Por qué hay promesas que no deben cumplirse. El caso de las deudas odiosas
May 1st, 2013(An English version of this article is available in the Winter/Spring 2013 issue of Moral ...
According to Thomas Nagel, “An ideal, however attractive it may be to contemplate, is utopian if reasonable individuals cannot be motivated to live by it.”1 When given serious consideration, utopian ideals generate what he calls the “problem of utopianism.” While a given political or moral theory may be well-supported by rigorous philosophical argument, if it is a utopian ideal, then this particular political or moral theory will not have any practical use because too few individuals will abide by it for its benefits to be meaningfully realized. In a manner similar to the demandingness objection, the problem of utopianism suggests that satisfactory, useful political and moral ideologies cannot demand unreasonable sacrifices of individuals’ self-interests.