own betterment and well-being (Levitas, 1998, Giddens, 1998, Jordan, 1998, Lund, 1999). This work begins by situating responsibility as a historically variable and discursive construction, uncovering how the understanding of responsibility changed as the problem focusing the minds of social engineers altered from one of poverty to one of security in the 1970s. While responsibility has only recently been identified as a particular issue for social policy academics (Roche, 1992, Dwyer, 1998, Dean et aI., 2004) philosophers and sociologists have paid close attention to responsibility over the past decade (Bauman, 1993, 1995, Habermas, 1990, 1995, Apel, 1989, 1996, Etzioni, 1995, Schmidtz, 1998, Goodin, 1998). Building on the issues raised by these authors, this work presents a qualitative study of government press releases, interviews with benefits recipients, members of the general public, welfare advisors and welfare benefits administrators to explore the rational structure of the discourses of responsibility for welfare. As a result, I develop the argument that while the reconfigured moral order promotes a private acceptance of responsibility for welfare, people still want a way of interpreting responsibility taking in a more public way.

A common conceptual framework depicts morality as an alien force commanding us from on high; in contrast, this dissertation presents a picture of morality that is deeply social. It is not an abstract morality that commands us, but we who place demands on each other. On this picture, we are equal participants in morality, rather than mere subjects of morality. This participation has fundamentally important implications for the shape and structure of morality; or so this dissertation argues. By way of introducing the work as a whole, I will here note some of the key facets of the social nature of morality that the dissertation develops. Our participation is primarily as enforcers, rather than followers, of morality. We hold people accountable to moral requirements through emotional responses like resentment, as well as actions and relations that follow from that attitude. As I argue, these emotions carry an important representational content, displaying the other person as having shown ill will. This ill will can be best understood as a disregard for relevant moral considerations that are available to the resented agent. Despite the negative tone of resentment, it is an aspect of being in community with each other. Someone who can be resented is a co-member of a community with us upon whom we can make demands and who can make demands upon us. We may not share community with some people regarding some issues, such as across religious divides, while still seeing them as people with whom we share at least some form of community, as within the system of basic liberal rights. There are people, as I discuss, who fail to be eligible for responsibility to even basic demands. With such people we have no community; they are to us like forces of nature, and the most dangerous of them are for us monsters. Though many endorse conceptions of community focused on shared experiences or values, I argue that such a notion of community is not appropriate for modern, diverse societies. In modern, particularly liberal, societies, we cannot expect to share religion, occupation, views of the good life, or the like, so these cannot constitute community among the members of society. A shared moral framework, however, provides a promising conception of community for diverse societies like our own. Our shared morality may thus be among the most important forms of community we can have on the large scale of modern society. That same diversity, however, raises problems for a shared morality. As I argue, our interpersonal moral demands will have to be justified to each other, given our different perspectives, and such justification may be difficult. I address both the nature of this interpersonal justification, as well as the difficulties of achieving it, within this dissertation. This dissertation shows that morality is social in yet another way. Focusing on justice, as a central part of the morality, I argue that the content of the principles to which we hold each other accountable itself emerges from our social institutions as those develop over time through our interactions. The diverse members of society must be able to share an understanding of their mutual expectations, but such members tend to disagree about how to interpret and apply moral values and principles. Social institutions, such as legal systems with courts to interpret law, can provide a common interpretation of expectations. If the rules that emerge from these institutions are justified to the members, then those rules may constitute justice within that society. This dissertation, then, presents a picture of morality that is social through and through. Morality is constructed within our social institutions, enforced interpersonally, restricted to what is mutually justified to society’s members, and ultimately constitutes one of our primary forms of community.

<p>A fundamental problem in political philosophy is how the freedom and equality of persons can be reconciled with the authority of social morality or law. The Kantian solution is to hold that the exercise of authority can be legitimate if and only if it is freely endorsed by the subjects of its exercise; thereby allowing persons to act as both subject and legislator. However, the fact of reasonable pluralism makes this approach problematic. A recent attempt to solve this conflict between authority and the free and equal idea, while also accounting for the fact of reasonable pluralism, is the theory of public reason liberalism developed by Gerald Gaus. The aim of this thesis is to give a critical evaluation of how successful Gaus is in solving this fundamental problem, while also situating public reason liberalism within the larger debate. The first chapter gives an overview of Gaus's theory and introduces some preliminary worries about the possibility of successfully converging on a workable set of socio-moral rules under public reason liberalism. Chapter two goes further, developing an internal critique of Gaussean public reason liberalism, and showing how this critique could play out using real-world examples. Chapter three explores alternative approaches to realizing the free and equal ideal in an attempt to situate Gaus's theory within the larger debate; finally concluding that Gaussean public reason liberalism is deeply problematic, both on a theoretical and a practical level, yet still offers important insights into the relationship between social-morality and the freedom and equality of persons.</p> / Master of Philosophy (MA)

Il presente studio è dedicato ad un'analisi del pensiero filosofico di F. D. Maurice (1805-1872), pastore anglicano, prima professore di letteratura inglese e storia presso il King's College di Londra e poi di filosofia morale e teologia presso l'Università di Cambridge, e si focalizza in particolare sui concetti di conscience e social order, nuclei speculativi in cui convergono i molteplici interessi di questo Autore. Dopo aver presentato una ricostruzione dei suoi anni di formazione, la ricerca considera i primi scritti di Maurice, di carattere etico e antropologico, dai quali emerge una decisa critica sia al soggettivismo razionalista, sia allo scetticismo empirista dell'epoca, e una riproposta dell'oggettività dell'esperienza e della conoscenza morali. Affrontando poi i suoi scritti di carattere socio-politico e di argomento religioso, si analizzano i fondamenti del vivere associato e il modello educativo proposto da Maurice, insieme ai suoi saggi su problemi storici e politici del tempo e alla polemica di argomento gnoseologico e teologico che lo ha opposto a Henry Mansel, a riguardo delle capacità e dei limiti della conoscenza umana. La ricerca considera infine il tema della coscienza collocando la trattazione mauriciana in materia di ontologia, antropologia, gnoseologia ed etica sociale. / This thesis is a study and critical analysis of the philosophical work of F. D. Maurice (1805-1872), Anglican priest, first professor of English literature and history at King's College, London, and later professor of morals and theology at Cambridge University. The thesis focuses on Maurice's ideas of conscience and social order, topics which uniquely characterise and best exemplify the divergent and speculative aspects of his thought. After reconstructing Maurice's education, the thesis considers his first writings about ethics and anthropology: these are characterized by a strong critique of both rationalistic subjectivism and the moral scepticism typical of empiricism. As a response Maurice stressed the objectivity of experience and consequent possibility of a genuinely moral knowledge. Then, considering Maurice's political and social works, the research presents an analysis of the basis of human social life, the pedagogic model proposed by the author, and his essays about the mid 19th century historical and political situation. In the same section, as a means of further elucidation, the thesis evaluates Maurice's debate with Henry Mansel about the capacity and the limits of human knowledge. The present study, finally, considers the topic of conscience, placing his thought within the fields of ontology, anthropology, knowledge, and social ethics.

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