Responsibility and Reactive Attitudes

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores the role of the reactive attitudes in our practices of holding people morally responsible for what they do. Reactive attitudes include resentment, indignation, guilt, and other emotions that emerge in the context of interpersonal relationships. Questions addressed in the contribution include the following: What are the distinguishing features of the reactive attitudes as a class? Should they be understood essentially as forms of angry disapprobation, or in a more relaxed way that includes less judgmental attitudes? What is the role of the reactive attitudes in relation to the phenomenon of moral blame? Is it possible for people to opt out of the reactive attitudes altogether, or are they naturally given to us with our involvement in social relations? What are the standards to which reactive emotions are answerable? How might reactive attitudes be overcome, for example, through forgiveness, or when they are ethically problematic (as in cases of hypocrisy)? What are the implications of the reactive attitudes for traditional debates about the conditions of moral responsibility? The chapter engages with P. F. Strawson’s lecture “Freedom and Resentment,” and with some of the more recent work that has been inspired by this seminal contribution to the modern debate about moral responsibility.