Alfred Archer
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View article: Consigning Injustice to History with Political Apologies
Consigning Injustice to History with Political Apologies Open
Failures to remember the past properly can constitute a range of different wrongs. In this article, we identify a novel kind of wrong that often occurs through political apologies: consigning an injustice to history. Consigning acknowledge…
View article: Moral Exemplars and the Moral Community
Moral Exemplars and the Moral Community Open
Linda Zagzebski’s groundbreaking book Exemplarist Moral Theory has inspired new attention to the use of moral exemplars in moral education. Zagzebski argues that admiration for moral exemplars has a crucial role to play in the development …
View article: Shame in Response to Institutional Failure
Shame in Response to Institutional Failure Open
When an institution morally fails, what is the appropriate emotional reaction for those institution members who are causally uninvolved in bringing about this failure? Our aim in this article is to explain why it may be fitting for such pe…
View article: In defense of sporting supererogation: a reply to Borge
In defense of sporting supererogation: a reply to Borge Open
In moral philosophy, it is common to accept that some acts are beyond the call of duty, or supererogatory. Recently, it has been argued that there are also distinctly sporting forms of supererogation (Archer 2017). These arguments have bee…
View article: ‘Life outside the diamond is a wrench’: on experiencing talent loss in sports
‘Life outside the diamond is a wrench’: on experiencing talent loss in sports Open
Many elite athletes find the loss of their athletic abilities due to age or injury to be a profoundly challenging experience. While talent development is a well-studied phenomenon, far less attention has been paid to the issue of talent lo…
View article: Rejecting Identities: Stigma and Hermeneutical Injustice
Rejecting Identities: Stigma and Hermeneutical Injustice Open
Hermeneutical injustice means being unjustly prevented from making sense of one's experiences, identity or circumstances and/or communicating about them. The literature focusses almost exclusively on whether people have access to adequate …
View article: Away from Home: The Ethics of Hostile Affective Scaffolding
Away from Home: The Ethics of Hostile Affective Scaffolding Open
During live sporting events, fans often create intense atmospheres in stadiums, expressing support for their own local players and discouragement for the opposition. Crowd hostility directed at opposition players surprisingly elicits contr…
View article: Book Symposium: Alfred Archer and Jake Wojtowicz’s <i>Why it’s OK to be a Sports Fan</i>
Book Symposium: Alfred Archer and Jake Wojtowicz’s <i>Why it’s OK to be a Sports Fan</i> Open
This is a book symposium on Why It’s OK to Be aSports Fan, by Alfred Archer and Jake Wojtowicz, with contributions from Adam Kadlac, Joe Slater, Nathaniel Baron-Schmitt, and Nina Windgätter. The discussion covers a range of topics, includi…
View article: Influencers as role models
Influencers as role models Open
The claim that celebrities have special duties to be good role models is prominent in the philosophical literature on fame. We investigate whether these arguments can be extended to social media influencers. According to the role model arg…
View article: The Cautionary Account of Supererogation
The Cautionary Account of Supererogation Open
The problem of supererogation has attracted significant attention from contemporary moral philosophers. In this paper, we show that this problem was outlined in different terms in the work of the 11th century Persian philosopher Abū Alī Mi…
View article: It was a Different Time: Judging Historical Figures by Today's Moral Standards
It was a Different Time: Judging Historical Figures by Today's Moral Standards Open
How should we respond to historical figures who played an important role in their country's history but have also perpetrated acts of great evil? Much of the existing philosophical literature on this topic has focused on explaining why it …
View article: Tightlacing and Abusive Normative Address
Tightlacing and Abusive Normative Address Open
In this paper, we introduce a distinctive kind of psychological abuse we call Tightlacing. We begin by presenting four examples and argue that there is a distinctive form of abuse in these examples that cannot be captured by our existing m…
View article: Exemplars and expertise: what we cannot learn from saints and heroes
Exemplars and expertise: what we cannot learn from saints and heroes Open
According to a popular line of thought, moral exemplars have a key role to play in moral development and moral education and by paying attention to moral exemplars we can learn about what morality requires of us. However, when we pay atten…
View article: There Goes My Hero: The Role of Exemplars in Identity Formation
There Goes My Hero: The Role of Exemplars in Identity Formation Open
In this paper, we argue that who one is and wants to become is closely related to whom one admires. Although the links between identity formation and exemplars have been largely neglected, we claim that integrating both literature studies …
View article: Using Stars for Moral Navigation: An Ethical Exploration into Celebrity
Using Stars for Moral Navigation: An Ethical Exploration into Celebrity Open
What role do celebrities play in our moral lives? Philosophers have explored the potential for celebrities to function as moral exemplars and role models. We argue that there are more ways in which celebrities play a role in helping us nav…
View article: Being a Celebrity: Alienation, Integrity, and the Uncanny
Being a Celebrity: Alienation, Integrity, and the Uncanny Open
A central feature of being a celebrity is experiencing a divide between one's public image and private life. By appealing to the phenomenology of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, we analyze this experience as paradoxically involving both a discon…
View article: Sportswashing: Complicity and Corruption
Sportswashing: Complicity and Corruption Open
When the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup was awarded to Qatar, it raised a number of moral concerns, perhaps the most prominent of which was Qatar’s woeful record on human rights in the arena of migrant labour. Qatar’s interest in hosting the ev…
View article: Online affective manipulation
Online affective manipulation Open
The aim of this chapter is broadly exploratory: we want to better understand online affective manipulation and what, if anything, is morally problematic about it. To do so, we begin by pulling apart various forms of online affective manipu…
View article: It’s much more important than that: against fictionalist accounts of fandom
It’s much more important than that: against fictionalist accounts of fandom Open
Do sports fans really care about their team winning? According to several philosophers, the answer is no. Sports fans engage in fictional caring during the match, which involves a game of make-believe that the result is important. We will …
View article: Honouring and admiring the immoral an ethical guide
Honouring and admiring the immoral an ethical guide Open
"Is it appropriate to honour and admire people who have created great works of art, made important intellectual contributions, performed great sporting feats or shaped the history of a nation if those people have also acted immorally? This…