Mabaquiao, Napoleon & Evangelista, Francis. Forthcoming. Ethics: Theories and Practices. Anvil.

Chapter
Two MORAL PERSONHOOD AND ACCOUNTABILITY The actions that we judge to be either morally good
or bad are those that involve moral persons, both as the sources and recipients of these actions. This
implies that a prior consideration in judging the morality an action is the determination of whether the
entities involved in this action are moral persons. Given this, it is just appropriate that before we study
the various ethical theories and their applications, we first clarify what it means to be a moral person.
Now a significant part of being a moral person is being morally accountable for one’s actions; for when
moral persons act as doers of morally evaluable actions, they may deserve moral blame or praise for
these actions. A thorough understanding of the nature of moral personhood thus requires an
examination of its corollary concept of moral accountability. This chapter aims to examine the nature of
moral personhood along with the concept of moral accountability. The chapter is divided into two parts.
The first part examines the nature of moral personhood. It accounts for the significance of moral
personhood in terms of possession of moral rights, explains the classification of moral persons into
moral agents and moral patients, and examines the different views on what constitutes the qualifying
features of moral personhood. The second part deals with nature of moral accountability. It clarifies the
difference of moral accountability from related concepts, and explicates the conditions for attributing
moral accountability as well as the factors that determine its degree.