Although the rule of individuation of reactions has been worldly common and accepted in the system of criminal justice, it is still confronted with certain problems. Considering the problem of moral luck, the article seeks to provide a special account of this rule. The problem of moral luck challenges our moral assessments. The main objection is that when we do not have control over our behavior, how can we be blamed for it. One of the potential responses neglected by researchers in the pre-behavioral luck is to take into consideration the compatibilist view, and more importantly the problem of weakness of will. Weakness of will, as it will be explained later, may justify the different ways of moral assessments. This justification articulated in legal terms can offer a novel strong explanation for justifying the rule of individuation of reactions in the system of criminal justice. Relying on analytical research the present article shows that the compatibilist view can justify the principle of inflicting punishment; justifying the principle of inflicting punishment, the problem of weakness of will can lay the foundations for accepting the differences among reactions.

Childbearing may be regarded as a significant constituent of demography as well as an important issue in different societies. The population of the majority of countries in the world is not balanced, and these countries are faced with challenges which such imbalance creates. This will lead countries with a decreasing trend of population growth to encounter the problem of population aging and difficulties arising from it. Childbearing can be explored with respect to jurisprudence, law, economics, and sociology. The problem of childbearing has not often been morally addressed in Iran; but in the West it has been examined by philosophers through applying different moral approaches such as consequentialism, deontology, and virtue theory. Deontology has advanced remarkable arguments for childbearing to be moral based on the principle of discharging duties, including the argument from the intrinsic value of childbearing. In view of the fact that a variety of accounts have been provided for this argument, we shall assess and criticize it in our article.

Criminal justice pertains to some standards and criteria for realizing justice in the process of an encounter with crimes. The realization of desirable criminal justice rests on the commitment to such principles as maintaining human dignity, reforming criminals, repairing victims’ material and immaterial damages, and finally citizens’ participation in the criminal procedures by means of which broken human relations would be repaired and reestablished. It is, among other things, conformity to moral norms that realizes such principles. Explaining the features of desirable criminal justice, I examine the nature and role of empathy as an important moral skill and character trait where empathy is a necessary condition for the realization of and commitment to these universal principles. I also show how empathy can, through a cognitive and affective close connection to the position of those involved in crimes, prepare the ground for considering others’ needs in criminal cases by leading one to avoid egoism and self-centeredness as the main obstacle to the realization of these principles. By virtue of empathy it would be accessible to uphold the principles of desirable criminal justice and to facilitate the following: compensating for the material and immaterial damages to individuals, making the criminal aware of these damages, dissuading him from doing similar things, and making social adjustment.

One view on this relation considers religion and ethics to be psychologically interdependent. Dividing desirable life into good and moral life, Thomas Nagel, a contemporary analytic philosopher, has made an effort to defend the objectivity of the values of good and moral life. Making distinctions between (1) objective and subjective perspectives on life, (2) motivated and unmotivated desires, (3) internalism and externalism about the source of moral motivation, (4) minimalist and maximalist accounts of internalism, he argued for a minimalist account of internalism, and laid the foundations for supporting the convergent constituents of motivation and the objectivity of the values of good and moral life, i. e. prudence in good life and altruism in moral life. On the other hand, Nagel holds that one can strengthen motivational convergence in good and moral life by virtue of religious beliefs, and one can take religious beliefs’ contribution to motivational convergence and the objectivity of the values of good and moral life as a kind of contingent psychological dependence of moral values on religious beliefs. The prominent points of Nagel’s theory are that it splits desirable life into good and moral life, it makes a psychological defense of their objectivity. There are, nevertheless, some matters that could have been deserved to be reconsidered by Nagel’s theory: (1) his reliance on psychological explanation, (2) his limiting moral values only to human relations, (3) his inattention to man’s relation to God and the nature, and finally (4) his inattention to the differences of religious beliefs in various religions about how to explain their interdependence.

Not only are moral dilemmas considered among the most controversial issues of moral philosophy in the recent decades, but they are also posed in the fields of humanities such as law and jurisprudence. When we attempt to solve a moral dilemma, we follow a process of moral reasoning, we explore available data, and we take into consideration certain consequences with respect to these data and the moral standards. Individuals are sometimes seen to make wrong decisions and display unacceptable behavior in facing relevant situations due to their negligence or their poor knowledge of the standards and skills of making decisions. In this article, I study this subject as a theme in applied ethics and as an epistemic issue related to criminal law in the light of moral philosophy and jurisprudential principles, and some Iranian regulations. The question at issue in this study is “what is a moral dilemma? What kind of benefit does it bring to criminal law? And how can we get out of the current situation?” The method of this inquiry is descriptive and analytical while library research methodology and interdisciplinary approach are used.

Modern moral philosophers and pre-modern philosophers in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition radically differ on their approaches to such moral concepts as virtue, justice, and the natural law theory. The present article aims to assess how Alasdair MacIntyre treated their differences, and to explain his reviving views on these moral concepts in pre-modern philosophy. MacIntyre maintains that virtue, justice, and natural law, as seen by modern philosophers, are abstracted from their historical and anthropological contents and contexts. He holds that modern philosophers have replaced the concept of virtue with the concept of duty and interest, while they also have endorsed an individualistic attitude which cannot provide an adequate understanding of virtue. MacIntyre believes that to make sense of virtue and to cultivate it in people, we are required to pay attention to social activities, historical background, and tradition. He thinks that the Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical tradition was the best philosophical context in which the concept of virtue was developed; modern philosophers also were concerned with the formal and abstract sense of justice, and took the function of justice as protecting individual rights and private goods; but justice in the Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical tradition is considered to be a virtue according to which everyone would receive his share of common good in the society in line with what he deserves. Modern philosophers have grounded the natural law theory in the transcendental subject whereas philosophers in the pre-modern era had grounded it in the inclinations and tendencies of simple ordinary humans.