About

Professor Sarah Buss is a faculty member in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. She earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University in 1989 and her B.A. in Philosophy from Yale University in 1981. Her research interests lie at the intersection of metaphysics and ethics. She has authored articles on topics including autonomy, moral responsibility, practical rationality, and respect for persons. Her work has involved developing accounts of weakness of will, exploring our moral obligations to the needy, examining the rationality of our concern for happiness, analyzing the relationship between intentional action and evaluative commitments, and investigating the moral significance of etiquette and the metaphysical implications of illness. Currently, her projects focus on the normative significance of formal principles of practical rationality, the nature of reasons for action, the contribution of the will to action, and the moral implications of certain basic human capacities.

Research topics

• Philosophy
• Epistemology
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Mathematics
• Law
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Virtues and Moral Responsibility: Some Reflections on John Doris’s Character Trouble

  Philosophia · 2025-08-30

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Dependence of Rational Agency on Various Forms of Powerlessness

  Midwest Studies in Philosophy · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Passivity is the opposite of activity. And yet in order to do something intentionally, one must be passive in certain respects. In this essay, I identify three forms of passivity that are necessary conditions of intentional action, contrast these forms of passivity with a fourth form that is incompatible with intentional action, and explore the relationships among all four. In so doing, I call attention to the complex relationship between our capacity to will and our capacity to reason.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• More Than Is Dreamed of in Recent Metaethics and the Philosophy of Action (Some Kierkegaardian Reflections on Relating to Yourself by Relating to God)

  2024-10-03

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract What distinguishes our actions from mere happenings? In virtue of what does a fact qualify as a reason for us to do one thing rather than another? Recent philosophical attempts to answer these questions appeal to our capacity to reflect on our own dispositions. But these appeals give rise to regress problems. This essay calls attention to the extent to which Kierkegaard anticipates both the answers and the problems. It also highlights the lesson Kierkegaard draws from the problems: insofar as we are not alienated from our own responses to our circumstances, this is because we are relating to these responses (be they our motives or our normative assessments) “by relating to God.” In following his argument, we are forced to consider the role that a commitment to a transcendent point of view plays in our apprehension of reasons for action.

  PublisherDOI

• Why Me?

  Journal of Practical Ethics · 2024-05-23

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  When a misfortune befalls us, it is natural for us to react: “Why me?” This is not just the question: “Why did this unfortunate event occur?” Nor are we simply wondering: “Why do such things happen?” The self-reference implies a comparison we generally manage to keep at the back of our minds: “Why did this happen to me, and not someone else?” Importantly, this is not an expression of idle curiosity. It is an expression of shock, dismay, and disbelief. I am interested in both the moral significance of this natural reaction and the moral significance of our disinclination to acknowledge it. If, as I believe, we are often morally permitted to promote our own interests over the interests of others, if it is our disposition to do so that underlies the “Why me?” reaction, and if we are nonetheless right to think there is something shameful about reacting this way, what does this suggest about the moral significance of our morally permissible self-privileging behavior? How close can we come to reconciling (i) our right to live lives that express very little concern for the fate of others with (ii) an ideal of human solidarity that manifests itself in our self-censuring attitude toward the “Why me?” thought and toward the very self-privileging actions whose moral permissibility we have least reason to challenge?

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Introduction

  2023-01-19

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This introduction offers brief summaries of the essays collected here. It calls attention to shared concerns and overlapping themes, even as it notes the wide range of positions the contributors explore and defend. What justifies the assumption that we are obligated to treat one another with concern and respect? What is it about us that gives each of us a moral claim on the others which goes deeper than any social conventions and does not depend on our race, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, religion, class, or any other aspect of our identity? Knowing the hazards we face when we seek useful truths about “humanity,” “human rights,” and “moral values,” the authors take on the challenge of rethinking the value of humanity. In so doing, they encourage us to probe this value ourselves.

  PublisherDOI

• Moral Theorizing and the Limits of Coherence

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2023 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Epistemology
  • Philosophy

  Abstract Is there any more compelling way to critique a moral theory than to point out that it cannot offer a fully coherent account of moral agency? This essay suggests that we should be wary of the assumption underlying such critiques. Coherence is an ideal, and there is good reason to think that it does not trump all other ideals. In particular, given the heterogeneity of the virtues, we have good reason to endorse a conception of moral agency according to which an ideal moral agent is vulnerable to conflicting requirements. Once we appreciate this fact, we are faced with the task of distinguishing the unacceptable forms of incoherence from the forms we have reason to endorse. The essay’s second half argues that coherence constraints rule out the possibility of supererogatory action as it is generally understood. But it concludes with the tentative suggestion that moral agents may be justified in cultivating a stance toward their own actions which is incoherent in the relevant respect. This gives us one more reason to doubt that we can dismiss a moral theory simply because it implies that the moral point of view is not a fully coherent point of view.

  PublisherDOI

• Copyright Page

  2023-01-19

  other1st authorCorresponding

  Extract Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2023 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form

  PublisherDOI

• Personal ideals and the ideal of rational agency¹

  Philosophy and Phenomenological Research · 2022-09-27 · 16 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract All of us have personal ideals. We are committed to being good (enough) friends, parents, neighbors, teachers, citizens, human beings, and more. In this paper, I examine the thick and thin aspects of these ideals: (i) their substance (to internalize an ideal is to endorse a particular way of being) and (ii) their accountability to reason (to internalize an ideal is to assume that this is really a good way to be). In considering how these two aspects interact in the ideal of rational agency, I address two philosophical debates that are generally conducted in isolation of each other: (i) debates over the anti‐ideal of normative “fetishism” and (ii) debates over whether acting for a reason is acting “under the guise of the good.” In the final two sections of the paper, I further explore the relations among the thick and the thin. I note the role that coherence constraints play in the process whereby our ideals gain determinacy. At the same time, I argue, our ideals constrain the possibility and desirability of coherence. This has implications for a third debate: the debate over the possibility of moral dilemmas.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Autonomy and the Metaphysics of Agency

  Routledge eBooks · 2022 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Epistemology
  • Philosophy

  All theorists of autonomy seem to agree that it is highly desirable to have the capacity and opportunity to govern one’s intentional actions. This suggests a criterion for evaluating accounts of self-governing agency: do they identify a self-relation whose desirability is the desirability of governing one’s own actions in a way that goes beyond merely doing what one intends to do? In this chapter, I argue that when we apply this criterion to a wide range of accounts of autonomous agency, we discover that the conceptually possible desirable conditions these accounts single out have nothing essential to do with self-governing agency. With the exception of one diachronic self-relation and one synchronic self-relation, the desirable conditions identified in these accounts are either ways of relating to oneself that have nothing essential to do with governing oneself, or (more frequently) ways of relating to other agents and/or one’s circumstances that have nothing essential to one’s relation to oneself.

  PublisherDOI

• Agency and (the limits of) volitional conflict

  2021-12-07

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  We experience volitional conflicts when we take ourselves to be subject to competing requirements. Such conflicts are possible because our substantive commitments are partly independent of our disposition to respond to reasons. I argue that we cannot experience volitional conflict in any other form. But I caution against concluding that there is no other possible form of synchronic incoherence. We are, I point out, capable of dissociating our agency from our reason. Given this capacity, the important challenge we face as agents is not the challenge of maintaining volitional coherence. It is, rather, the challenge of providing our will with an appropriate grounding without unduly interfering with our capacity to will.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Lee Overton

  1 shared

• Elijah Millgram

  1 shared

• Marian David

  University of Graz

  1 shared

• Martha Klein

  Sierra Club

  1 shared

• Zachary Ernst

  Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences

  1 shared

• Thomas C. Brickhouse

  University of Lynchburg

  1 shared

• Melissa Barry

  1 shared

• Peta Bowden

  1 shared