Forgiveness Or Fairness?

Several philosophers who argue that forgiveness is an important virtue also wish to maintain the moral value of retributive emotions that forgiveness is meant to overcome. As such, these accounts explicate forgiveness as an Aristotelian mean between too much resentment and too little resentment. I argue that such an account ends up making forgiveness superfluous: it turns out that the forgiving person is not praised for a greater willingness to let go of her resentment, but rather for her fairness or good judgment. I conclude by arguing that the virtue of fair-mindedness is more compatible with maintaining the value of the retributive emotions than the virtue of forgiveness

Reactive attitudes, relationships, and addiction

In this chapter we focus on the structure of close personal relations and diagnose how these relationships are disrupted by addiction. We draw upon Peter Strawson’s landmark paper ‘Freedom and Resentment’ (2008, first published 1962) to argue that loved ones of those with addiction veer between, (1) reactive attitudes of blame and resentment generated by disappointed expectations of goodwill and reciprocity, and (2) the detached objective stance from which the addicted person is seen as less blameworthy but also as less fit for ordinary interpersonal relationships. We examine how these responses, in turn, shape the addicted person’s view of themselves, their character and their capacities, and provide a negative narrative trajectory that impedes recovery. We close with a consideration of how these effects might be mitigated by adopting less demanding variations of the participant stance

Folly at Fredericksburg: A Wound to the Pride of the 127th PA

After three months in Washington, the Dauphin County Regiment was at last headed south. Resentment in the ranks at the last-minute transfer had been replaced by enthusiasm for the coming battle. At last, the men were to see the fight they had enlisted to join. [excerpt

Public Justification and the Reactive Attitudes

A distinctive position in contemporary political philosophy is occupied by those who defend the principle of public justification. This principle states that the moral or political rules that govern our common life must be in some sense justifiable to all reasonable citizens. In this article, I evaluate Gerald Gaus’s defence of this principle, which holds that it is presupposed by our moral reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation. He argues, echoing P.F. Strawson in ‘Freedom and Resentment’, that these attitudes are so deep a part of us that we are unable to rationally reject them. I examine and reject this defence of the principle. Considering the nature of our commitment to the moral reactive attitudes, I argue that those attitudes need not be grounded in a commitment to public justification. The availability of alternative grounds for these attitudes shows, contra Gaus, that we can rationally reject the principle of public justification while maintaining a wholehearted commitment to the reactive attitudes

Unreasonable Resentments

How ought we to evaluate and respond to expressions of anger and resentment? Can philosophical analysis of resentment as the emotional expression of a moral claim help us to distinguish which resentments ought to be taken seriously? Philosophers have tended to focus on what I call ‘reasonable’ resentments, presenting a technical, narrow account that limits resentment to the expression of recognizable moral claims. In the following paper, I defend three claims about the ethics and politics of resentment. First, if we care about socially just processes of reconciliation, we have good reason to pay attention to the logic of resentments. Second, the account philosophers offer of resentment – its distinctive features, aims, rationality, and gratification – will affect the conclusions we draw about which actual resentments to take seriously, which aspects of resentful claims need addressing, and what it means to address and repair them. In contesting definitions of resentment, I argue, we do more than simply perform housekeeping in philosophical taxonomies of emotion. Restricting our understanding to essentially ‘moral’ cases may cause us to lose sight of expressly political resentments. Instead, I argue, a plausible account of resentment must acknowledge that we resent violations and threats that are not necessarily self-pertaining, may not be expressible as individual, discrete injuries, and cannot always be construed as moral threats. Second, given the dependence of moral judgments on a broader horizon of moral possibility, philosophical standards of ‘reasonable’ or ‘appropriate’ resentment cannot avoid being politically charged. Thus, the widely accepted account of ‘reasonable’ resentment cannot make philosophical sense of the most interesting and perplexing cases. Ironically, a theoretical measure designed to revalue emotional expressions of moral protest may result in the exclusion and silencing of those with the most reasons to protest

Generosity as a central virtue in Nietzsche's ethics

Nietzsche's ethics is basically an ethics of virtue. In his own unique way, and in accordance with his extra-moral view of life, Nietzsche recovers and re-appropriates certain virtues – notably pagan, aristocratic virtues – as part of his project to reconceptualise (‘rehabilitate’) the virtues in terms of virtù (virtuosity and vitality), to which he also refers as his ‘moraline-free’ conception of the virtues. The virtue of generosity (in the sense of magnanimity) plays a central role in Nietzschean ethics. According to Nietzsche, the truly noble or virtuous person is one who lives beyond resentment and feelings of remorse and guilt. He lives his life from the fullness and plenitude of his own being and what he is able to bestow on others. Nietzsche seeks to rekindle and rehabilitate the aristocratic ‘pathos of distance’ as the true origin of ethical life. This pathos of distance basically emanates from self-respect: ‘The noble soul has reverence for itself’ (1974b: §287). For Nietzsche, this means that one should realize the greatest multiplicity of drives and form-giving forces in oneself, in the most tension-fraught but ‘controlled’ manner. This control, this imposing a form on oneself without neglecting the multiplicity in oneself, is a creative, artistic activity. Nietzsche also refers to this as a process of transforming the self into a work of art, of giving style to one's own existence. Thus we free ourselves from guilt, resentment and the rage against contingency. It is of the utmost importance for Nietzsche that one should attain satisfaction with oneself, for ‘only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is continually ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight.’ (1974a: §290). To attain satisfaction with oneself ultimately means to affirm life in its totality. This implies a life beyond resentment, i.e. a life that is characterised by generosity or magnanimity (megalopsychia, magnanimitas), which is for Nietzsche the ‘crown’ of all the virtues

Collective Resentment: to the Issue of Defining the Phenomenon

Наличие боевых действий на территории страны, политический и религиозный кризис являются благоприятными обстоятельствами для появления и конструирования коллективной обиды. В статье освещается разница между примордиалистскими и конструктивистскими подходами к пониманию коллективной обиды. Теоретический анализ с использованием концепции М. Хальбвакса позволяет выявить, какие именно аспекты в коллективной обиде могут быть сконструированы – представление о прошлом, образ врага. Выявляется взаимосвязь с родовыми понятиями – коллективная память и культурная травма. В статье представлены традиционные и новые формы демонстрации коллективной обиды, среди которых – политические заявления, резолюции, акции протеста, вандализм, публикации в социальных сетях, санкции, использование художественных средств для демонстрации и конструирования коллективной обиды. The article deals with the phenomenon of collective resentment, as well as related concepts: collective memory, cultural trauma. Favorable circumstances have now developed in Ukraine (hostilities are underway in the country, a crisis in the sphere of politics and religion is also appearing) for the emergence and construction of a collective resentment. However, the phenomenon itself is poorly studied, so it is important to study its features, the specifics of its appearance and how it is manifested in practice. For this purpose, we analyze primordialist and constructivist approaches to the study of collective resentment. It has been revealed that constructivism better describes this phenomenon, since even within the same society individuals may have different resentments. Using the Halbwachs concept, it is possible to identify the relationship between collective resentment and tribal concepts – collective memory and cultural trauma. Collective resentment is seen as a result of cultural trauma, as well as its further construction with the help of the media, agents of resentment actualization, artworks, and memorial events. Cultural trauma becomes a part of collective memory and its repeated reproduction (e.g., the annual memory day of war victims) contributes to the formation and maintenance of the current state of collective resentment. Whereas collective resentment used to be manifested in pogroms, wars and other violent methods, the situation is changing now. It is reaching the diplomatic level. Politicians are called upon to express collective grievances, and by adopting laws and regulations, they actually legitimize them. Demonstration is important for collective resentment, so social networks are used to convey information to as many audiences as possible and to contribute to the construction of resentment. They provide information about an event or a day of remembrance. Collective resentment can be the basis of identity and it is precisely this that establishes «boundaries» between representatives of different social, cultural and ethnic groups, which only aggravates existing divisions and contributes to the further polarization of different groups, and this can occur even within the same society

Resentment and Moral Judgment in Smith and Butler

This paper is a discussion of the ‘moralization’ of resentment in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. By moralization, I do not refer to the complex process by which resentment is transformed by the machinations of sympathy, but a prior change in how the ‘raw material’ of the emotion itself is presented. In just over fifty pages, not only Smith’s attitude toward the passion of resentment, but also his very conception of the term, appears to shift dramatically. What is an unpleasant, unsocial and relatively amoral passion of anger in general metamorphoses into a morally and psychologically rich account of a cognitively sharpened, normatively laden attitude, an attitude that contains both the judgment that the injury done to me was unjust and wrongful, and the demand that the offender acknowledge its wrongfulness. Two very different readings of ‘Smithean resentment’ are thus available from the text. Indeed, the notion of two distinct forms of resentment – an instinctive, amoral version and a rich, rationally appraising attitude – would bring Smith into line with an earlier account of resentment, found in Bishop Joseph Butler’s Fifteen Sermons Preached at Rolls Chapel, first published in 1726. Ultimately, I argue, the differences in their theories are to Smith’s credit. It is precisely because the ‘thin’ or generic retaliatory passion described in Part I can be reconciled with the rich, normative attitude in Part II, that Smith is able to accomplish his meta-ethical goal of grounding moral judgments in naturally occurring emotion

OVERWHELMING FEELING OF RESENTMENT

Feelings of resentment arise when painful emotions are experienced but not adequately or effectively expressed. Such feeling is mostly based on unsupportable expectations. The person is initially convinced that surrounding people must have the positive attitude to her/him. However, the reality sometimes is different. A person happens to suffer from a bad attitude and her/his point of view is often neglected. The reasons for this attitude may vary from inexperience or youth to inability to reveal the personality traits