Moral Burnout

A nurse in an understaffed hospital; an activist fighting insurmountable systemic injustice; an aid worker desperately triaging resources between victims of violence: individuals in morally demanding circumstances run a significant risk of burning out. Unnoticed by philosophers, an empirical literature on this phenomenon has explored a chronic stress condition: ‘Moral Burnout.’ Individuals with Moral Burnout become so preoccupied with their moral shortcomings that they lose the motivation to act on their moral judgments. This article introduces the phenomenon of Moral Burnout and shows it to be a potent counterexample to Judgment Internalism.