The Unity of Motive [Lex Academic Prize]
Issue: Issue 18 • Author/s: Levin Güver
Topics: Epistemology, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of action, Theoretical philosophy
The role of intention in criminal law stands in stark contrast to that of motive. While intention’s significance for criminal liability is hardly ever contested, motive’s relevance is most frequently relegated to the peripheries. This is, I believe, a mistake, and I hope to amend it by providing a novel argument in favour of motive’s relevance to criminal liability: an argument premised not on normative considerations, but on the very nature of motive itself. An agent’s motives, I will argue, are her ‘focal desires’. Desires, as I will illustrate in…