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Most moral theorists subscribe to a vindicatory account of moral justification, according to which an action is morally justified if and only if the action is not morally wrong. Vindicatory accounts of moral justification are incompatible with genuine moral dilemmas, since any action the agent performs in a dilemma will fail to conform with at least one operative duty and therefore render morally wrong. Yet, in moral dilemmas, it typically seems as though there is a morally preferred solution – an action the agent is justified in performing. So, if agents are sometimes morally justified in performing the morally preferred act in dilemma cases, then the only available account of justification is a non-vindicatory account, according to which agents are sometimes justified in performing morally wrong actions. While such views have received little attention in the existing philosophical literature, I argue that rejecting vindicatory accounts of moral justification positions me to unify a range of apparently contradictory patterns of moral assessment in a single moral framework, including in moral dilemmas. Because moral justification is closely linked to moral permissibility, by conceding the possibility of justified wrongdoing, I concede the possibility of a prima facie incoherent act-assessment: Permissible-Wrong Action [PWA] – morally permissible actions that are morally wrong. To make sense of PWA, I distinguish between wrongness (or rightness) and moral permissibility. Wrongness is a first-order act-assessment, an evaluation of the morally relevant features of the act alone. Moral permissibility is a second-order (hybrid) act-assessment, an evaluation of the relationship between the action and the motivations of the agent performing it. This distinction can help us understand the Doctrine of Double Effect [DDE] debate. The central question for the DDE is whether agent motivations inform assessments of moral permissibility. I argue that we can offer a principled exp

Most moral theorists subscribe to a vindicatory account of moral justification, according to which an action is morally justified if and only if the action is not morally wrong. Vindicatory accounts of moral justification are incompatible with genuine moral dilemmas, since any action the agent performs in a dilemma will fail to conform with at least one operative duty and therefore render morally wrong. Yet, in moral dilemmas, it typically seems as though there is a morally preferred solution – an action the agent is justified in performing. So, if agents are sometimes morally justified in performing the morally preferred act in dilemma cases, then the only available account of justification is a non-vindicatory account, according to which agents are sometimes justified in performing morally wrong actions. While such views have received little attention in the existing philosophical literature, I argue that rejecting vindicatory accounts of moral justification positions me to unify a range of apparently contradictory patterns of moral assessment in a single moral framework, including in moral dilemmas. Because moral justification is closely linked to moral permissibility, by conceding the possibility of justified wrongdoing, I concede the possibility of a prima facie incoherent act-assessment: Permissible-Wrong Action [PWA] – morally permissible actions that are morally wrong. To make sense of PWA, I distinguish between wrongness (or rightness) and moral permissibility. Wrongness is a first-order act-assessment, an evaluation of the morally relevant features of the act alone. Moral permissibility is a second-order (hybrid) act-assessment, an evaluation of the relationship between the action and the motivations of the agent performing it. This distinction can help us understand the Doctrine of Double Effect [DDE] debate. The central question for the DDE is whether agent motivations inform assessments of moral permissibility. I argue that we can offer a principled exp