Self Blame And Moral Responsibility

New essays by leading moral philosophers on the nature and ethics of self-blame, and its connections to moral responsibility.

One mark of interpersonal relationships is a tendency to blame. But what precise evaluations and responses constitute blame? Is it most centrally a judgment, or is it an emotion, or something else? Does blame express a demand, or embody a protest, or does it simply mark an impaired relationship? What accounts for its force or sting, and how similar is it to punishment? The essays in this volume explore answers to these (and other) questions about the nature of blame, but they also explore the various norms that govern the propriety of blame. The traditional question is whether anyone ever deserves to be blamed, but the essays here provide a fresh perspective by focusing on blame from the blamer's perspective instead. Is our tendency to blame a vice, something we should work to replace with more humane ways of relating, or does it rather lie at the very heart of a commitment to morality? What can we legitimately expect of each other, and in general, what sort of attitude do would-be blamers need to have in order to have the standing to blame? Hypocritical or self-righteous blame seems objectionable, but why? The contributions to this volume aim to give us a fuller picture of the nature and norms of blame, and more generally of the promises and perils of membership in the human moral community.

We evaluate people all the time for a wide variety of activities. We blame them for miscalculations, uninspired art, and committing crimes. We praise them for detailed brushwork, a superb pass, and their acts of kindness. We accomplish things, from solving crosswords to mastering guitar solos. We bungle our endeavors, whether this is letting a friend down or burning dinner. Sometimes these deeds are morally significant, but many times they are not. Simply Responsible defends the radical proposal that the blameworthy artist is responsible in just the same way that the blameworthy thief is. We can be responsible for all kinds of different activities, from lip-synching to long division, from murders to meringues, but the relation involved, what author Matt King calls the basic responsibility relation, is the same in every case. We are responsible for the things we do first, then blameworthy or praiseworthy for having done them in light of whether they're good or bad, according to a variety of standards. Why is this a radical proposal? Firstly, because so much of the contemporary literature on moral responsibility has moralized its nature. According to most accounts, moral responsibility is either a special species of responsibility or else depends on moralized capacities. In contrast, King argues that we get a more complete and unifying picture of responsible agency from a more general theory of responsibility. Secondly, the proposal is radical due to its drastic simplicity. King foregoes many of the complications that feature in other accounts of responsibility, arguing that we can make do with less demanding theoretical elements.

R. Jay Wallace advances a powerful and sustained argument against the common view that accountability requires freedom of will. Instead, he maintains, the fairness of holding people responsible depends on their rational competence: the power to grasp moral reasons and to control their behavior accordingly. He shows how these forms of rational competence are compatible with determinism. At the same time, giving serious consideration to incompatibilist concerns, Wallace develops a compelling diagnosis of the common assumption that freedom is necessary for responsibility.

Fittingness explores the nature, roles, and applications of the notion of fittingness in contemporary normative and metanormative philosophy. The fittingness relation is the relation in which a response stands to a feature of the world when that feature merits, or is worthy of, that response. In the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, this notion of fittingness played a prominent role in the theories of the period's most influential ethical theorists, and in recent years it has regained prominence, promising to enrich the theoretical resources of contemporary theorists working in the philosophy of normativity. This volume is the first central discussion of the notion of fit to date. It is composed of seventeen new essays covering a range of topics including the nature and epistemology of fittingness, the relation between fittingness and reasons, the normativity of fittingness, fittingness and value theory, and the role of fittingness in theorizing about responsibility. In addition to making important contributions to the debates in the philosophy of normativity with which they're concerned, the essays in the volume support the hypothesis that the notion of fittingness has great theoretical utility in investigating a range of normative matters, across a variety of domains.

Blame Yourself! is a book that takes a wider look at self-improvement, covering the development of the body, mind, and spirit individually then holistically. It defines these in a way that's direct and simple but also gets to the central philosophies that underpin these concepts. It explores ancient religious and philosophical ideas and correlates those to modern-day application. This book not only guides you to success in physical fitness, mental sharpness, and spiritual depth but also does so in a way that puts each into context with each other and in your life. In order to make the changes you need, to get the results you want, to become the person you admire, you have to begin by blaming yourself.

An examination of the responsibility individuals have for their actions and characters.

Explores the problem of blame in moral philosophy, setting out a new theory of blame, free will, and moral responsibility.