In this essay I examine the provocation or "heat of passion" defense in law, with particular attention to the following questions: Is the defense a justification or an excuse? What is the rationale for having such a defense? Should there be such a defense? I reject the view that it is purely a partial excuse, and instead take it to be a hybrid--part excuse, part justification (and of course a partial rather than complete defense). After canvassing the reasons--and strong reasons they are--for abolishing the defense, I support retaining it, but only for cases in which the provocation was a clear and serious wrong. This reflects my emphasis on the justificatory component of the defense.

The aim of this address is to understand manipulativeness, focusing on the character trait of being manipulative, not on manipulation itself. I take it that manipulativeness is a vice, but also take seriously the claims of some that one can go too far in the opposite direction. I employ an Aristotelian model, according to which virtue is a mean, lying between extremes. If manipulativeness is one extreme, what vice or vices are there in the opposite direction? And what would be the corresponding virtue? Through this approach I try to figure out what makes manipulativeness a vice, looking not only at egregious cases of manipulativeness, but at forms of manipulativeness that some see as virtuous.

Should mistakes of fact be a complete defense in criminal law only when they are reasonable? Or should even unreasonable mistakes exculpate? I examine and take issue with arguments that mistakes should not have to be reasonable to be a complete defense. For the most part, however, I focus not on the general question, but on one particular defense: the defense, to a charge of rape, that "I thought s/he was consenting." Mistakes are possible regarding sexual consent, but unreasonable mistakes are possible only if the defendant was indifferent as to whether his partner consented, or at best cared too little to attend to the matter. An unreasonable mistake shows him to be culpable in roughly the same way that recklessness does, and therefore should not exculpate. This may not be true of unreasonable mistakes in general, but is true of unreasonable mistakes regarding sexual consent.

This paper develops and assesses a set of criticisms of Kantian ethics that claim that Kantian ethics involves detachment: detachment from other persons, detachment from our own projects, and detachment from our emotions and feelings. These criticisms are often, though by no means always, developed as feminist objections and although I do not focus on them as feminist objections, at some points I assess the claim that a particular objection draws sustenance from feminism. My broader aim is to show that Kant's ethics is more congenial to feminism than us usually thought.

In the 'Metaphysics of Morals', Kant contrasts duties of love with duties of respect, claiming that love bids us to approach one another, while respect admonishes us to maintain distance between ourselves and others. This paper examines the relationship between love and respect in the 'Doctrine of Virtue' and between duties of love and duties of respect, and challenges the sharp contrast Kant draws between the two types of duty.