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P. F. Strawson, Moral Theories and ‘The Problem of Blame’: ‘Freedom and Resentment’ Revisited

P. F. Strawson, Moral Theories and ‘The Problem of Blame’: ‘Freedom and Resentment’ Revisited II —MARIA ALVAREZ P. F. STRAWSON,MORAL THEORIES AND ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’REVISITED After nearly sixty years, the influence of Peter Strawson’s ‘Freedom and Resentment’ remains strong in discussions of moral responsibility. However, as the paper has become more re- mote in time and in intellectual climate, some of those influences have turned into amplifications of ideas and claims that are mis- interpretations or distortions of the paper, while other notions have been projected onto it. I try to make the case for this charge specifically in relation to what has become accepted as Strawson’s ‘response-dependent’ theory of moral responsibility and to an allegedly problematic conception of blame said to be at the centre of that theory. Against that background, I comment on the current philosophical project to ‘civilize’ blame. Introduction. After nearly sixty years, the influence of Peter Strawson’s ‘Freedom and Resentment’ (Strawson 1962/2008) remains strong in discussions of moral responsibility, its ripples extending ever more widely. However, as the paper has become more remote in time and in intellectual climate some of those influ- ences, I shall argue, have turned into amplifications of ideas and claims that are misinterpretations or distortions of the paper, while other notions have been projected onto it. Certain ways of reading Strawson’s paper have given rise to views that are only superficially, if at all, Strawsonian, and to projects that are only tenuously con- nected to his opinions. I have in mind specifically what has become accepted as Strawson’s ‘response-dependent’ theory of moral respon- sibility and the allegedly problematic conception of blame that is said to be at the centre of this theory —a conception that has given rise to the project of ‘civilizing’ blame that Catriona Mackenzie scru- tinizes in her paper. Unless the context suggests otherwise, references to ‘blame’ in this paper refer to the (ex- tremely varied) practice of blaming, rather than to ‘fault’ —what is typically imputed to someone in blaming them. V C 2021 The Aristotelian Society This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 184 II —MARIA ALVAREZ I shall first delineate the interpretative route from the theory to the project (§ii), and in the rest of the paper attempt to challenge some aspects of that interpretation. In §iii, I highlight Strawson’s avowed aim in ‘Freedom and Resentment’ and summarize what I take to be his central argument towards that aim. I then deploy that construal, first in §iv, to challenge the attribution to Strawson of a ‘response-dependent’ theory of moral responsibility, and then in §v, to dispel worries about his conception of blame. I conclude with some brief remarks about the project of civilizing blame and the con- cerns that motivate Mackenzie’s paper. II From Moral Responsibility to the Need to Civilize Blame.It is widely held among philosophers working on moral responsibility that in ‘Freedom and Resentment’ Strawson presents a theory of what it is for someone to be a morally responsible agent. Formulations of this theory, as well as reservations about its success, vary. Nonetheless, all of the commentators I have in mind have found in Strawson’s paper a theory that can be captured by the slo- gan ‘To be responsible is to be an appropriate target of the reactive attitudes’ and which holds that facts about being held responsible have metaphysical or explanatory priority over facts about being responsible. Accordingly, various philosophers have developed theories of moral responsibility explicitly informed by what they take to be Strawson’s main contribution, while jettisoning, also explicitly, aspects of his views they judge unsatisfactory. But many more have come to endorse conceptions of moral responsibility that they would describe as ‘broadly Strawsonian’. A striking feature of the latter is the centrality given to the practice of holding responsible through blaming. As the editors of a recent volume on blame put it: [T]he most common way of conceiving of moral responsibility these days is along broadly Strawsonian lines, emphasizing the importance For instance, Wallace (1994), McKenna (2012), and Shoemaker (2015, 2017). Like them, Bennett (1980), Watson (1987, 2014) and Hieronymi (2020) also offer insightful discus- sions, but not a fully developed ‘Strawsonian’ theory. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’ REVISITED 185 and explanatory priority of our practices of blaming and holding one another responsible. (Coates and Tognazinni 2013,p. 6) On the other hand, as Mackenzie points out in her paper, recent philosophical discussions have expressed concern about the (alleged) ‘ambivalent nature of blame and of our social practices of blaming’; the suggestion is that while blame can help to scaffold and capacitate responsible agency .. ., the negative reactive emotions and punitive responses associated with blame often motivate destructive attitudes and behaviour that run counter to the aims of mo- rality. (Mackenzie 2021,p. 000) As Mackenzie goes on to explain, this has given rise to the philo- sophical project of ‘civilizing’ blame. Victoria McGeer attributes the need for this project to a worry that there might be something ‘in the nature of blame itself that makes it a morally objectionable response to (culpable) wrongdoing’ (McGeer 2013,p. 162). This is because blaming is often accompanied by negative emotions and a wish to impose sanctions and punishment, to inflict suffering on the wrong- doer, and recent philosophers find these emotions and motivations morally distasteful. So they have sought to sanitize blame by cleans- ing it of this perceived morally problematic element and thereby of- fer a conception of blame that is ‘normatively acceptable’. McGeer warns of a need to ensure that the process of sanitizing blame is not too revisionist, lest we lose the psychological phenome- non of blame ‘as we know it’ —presumably because this sanitized practice may not be suited to play the critical role that blaming plays in regulating behaviour. (McGeer herself favours a ‘domesticating’ version of the project, which takes the ‘ugly punitive face of blame’ to be an essential feature of the phenomenon, and so endeavours to tame rather than to eradicate it.) While Mackenzie herself is sympathetic to that general project, she is concerned that so-called ‘Strawsonian’ approaches to moral responsibility and blame, and the project to ‘civilize’ it, tend to oper- ate with ‘highly idealized conceptions of the moral dynamics’ that underlie the practices associated with blaming. Accordingly, the aim of her paper is to caution that the success of the project depends on See McGeer (2013, pp. 162 ff.). It is not always clear whether the project aims to offer a better account of the familiar practice of blame, or rather to develop a new, more morally acceptable practice. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 186 II —MARIA ALVAREZ acknowledging the extent to which the ‘supposedly capacitating fea- tures of our blaming practices can be implicated in structural injusti- ces of various kinds and distorted by epistemic and discursive injus- tice’ (Mackenzie 2021,p. 000). What does this need for the project of ‘civilizing’ blame have to do with ‘Freedom and Resentment’? One connection is the idea that Strawson’s characterization of blame, as manifested in the reactive attitudes, together with the centrality he gives the latter in elucidat- ing the concept of moral responsibility, might imply that these mor- ally objectionable features of blame are ineradicable aspects of our most fundamental and valuable interactions. I think that, despite Strawson’s emphasis on the reactive attitudes and his insistence on the practical inconceivability of giving them up and their importance to us, his characterization of blame is free from the morally objec- tionable features that give rise to the need to ‘civilize’ that concept. Further, his account has the resources to disqualify many of the blaming practices that have been thought to be morally troubling — and so it has some of the resources needed for the project of ‘civiliz- ing’ our actual practices of blaming which, at the intrapersonal, in- terpersonal, social and institutional levels, are undeniably often pro- foundly flawed —in particular, in being subject to the structural injustices that Mackenzie urges us to attend to. III Strawson’s Aim in ‘Freedom and Resentment’. Despite the wide- spread attribution of the response-dependent theory to Strawson, one may question whether he intended to offer a theory of moral re- sponsibility at all; and whether, regardless of his intentions, the pa- per does in fact reveal commitment to the theory often attributed to Strawson. I shall address the first question in this section and the sec- ond in the next. One thing is clear because Strawson says it explicitly: ‘Freedom and Resentment’ was primarily intended as a move towards reconcil- ing the opposing parties in the traditional debate about whether moral responsibility is compatible with the truth of determinism — or indeed with its falsity. I’ll briefly spell out Strawson’s aim and the tactics he uses to achieve it. Inevitably, this will mean retelling V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’ REVISITED 187 familiar ideas. No summary could do justice to the subtlety and rich- ness of the paper —to say nothing of the elegance of its style. Still, with this sketch I hope to draw attention to aspects of Strawson’s po- sition that, though widely acknowledged, tend to be underplayed de- spite their centrality to his elucidation of the concept of moral re- sponsibility and the associated blaming practices. In the opening section, Strawson introduces the two camps to be reconciled as follows: Some philosophers say they do not know what the thesis of determin- ism is. Others say, or imply, that they do know what it is. Of these, some —the pessimists perhaps —hold that if the thesis is true, then the concepts of moral obligation and responsibility really have no applica- tion, and the practices of punishing and blaming, of expressing moral condemnation and approval, are really unjustified. Others —the opti- mists perhaps —hold that these concepts and practices in no way lose their raison d’e ˆ tre if the thesis of determinism is true. Some hold even that the justification of these concepts and practices requires the truth of the thesis. (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 1) The optimist detects no threat because, for her, the said justifica- tion lies in the social utility of the application of the concepts and as- sociated practices, and the truth of determinism doesn’t threaten that justification —perhaps it even underlies it. The pessimist thinks this justification requires the truth of ‘some general metaphysical proposition’ about our freedom which, however, must be false if de- terminism is true. Strawson concedes to each party that their opponent’s position is unsatisfactory: as the pessimist objects, the optimist leaves some- thing essential out of the picture; and, as the optimist protests, the pessimist adds something that is of doubtful coherence. Strawson’s proposed reconciliation will require each party to acknowledge this. The incompatibilist (pessimist) must give up the requirement of that obscure condition called ‘contra-causal freedom’. The compa- tibilist (optimist), in turn, must admit that the practices of imputing responsibility, desert, culpability or merit, and the associated Page references are to the 2008 reprint. The sceptic does not think that the practices can be justified because that would require the existence of something called ‘metaphysical blame’, which the sceptic thinks cannot ex- ist, regardless of the truth of the thesis of determinism. ‘A formal withdrawal on one side in return for a substantial concession on the other’ (Strawson, 1962/2008,p. 2). V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 188 II —MARIA ALVAREZ practices of punishment or reward are not mere instruments of so- cial utility but also expressions of deep-rooted, arguably ineradica- ble, elements of our nature. But the reconciliation cannot come about until both parties also accept that there was something wrong-headed in their approach, namely, the assumption that the application of the concept of moral responsibility, blame, and so on, and our engagement in the associ- ated practices, as a whole, stand in need of rational justification. Each party must accept not merely that their justification is unsatis- factory but that the very task of seeking a justification is misguided because, although particular moves within the practice admit of justification, no justification is possible or needed for the prac- tice as a whole: not possible because there is no standpoint from which we could justify our concepts or practices as a whole; and not needed because those concepts and practices are expres- sions of attitudes (concerns and demands; see below) that form ‘the general framework’ of our human and essentially social nature, and that framework is, again as a whole, neither rational nor irrational. ‘Pessimist and optimist alike’, Strawson says, ‘show themselves, in different ways, unable to accept this’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 25). To help the parties reach a position that might enable this recon- ciliation, Strawson reminds them of the rich complexities inherent in the transactions in which the concept of responsibility finds application, and also of their fundamental place in human life. These reminders delineate the concept of responsibility, and in doing so reveal the thesis of determinism as irrelevant to the questions about moral responsibility that underlie the traditional compatibilism debate —irrelevant not, however, for the reasons that the optimist would think, and not because the incompatibilist’s misgivings about those reasons were misplaced. Until they accept that all parties have sought ‘in different ways, to over-intellectualize the facts’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 25). This is, in essence, Strawson’s response to the Nagel-inspired objection that, from the purely objective point of view, moral responsibility is an illusion. The illusion, Strawson retorts, is rather the belief in a ‘metaphysically absolute standpoint from which we can judge’ which of the various standpoints we can occupy allows us to see things ‘as they really are’ (Strawson 1985,p. 30). Even though the incompatibilist fails to give them coherent articulation. Should we, then, think of Strawson as a compatibilist? His remark that ‘if we sufficiently, that is radically, modify’ it (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 27), the optimist’s view is right would suggest we should. But when we consider how radical the modification needs to be, and Strawson’s V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’ REVISITED 189 To this end, Strawson relocates the discussion about responsibility to a ‘neighbouring field’, where problems sufficiently close to those at issue in the dispute appear to arise as well. This is the field of ordi- nary interpersonal interactions in the context of relationships that range ‘from the most intimate to the most casual’. Those interactions are woven from actions, but also, crucially, from reactions to how others are disposed towards us —or to how we perceive them to be disposed on account of their treatment of us. Here Strawson introduces ‘the central commonplace’ that under- pins his account of the reactive attitudes, namely, ‘the very great im- portance that we attach to the attitudes and intentions towards us of other human beings’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 5). This ‘basic con- cern’ which, he adds, various thinkers have claimed to be born from self-esteem, or the need for love and security, or a sense of dignity, and so on, gives rise to a ‘basic demand’ that others should hold atti- tudes and intentions towards us that are appropriate to the relation- ships in which we stand to them, and that they should manifest these in their interactions with us. We react to perceived attitudes of love, affection, sympathy, respect, indifference, lack of recognition, contempt, malevolence, and so on, in others towards us with what Strawson calls the ‘personal reactive attitudes’ —representative examples of which are ‘gratitude, resentment, forgiveness, love, and hurt feelings’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 5). At this point, commentators tend to emphasize the primacy Strawson gives to these reactive attitudes, in particular to their psy- chological inevitability, in so far as we are essentially emotional and social creatures shaped by the basic concern. While these are major themes in Strawson’s argument, I want to focus on something else that Strawson himself says he is concerned with, and on which he elaborates at some length, namely, the modifications that the scepticism about what exactly the thesis of determinism is, calling Strawson a compatibilist underplays these crucial elements of his position. See Watson (1987,p. 226 n.6). These are Gary Watson’s labels (2014,p. 17), but he takes exception to Strawson’s thought that the making of the demand just is the proneness to the attitudes that manifest the concern, on the grounds that the basic demand ‘need not be tied to any particular range of emotional responses’. Repudiating this equation, Watson adds, ‘creates the appealing op- tion of denying, in particular, a central place to resentment and indignation, without reject- ing responsibility or accountability itself’ (2014,p. 18). I discuss this issue, though briefly, in §v. In my view, though, the non-rational status of our moral concepts and practices, rather than just their inevitability, is the key to understanding the significance of Strawson’s ‘Humean’ naturalist remarks. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 190 II —MARIA ALVAREZ reactive attitudes are subject to and, in particular, the special consid- erations that ‘might be expected to modify or mollify’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 7), or even lead to the total suspension of, those attitudes. As is well known, Strawson argues that the manifold consi- derations that affect our reactive attitudes can, for his purposes, be divided into two groups. First, those that lead us to modify but not altogether suspend the natural ‘participant stance’ towards others characterized by the reactive attitudes. Second, considerations that lead us to suspend that stance, whether temporarily or permanently, and replace it with the ‘objective stance’, where we substitute practices of management, curing, training, and so on, for attitudes of interpersonal engagement that constitute the participant stance. I shall focus on the two groups of considerations that correspond to, and lead us to take on, those stances, rather than on the stances themselves. Starting with the second group, these are considerations about lack or defect of the capacity to engage in the participant stance, owing to such things as immaturity, or psychological abnormalities resulting from severe cognitive impairment, acute mental illness, and other conditions that compromise that capacity. These lead us naturally to take the objective stance towards that person, excluding them, temporarily or permanently, from the reac- tions typical of the participant stance though not necessarily from all interpersonal relationships. Since capacities can be possessed in degrees, agents or their behav- iour may occupy borderline areas that complicate which stance, and so whether a particular reactive attitude, is appropriate. And, partly because of this, the stances, though deeply opposed, don’t totally ex- clude each other: we may take both stances towards someone in the same situation, sometimes involving a compromise of taking each stance only partially, or shifting between them. And we typically do that, in distinctive ways, in the upbringing of children. On occasion, According to ‘Freedom and Resentment’, agents in such categories are ‘exempted’ from the reactive attitudes, when they are, not because we don’t blame (resent, etc.) them for wronging us, but rather because we deem them not capable of doing so, even while deeming them capable of harming us —and of meaning to do so. ‘In the case of the abnormal .. . our adoption of the objective attitude is a consequence of our viewing the agent as incapacitated in some or all respects for ordinary interpersonal relationships’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 13). See Watson (2014, pp. 27 ff.) for a convincing rebuttal of Wallace’s objection (1994) that Strawson conflates the distinctions between re- active and non-reactive attitudes and between the participant and the objective stances. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’ REVISITED 191 we may take something close to the objective stance towards the nor- mal and mature because their extraordinary circumstances (extreme strain, exhaustion, stress, even post-hypnotic suggestion) as good as deprived them of that capacity at the time. Moreover, we can some- times, for a while, take the objective stance towards the unimpaired normal and mature as a ‘resource’ we exploit for various practical or theoretical purposes. I now turn to the first group of considerations, which concern not agents’ capacities but rather aspects of their conduct or circumstan- ces surrounding it that alter its significance for us. These divide into two sub-types. The first sub-type includes considerations that reveal that the conduct that would (or did) elicit a particular reactive atti- tude is not, in fact, contrary to initial appearances, something that warrants that reaction. This include cases of justification when what appeared an instance of wrongdoing is no such thing: it was your umbrella you took, not mine; or you pushed me deliberately but so as to get me out of the way of oncoming traffic. (And similarly, mu- tatis mutandis, for merely apparent acts of beneficence.) And, still within this sub-type, reactive attitudes are withdrawn where there was in fact nothing that qualifies as conduct apt to elicit such atti- tudes, despite the person remaining a capable agent: you pushed me because you were forcibly and unexpectedly pushed; or the punch was the result of a spasm. There is, strictly speaking, no behaviour to warrant the initial reactive attitude in these cases, even if some harm transpires and an apology is called for. Depending on the details of these cases, the reactive attitude that seemed initially justi- fied may change valence —from resentment to gratitude, or vice versa —or be altogether dropped. The second sub-type is comprised of excusing considerations proper, which include ignorance, mis- takes, inadvertence, reluctant or forced choices, and so on, and which J. L. Austin nicely explores in ‘A Plea for Excuses’ (1957). These show that the harm done, though inflicted through one’s agency, was not meant, or at least not fully meant. Austin discusses and illustrates the distinction between, but also almost convergence of, justifications and excuses; and notes that there exist too ‘the opposite numbers of excuses — the expressions that aggravate, such as ‘deliberately’, ‘on purpose’, and so on, if only for the reason that an excuse often takes the form of a rebuttal of one of these’ (Austin 1957,p. 3). Knowing that Austin and Strawson were philosophical interlocutors, it is almost impos- sible, having read both papers, not to see ‘Freedom and Resentment’ as at least partly heed- ing Austin’s plea. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 192 II —MARIA ALVAREZ Strawson’s ‘irrelevance of determinism’ point is that the differen- ces in capacities, intentions and circumstances reflected in the range of considerations just canvassed, which lead us to suspend or modify our reactive attitudes, would in no way be abolished or otherwise af- fected, mitigated or amplified if determinism were true —or indeed, if it were false. For even if we suppose that behaviour is determined, in the sense implied by the thesis of determinism, there remains a difference between those who lack (perhaps temporarily) the requi- site capacities and are, therefore, exempted from the reactive atti- tudes, and those who have them: to paraphrase Strawson, the truth of determinism would not make us all abnormal, immature, or psy- chologically defective. And even if behaviour is determined in the relevant sense, there is a difference between behaviour that results from ignorance, mistake, duress, inadvertence, carelessness, malice, and so on, and that which does not. The same is true if all behaviour is indetermined. The final move in Strawson’s argument is to transpose these con- siderations to the field of the traditional dispute, where the reactive attitudes in question are what Strawson calls the ‘vicarious ana- logues’ of the personal ones, namely, the other-directed attitude of moral indignation or disapprobation in its various incarnations, and also the self-directed attitude of guilt or remorse, again in its various guises. The ‘basic demand’ here is made not for oneself but on behalf of everyone and anyone. Being ‘disinterested or generalized’, this demand is not shaped, as it is in the interpersonal attitudes, by the web of personal relationships. And here, again, the same sorts of considerations that result in the modulations and modifications of the attitudes, Strawson argues, would also be unaffected by the truth or falsity of determinism. To illustrate with a sort of reductio the fact that the truth of the thesis of determinism is in no way impli- cated in these considerations, Strawson notes that, if the reason, or part of the reason, why we don’t hold children morally responsible for their behaviour were that we think the latter is determined (in the sense implied by the thesis of determinism), then we would absurdly have to regard a child’s ‘progressive emergence’ as a responsible be- ing as its ‘progressive or patchy emergence from an area in which its Which, Strawson tentatively suggests, implies less tension between the objective and the participant stances in this context by comparison to the personal one (see Strawson 1962/ 2008,p. 18). V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’ REVISITED 193 behaviour is in this sense determined into an area in which it isn’t’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 21). Therefore, as I understand him, Strawson viewed the reactive attitudes as cognitive emotional attitudes: they are more or less intense emotional reactions we experience, informed by considera- tions about (a) which attitudes and intentions towards each other we deem appropriate in various contexts; (b) which atti- tudes and intentions the (potential)target ofthe attitudesactually holds and manifests; and (c) the latter’s capacities and incapacities, and the circumstances in which they act when they manifest their attitudes. I have not discussed several themes in ‘Freedom and Resentment’, such as Strawson’s insistence on the practical inconceivability of our giving up the participant stance, or his assertion that an assessment of the rationality of doing so, supposing it to be possible, would be constrained not by the truth of determinism but by weighing up the consequent gains and losses to human life. These are important ideas, but distracting for my purposes. It would be an understatement to say that the immense influence of ‘Freedom and Resentment’ has not been primarily due to the suc- cess of this reconciling aim. While I myself find it convincing, this is not the place to assess its overall success given the various objec- tions that have been levelled against it. My purpose in stressing Strawson’s original aim, his strategy in reaching that aim, and the cognitive dimension of the reactive attitudes (at least as I construe these) is to provide a background against which to address the sec- ond question about his position outlined above, and to assess his conception of blame. I start with the question. But note that Strawson’s central point is not merely that we don’t base general exemp- tions of responsibility on an assumption that the thesis is true in respect of that behaviour but rather the stronger claim that the truth of the thesis in respect of all behaviour would not affect the distinctions that dictate whether particular attitudes, or the taking of either stance, is appropriate. A point emphasized by Wallace (1994) and developed in his own account. Even many of Strawson’s most ardent admirers, for instance, Wallace, McKenna and Watson, consider the argument unconvincing. For example, Nagel (1979), Wiggins (1973), Russell (1992) and, to some extent, Watson (1987). V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 194 II —MARIA ALVAREZ IV Strawson’s Theory of Moral Responsibility? Although, as we have just seen, the aim of ‘Freedom and Resentment’ was to reconcile optimists and pessimists, and not, at least explicitly, to provide a the- ory of moral responsibility, many have claimed to find such a theory in the paper —and in it an answer to a question about the ‘priority of facts’ concerning moral responsibility, namely, ‘Which has prior- ity, the fact that someone is responsible, or the fact that someone is held responsible?’ Moreover, these commentators urge, this question shouldn’t be construed merely in epistemic terms: the question at is- sue, it is said, is about metaphysical priority. The centrality that Strawson gives to the reactive attitudes, which are ways of holding each other and ourselves responsible, has been construed by the commentators I have in mind as evidence that in ‘Freedom and Resentment’ Strawson is committed to a theory of re- sponsibility that gives metaphysical or explanatory priority to facts about holding people responsible. Watson appears to advance this interpretation when he laments that the prevailing willingness to em- brace ‘Strawsonian’ views of responsibility has not been matched by a commitment to what he takes to be Strawson’s most original con- tribution: a ‘response-dependent’, ‘anti-realist’ understanding of being responsible, against realist views that take ‘being responsible’ to be ‘an independent property evidenced or presumed by the reactive attitudes’ (Watson 2014,p. 16). Michael McKenna says his own theory is inspired by Strawson, while departing from, as McKenna thinks, Strawson’s view that ‘holding morally responsi- ble is metaphysically more basic than being morally responsible’ (McKenna 2012,p. 47); David Shoemaker (2017) attributes that theory to Strawson too, and offers an extended argument on its behalf. For detailed and helpful discussion, see McKenna (2012, pp. 39 ff.) McKenna himself argues for a third alternative: neither is metaphysically prior to the other. As Watson notes, this realist view and direction of metaphysical priority is advanced by Brink and Nelkin (2013). Although McKenna allows that he’s thereby ‘taking some interpretive liberties’ (2012,p. 40 n.10). He attributes to Strawson a non-cognitive notion of the basic reactive attitudes where, for example, reactive anger is merely ‘a natural angry response to a discernment of anoth- er’s’ will’ (Shoemaker 2017,p. 494). For reasons given in section III, I disagree with this interpretation. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’ REVISITED 195 Some have objected to the response-dependent theory attributed to Strawson on the grounds that, in making being responsible depen- dent on being held responsible, the theory does not allow for the possibility ‘that one can be held responsible even though one in fact is not responsible’ (Fischer and Ravizza 1993,p. 18). Its defenders have sought to overcome this objection by introducing a normative element: it is being held appropriately responsible that is metaphysi- cally prior to being responsible. However, without a standard of appropriateness that is independent of a community’s practices, the objector can insist, this modification still seems to leave no room for the possibility of a community’s making systematic mistakes in treat- ing whole groups as legitimate targets of the reactive attitudes when they are not, and vice versa. Is Strawson’s position vulnerable to this objection? Before addressing that issue, I want to suggest that, whatever the merits of a ‘response-dependent’ theory of responsibility, it is doubt- ful that ‘Freedom and Resentment’ commits Strawson to a view about the relative metaphysical or explanatory priority of facts about responsibility, or, a fortiori, to an answer that gives priority to facts about holding people responsible. As argued above, Strawson’s aim in drawing attention to the practice of holding peo- ple responsible inherent in the reactive attitudes is to remind us of various ‘known facts’ in order to show that the thesis of determinism is irrelevant to questions about moral responsibility, and why. Those facts include the link between the reactive attitudes, the basic concern and the basic demand; the ways in which our taking the objective or the participant stance —and within the latter, particular reactive attitudes —is constrained by the considerations about agen- tial incapacities, excuses and justifications outlined above; and the fact that this web of stances and reactions is neither susceptible to nor in need of external rational justification. Although this shows that Strawson believed that reflection on the reactive attitudes is crucial in elucidating the concept of moral re- sponsibility, and that such reflection reveals the extent to which the practice of holding people morally responsibility is an ineradicable See Shoemaker (2017) for a discussion of this issue. And that seems to be the case whether the question is about being a morally responsible agent, that is, an agent who is in principle capable of moral agency, or about being morally responsible (and perhaps blameworthy or praiseworthy) for some particular episode or as- pect of one’s conduct . V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 196 II —MARIA ALVAREZ part of our social nature, those remarks do not seem sufficient to attribute to him a belief about the metaphysical or explanatory priority of facts about holding people responsible over facts about their being morally responsible. And even if we raise the question of basicness in relation to concepts, it is doubtful that he held that ei- ther of the concepts of being responsible and of being held appropri- ately responsible is more basic than the other, so that either could be analysed in terms of the other, or indeed that they could be analysed in terms of some other more basic concept(s). In ‘Morality and Perception’, Strawson says that the ‘moral attitudes and judgements and personal reactive attitudes’ are ‘indissolubly linked with that sense of agency or freedom or responsibility which we feel in our- selves and attribute to others’ (Strawson 1985,p. 25). And in the later, complementary, and much less discussed paper ‘Freedom and Necessity’ (1992), Strawson describes the phenomenology of agency that gives rise ‘or perhaps constitutes’ our sense of freedom, which he connects to the experience of agency and the sense of self. In these texts Strawson presents freedom, agency, moral responsibility, the reactive attitudes, justifications, exemptions and excuses, and so on, as a cluster of concepts which are to be elucidated by attending to the interconnections between them but which are nonetheless all on a par. It is therefore doubtful that he held the corresponding phenomena (or related facts) to differ in explanatory or metaphysi- cal priority. Let me return to the question whether Strawson is vulnerable to the objection levelled against response-dependent theories, namely, that they lack a standard of appropriateness that is independent of a community’s practices. A full answer would require more space than I can devote to it here, but I shall sketch the reasons why I think he isn’t. Strawson’s injunction that the concept of moral responsibility is best understood by reflecting on the reactive attitudes and associ- ated practices does not imply that local customs or idiosyncrasies are immune to rational criticism. On the contrary, for as we have seen, within the human practice of holding each other and ourselves re- sponsible, the justification of a particular reactive attitude towards someone answers to the sorts of considerations about their capacities ‘The fact that we find ourselves in our desires and preferences and do not, in general, find them as alien presences within ourselves; the experience of deliberation which heightens and strengthens our sense of self; and the constantly repeated experience of agency’ (Strawson 1992,p. 135). V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’ REVISITED 197 and circumstances spelled out in §iii. And the truth of those consid- erations is independent of our taking the reactive attitude(s) in ques- tion. That leaves ample room for the possibility that we, individuals or communities, may be mistaken about a person’s or a group’s real intellectual or psychological (including emotional) capacities, or about the details and stringency of their circumstances, or the effects of the latter on their conduct, and so on. It also leaves ample room for critical reflection on, and correction of, particular manifestations of our attitudes, however socially widespread and historically entrenched, and in particular, of practices of blaming and punish- ment —the issue to which I shall turn next. While much more would need to be said to flesh out this interpretation of ‘Freedom and Resentment’ concerning Strawson’s theoretical commitments about metaphysical or explanatory priority, I hope these remarks go some way to recommend it. The Project of Civilizing Blame. Various authors have claimed that Strawson’s characterization of blame involves features that are mor- ally problematic. The worry was articulated early on by Watson, who, despite his admiration for ‘Freedom and Resentment’, saw a troubling connection in Strawson’s views between the practice of holding one another responsible and ‘retributive sentiments and hence a limitation of goodwill’ (Watson 1987,p. 256). The prob- lem, Watson argues, is that this link implies that ‘skepticism about retribution is skepticism about responsibility’ and that, on Strawson’s account, ‘holding one another responsible is at odds with one historically important ideal of love’ (1987,p. 256). The ideal is embodied by moral exemplars such as Gandhi or Martin Luther King, who, Watson adds, while unequivocally holding responsible those guilty of oppression and injustices and making appropriate demands on behalf of the victims, nonetheless ‘manage, or come much closer than others to managing, to do such things without vin- dictiveness or malice’ (1987, pp. 256–7). Watson finds this ideal in tension with Strawson’s suggestion that a ‘partial withdrawal of goodwill’ and ‘the preparedness to acquiesce in that infliction of Page references are to the reprint in Watson (2004). V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 198 II —MARIA ALVAREZ suffering on the offender which is an essential part of punishment’ are ‘all of a piece’ with the moral reactive attitudes (Strawson 1962/ 2008, pp. 23–4). To assess the aptness of the charge, we need to separate two claims implicit in it. One is that Strawson’s characterization of blame involves a problematic ‘retributivist’ view of punishment. The other is that any retributivist view of punishment, or at any rate the view allegedly embraced by Strawson, involves ‘vindictiveness or malice’. Both claims seem off-target. I start with the second. It is consistent with Strawson’s picture that moral indignation (or resentment and self-directed guilt) should not involve even an incli- nation or desire to punish, let alone vindictiveness or malice. What Strawson says is required is acquiescence to punishment —or, for the offender, the forgoing of resentment —were punishment to turn out to be appropriate. Acquiescing to punishment involves loosening ‘the general demand that another should, if possible, be spared suf- fering’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 23) —a demand we make, and so may loosen for ourselves too. But since this acquiescence may in fact be intensely reluctant it is doubtful that, for Strawson, indignation need involve vindictiveness or malice —or related unsavoury feelings (sadism, masochism, etc.). The second claim is that Strawson’s conception of blame involves a retributivist attitude to punishment. Perhaps it does but, since his conception is only minimally retributivist, I do not think it is in ten- sion with Watson’s ‘important ideal’, or otherwise problematic. Strawson himself repudiates the thought that the reactive attitudes involve a preparedness to punish by inflicting indiscriminate suffer- ing. This, I suggest, gives the sense in which his view of punishment is retributivist —that is, the sense in which it involves the idea of ‘re- payment’: punishment that is deserved by the offender and propor- tionate to the offence. On the other hand, in disallowing punishment ‘in accordance with procedures which we knew to be wholly useless’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 24) in bringing about the social goods pun- ishment aims at, Strawson’s view also disallows punishment for its own sake or punishment as a form of revenge. This position would recommend the modification or abandonment of forms of punish- ment that are counterproductive or morally compromised. It is at least consistent with, and arguably committed to, attitudes to pun- ishment that aim primarily at rehabilitation, deterrence or protection and that may arise from, or be consistent with, sympathy and V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’ REVISITED 199 compassion. One should remember that Strawson aims to incorporate the sense of desert that the pessimist is rightly shocked to find lacking in the optimist’s inadequate —because purely conse- quentialist —understanding of our practices of holding each other re- sponsible, without, in the process, losing whatever real social utility the practices may have. Because of this, I am not convinced that his view is problematic in the ways Watson and other have suggested. Where does this leave the philosophical project to ‘civilize’ blame? I think it may be helpful here to distinguish two different, though related, tasks. One is that of providing a philosophically adequate account of blame. The other is to identify the conditions that make it right or appropriate to blame someone for something, and by whom and when, and relatedly, which, if any, forms of sanctions or punish- ment would be justified. Concerning the first, as we just saw, Strawson’s account has been thought to be problematic because it is taken to validate negative, destructive emotions and a vindictive attitude that some find morally troubling. I have tried to show in my response to Watson that the worry about objectionable retributivist attitudes in Strawson’s con- ception of blame is misplaced. On the other hand, while negative sentiments of resentment, indignation and guilt are indeed central to his characterization of the blaming reactive attitudes, it is not clear that these are in themselves morally objectionable responses to wrongdoing. To be sure, the warrant for or appropriateness of an- ger or resentment may often be questionable, and excessive indul- gence in them may be destructive. Nonetheless, a degree of moral indignation or a sense of guilt in the face of egregious offenses is arguably not merely acceptable but sometimes required for both normative and instrumental reasons. To that extent, Strawson’s account of blame as instantiated in some reactive attitudes stands unimpeached. This overlaps with Bennett’s interpretation of Strawson, and with Bennett’s own theory of punishment, except that he is untroubled that his retributivist view brushes ‘up against the idea of revenge’ (Bennett 1980,p. 19). At a minimum, these practices contribute to the social organization that Strawson charac- terizes as ‘a condition of everything that matters’ in ‘Social Morality and Individual Ideal’ (1961,p. 5). I note that, in a footnote, Watson adds that trying ‘to harmonize retribution and good- will’ seems to him a possibility worth exploring (Watson 1987,p. 257 n.28); I mean these remarks to point towards a way of doing just that. Some of these are laid out in Smith (2007) and discussed by Mackenzie in her paper. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 200 II —MARIA ALVAREZ To the second task, ‘Freedom and Resentment’ makes at least two important contributions. One is to draw attention to the broad categories of exculpation (exemptions, justifications and excuses) that constrain the appropriateness of the reactive attitudes. The other is the justification of punishment canvassed above. These help to circumscribe culpability and, at least partly, the appropriateness of sanctions and punishment, and they contribute to understanding the conditions for appropriate blaming. But besides these, there are normative questions about the so-called ‘standing to blame’ and about the forms that blaming and punishment might take. It is here that many of the important questions raised by Mackenzie in her pa- per find their proper place. Her case study is a fictional character, Kya, a socially marginal- ized woman with an upbringing punctuated by abandonment and betrayal, who kills a socially privileged former lover who tried to rape her and is almost certain to try again, and she does so with care- ful premeditation. Mackenzie brings out convincingly the impor- tance of the dynamics of social power when considering, not simply who has the standing to blame her, but just how blameworthy Kya is. I agree with much of what she says about both, but I want to raise a point of disagreement and a question. I do not agree that a Strawsonian analysis of excusing conditions cannot accommodate the sorts of factors that Mackenzie thinks mitigate Kya’s blamewor- thiness. My discussion of Strawson’s view on exculpation in §ii explains why: given the threat and her marginalization —‘the struc- tural, epistemic and discursive injustices to which she is subject’ (Mackenzie, p. 000), it is not clear that she had a choice and, if she didn’t, that would mitigate her culpability. To paraphrase Strawson, we may see her acting for reasons ‘which acceptably over- ride’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 8) her general reluctance to harm. But perhaps the disagreement is superficial: I think Strawson’s analysis can accommodate them, but it may be that, as Mackenzie says, some ‘Strawsonian’ analyses can’t. The question is this. Mackenzie says that the reasons that lead Kya to kill are ‘twisted’ by her fear, her childhood experience of violence, and her being the subject of structural injustices (Mackenzie 2021,p. 000). However, in so far as In Delia Owens’s Where the Crawdads Sing (2019). The plausibility of these remarks depends on giving enough credibility to the character of Kya and her predicament, but I am putting that issue aside. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’ REVISITED 201 we agree that her predicament mitigates her guilt, isn’t that because we think that she has legitimate reasons to act as she does? And if that is right, in what sense are her reasons ‘twisted’? Towards the end of ‘Freedom and Resentment’, Strawson suggests that increased reflection on, and study of, the reactive attitudes and associated practices in social, historical and anthropological sciences should make us cautious of claiming universality for aspects of these attitudes that may be quite local in space or time. In addition, psy- chological and psychoanalytic studies increase our distrust in them because they reinforce with aseptic clarity the common wisdom that these practices are ‘a prime realm of self-deception, of the ambiguous and the shady, of guilt-transference, unconscious sadism and the rest’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 26). Mackenzie’s paper aptly reminds us that, in addition, these practices are a minefield of occasions for compounding the injustices that arise at least partly from pre- existing unjust social hierarchies. Department of Philosophy King’s College London Strand London wc2r 2ls uk maria.alvarez@kcl.ac.uk References Austin, J. L. 1957: ‘A Plea for Excuses’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Soci- ety, 57(1), pp. 1–30. Bennett, Jonathan 1980: ‘Accountability (ii)’. In van Straaten Zak (ed.), Phil- osophical Subjects: Essays Presented to P. F. Strawson, pp. 14–47. Ox- ford: Clarendon Press. Reprinted in McKenna and Russell 2008, pp. 47–68. Brink, David O., and Dana K. Nelkin 2013: ‘Fairness and the Architecture of Responsibility’. Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility, 1, pp. 284–313. I am indebted to Bill Brewer, Simon-Pierre Chevarie-Cossette, Ulrike Heuer, John Hyman, Felix Koch, Guy Longworth, Michael McKenna, Eliot Michaelson, David Owens, Joseph Raz, Aaron Ridley and Matt Soteriou for helpful comments on previous versions. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 202 II —MARIA ALVAREZ D. Justin, Coates, and Tognazzini Neal A. (eds.) 2013: Blame: Its Nature and Norms. Oxford: Oxford University Press. John Martin, Fischer, and Ravizza Mark (eds.) 1993: Perspectives on Moral Responsibility. Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press. Hieronymi, Pamela 2020: Freedom, Resentment, and the Metaphysics of Morals. Princeton, nj and Oxford: Princeton University Press. McGeer, Victoria 2013: ‘Civilizing Blame’. In Coatesand Tognazzini2013, pp. 162–88. McKenna, Michael 2012: Conversation and Responsibility. New York: Ox- ford University Press. — —and Russell Paul 2008: Free Will and Reactive Attitudes: Perspectives on P. F. Strawson’s ‘Freedom and Resentment’. Farnham: Ashgate. Mackenzie, Catriona: ‘Culpability, Blame, and the Moral Dynamics of Social Power’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 95, pp. 000–00. Nagel, Thomas 1979: ‘Moral Luck’. In his Mortal Questions, pp. 24–38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Owens, Delia 2019: Where the Crawdads Sing. London: Corsair. Russell, Paul 1992: ‘Strawson’s Way of Naturalizing Responsibility’. Ethics, 102(2), pp. 287–302. Shoemaker, David 2015: Responsibility from the Margins. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ——2017: ‘Response-Dependent Responsibility; or, a Funny Thing Hap- pened on the Way to Blame’. Philosophical Review, 126(4), pp. 481–527. Smith, Angela 2007: ‘On Being Responsible and Holding Responsible’. Jour- nal of Ethics, 11(4), pp. 465–84. Strawson, P. F. 1961: ‘Social Morality and Individual Idea’. Philosophy, 36(136), pp. 1–17. ——1962/2008: ‘Freedom and Resentment’. Proceedings of the British Academy, 48, pp. 187–211. Reprinted in Strawson 2008, pp. 1–25. Page references are to the reprint. 1985: ‘Morality and Perception’. In his Scepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties —The Woodbridge Lectures 1983, pp. 25–41. London: Routledge, 2008. 1992: ‘Freedom and Necessity’. In his Analysis and Metaphysics: An In- troduction to Philosophy, pp. 133–42. New York: Oxford University Press. 2008: Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays. London: Routledge. Wallace, R. Jay 1994: Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press. Watson, Gary 1987: ‘Responsibility and the Limits of Evil: Variations on a Strawsonian Theme’. Reprinted in Watson 2004, pp. 219–59. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’ REVISITED 203 ——2004: Agency and Answerability. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2014: ‘Peter Strawson on Responsibility and Sociality’. Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility, 2, pp. 15–32. Wiggins, David 1973: ‘Towards a Reasonable Libertarianism’. In Honderich Ted (ed.), Essays on Freedom of Action. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume Oxford University Press

P. F. Strawson, Moral Theories and ‘The Problem of Blame’: ‘Freedom and Resentment’ Revisited

Alvarez, Maria
Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume , Volume 95 (1): 21 – Jul 2, 2021
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II —MARIA ALVAREZ P. F. STRAWSON,MORAL THEORIES AND ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’REVISITED After nearly sixty years, the influence of Peter Strawson’s ‘Freedom and Resentment’ remains strong in discussions of moral responsibility. However, as the paper has become more re- mote in time and in intellectual climate, some of those influences have turned into amplifications of ideas and claims that are mis- interpretations or distortions of the paper, while other notions have been projected onto it. I try to make the case for this charge specifically in relation to what has become accepted as Strawson’s ‘response-dependent’ theory of moral responsibility and to an allegedly problematic conception of blame said to be at the centre of that theory. Against that background, I comment on the current philosophical project to ‘civilize’ blame. Introduction. After nearly sixty years, the influence of Peter Strawson’s ‘Freedom and Resentment’ (Strawson 1962/2008) remains strong in discussions of moral responsibility, its ripples extending ever more widely. However, as the paper has become more remote in time and in intellectual climate some of those influ- ences, I shall argue, have turned into amplifications of ideas and claims that are misinterpretations or distortions of the paper, while other notions have been projected onto it. Certain ways of reading Strawson’s paper have given rise to views that are only superficially, if at all, Strawsonian, and to projects that are only tenuously con- nected to his opinions. I have in mind specifically what has become accepted as Strawson’s ‘response-dependent’ theory of moral respon- sibility and the allegedly problematic conception of blame that is said to be at the centre of this theory —a conception that has given rise to the project of ‘civilizing’ blame that Catriona Mackenzie scru- tinizes in her paper. Unless the context suggests otherwise, references to ‘blame’ in this paper refer to the (ex- tremely varied) practice of blaming, rather than to ‘fault’ —what is typically imputed to someone in blaming them. V C 2021 The Aristotelian Society This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 184 II —MARIA ALVAREZ I shall first delineate the interpretative route from the theory to the project (§ii), and in the rest of the paper attempt to challenge some aspects of that interpretation. In §iii, I highlight Strawson’s avowed aim in ‘Freedom and Resentment’ and summarize what I take to be his central argument towards that aim. I then deploy that construal, first in §iv, to challenge the attribution to Strawson of a ‘response-dependent’ theory of moral responsibility, and then in §v, to dispel worries about his conception of blame. I conclude with some brief remarks about the project of civilizing blame and the con- cerns that motivate Mackenzie’s paper. II From Moral Responsibility to the Need to Civilize Blame.It is widely held among philosophers working on moral responsibility that in ‘Freedom and Resentment’ Strawson presents a theory of what it is for someone to be a morally responsible agent. Formulations of this theory, as well as reservations about its success, vary. Nonetheless, all of the commentators I have in mind have found in Strawson’s paper a theory that can be captured by the slo- gan ‘To be responsible is to be an appropriate target of the reactive attitudes’ and which holds that facts about being held responsible have metaphysical or explanatory priority over facts about being responsible. Accordingly, various philosophers have developed theories of moral responsibility explicitly informed by what they take to be Strawson’s main contribution, while jettisoning, also explicitly, aspects of his views they judge unsatisfactory. But many more have come to endorse conceptions of moral responsibility that they would describe as ‘broadly Strawsonian’. A striking feature of the latter is the centrality given to the practice of holding responsible through blaming. As the editors of a recent volume on blame put it: [T]he most common way of conceiving of moral responsibility these days is along broadly Strawsonian lines, emphasizing the importance For instance, Wallace (1994), McKenna (2012), and Shoemaker (2015, 2017). Like them, Bennett (1980), Watson (1987, 2014) and Hieronymi (2020) also offer insightful discus- sions, but not a fully developed ‘Strawsonian’ theory. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’ REVISITED 185 and explanatory priority of our practices of blaming and holding one another responsible. (Coates and Tognazinni 2013,p. 6) On the other hand, as Mackenzie points out in her paper, recent philosophical discussions have expressed concern about the (alleged) ‘ambivalent nature of blame and of our social practices of blaming’; the suggestion is that while blame can help to scaffold and capacitate responsible agency .. ., the negative reactive emotions and punitive responses associated with blame often motivate destructive attitudes and behaviour that run counter to the aims of mo- rality. (Mackenzie 2021,p. 000) As Mackenzie goes on to explain, this has given rise to the philo- sophical project of ‘civilizing’ blame. Victoria McGeer attributes the need for this project to a worry that there might be something ‘in the nature of blame itself that makes it a morally objectionable response to (culpable) wrongdoing’ (McGeer 2013,p. 162). This is because blaming is often accompanied by negative emotions and a wish to impose sanctions and punishment, to inflict suffering on the wrong- doer, and recent philosophers find these emotions and motivations morally distasteful. So they have sought to sanitize blame by cleans- ing it of this perceived morally problematic element and thereby of- fer a conception of blame that is ‘normatively acceptable’. McGeer warns of a need to ensure that the process of sanitizing blame is not too revisionist, lest we lose the psychological phenome- non of blame ‘as we know it’ —presumably because this sanitized practice may not be suited to play the critical role that blaming plays in regulating behaviour. (McGeer herself favours a ‘domesticating’ version of the project, which takes the ‘ugly punitive face of blame’ to be an essential feature of the phenomenon, and so endeavours to tame rather than to eradicate it.) While Mackenzie herself is sympathetic to that general project, she is concerned that so-called ‘Strawsonian’ approaches to moral responsibility and blame, and the project to ‘civilize’ it, tend to oper- ate with ‘highly idealized conceptions of the moral dynamics’ that underlie the practices associated with blaming. Accordingly, the aim of her paper is to caution that the success of the project depends on See McGeer (2013, pp. 162 ff.). It is not always clear whether the project aims to offer a better account of the familiar practice of blame, or rather to develop a new, more morally acceptable practice. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 186 II —MARIA ALVAREZ acknowledging the extent to which the ‘supposedly capacitating fea- tures of our blaming practices can be implicated in structural injusti- ces of various kinds and distorted by epistemic and discursive injus- tice’ (Mackenzie 2021,p. 000). What does this need for the project of ‘civilizing’ blame have to do with ‘Freedom and Resentment’? One connection is the idea that Strawson’s characterization of blame, as manifested in the reactive attitudes, together with the centrality he gives the latter in elucidat- ing the concept of moral responsibility, might imply that these mor- ally objectionable features of blame are ineradicable aspects of our most fundamental and valuable interactions. I think that, despite Strawson’s emphasis on the reactive attitudes and his insistence on the practical inconceivability of giving them up and their importance to us, his characterization of blame is free from the morally objec- tionable features that give rise to the need to ‘civilize’ that concept. Further, his account has the resources to disqualify many of the blaming practices that have been thought to be morally troubling — and so it has some of the resources needed for the project of ‘civiliz- ing’ our actual practices of blaming which, at the intrapersonal, in- terpersonal, social and institutional levels, are undeniably often pro- foundly flawed —in particular, in being subject to the structural injustices that Mackenzie urges us to attend to. III Strawson’s Aim in ‘Freedom and Resentment’. Despite the wide- spread attribution of the response-dependent theory to Strawson, one may question whether he intended to offer a theory of moral re- sponsibility at all; and whether, regardless of his intentions, the pa- per does in fact reveal commitment to the theory often attributed to Strawson. I shall address the first question in this section and the sec- ond in the next. One thing is clear because Strawson says it explicitly: ‘Freedom and Resentment’ was primarily intended as a move towards reconcil- ing the opposing parties in the traditional debate about whether moral responsibility is compatible with the truth of determinism — or indeed with its falsity. I’ll briefly spell out Strawson’s aim and the tactics he uses to achieve it. Inevitably, this will mean retelling V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’ REVISITED 187 familiar ideas. No summary could do justice to the subtlety and rich- ness of the paper —to say nothing of the elegance of its style. Still, with this sketch I hope to draw attention to aspects of Strawson’s po- sition that, though widely acknowledged, tend to be underplayed de- spite their centrality to his elucidation of the concept of moral re- sponsibility and the associated blaming practices. In the opening section, Strawson introduces the two camps to be reconciled as follows: Some philosophers say they do not know what the thesis of determin- ism is. Others say, or imply, that they do know what it is. Of these, some —the pessimists perhaps —hold that if the thesis is true, then the concepts of moral obligation and responsibility really have no applica- tion, and the practices of punishing and blaming, of expressing moral condemnation and approval, are really unjustified. Others —the opti- mists perhaps —hold that these concepts and practices in no way lose their raison d’e ˆ tre if the thesis of determinism is true. Some hold even that the justification of these concepts and practices requires the truth of the thesis. (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 1) The optimist detects no threat because, for her, the said justifica- tion lies in the social utility of the application of the concepts and as- sociated practices, and the truth of determinism doesn’t threaten that justification —perhaps it even underlies it. The pessimist thinks this justification requires the truth of ‘some general metaphysical proposition’ about our freedom which, however, must be false if de- terminism is true. Strawson concedes to each party that their opponent’s position is unsatisfactory: as the pessimist objects, the optimist leaves some- thing essential out of the picture; and, as the optimist protests, the pessimist adds something that is of doubtful coherence. Strawson’s proposed reconciliation will require each party to acknowledge this. The incompatibilist (pessimist) must give up the requirement of that obscure condition called ‘contra-causal freedom’. The compa- tibilist (optimist), in turn, must admit that the practices of imputing responsibility, desert, culpability or merit, and the associated Page references are to the 2008 reprint. The sceptic does not think that the practices can be justified because that would require the existence of something called ‘metaphysical blame’, which the sceptic thinks cannot ex- ist, regardless of the truth of the thesis of determinism. ‘A formal withdrawal on one side in return for a substantial concession on the other’ (Strawson, 1962/2008,p. 2). V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 188 II —MARIA ALVAREZ practices of punishment or reward are not mere instruments of so- cial utility but also expressions of deep-rooted, arguably ineradica- ble, elements of our nature. But the reconciliation cannot come about until both parties also accept that there was something wrong-headed in their approach, namely, the assumption that the application of the concept of moral responsibility, blame, and so on, and our engagement in the associ- ated practices, as a whole, stand in need of rational justification. Each party must accept not merely that their justification is unsatis- factory but that the very task of seeking a justification is misguided because, although particular moves within the practice admit of justification, no justification is possible or needed for the prac- tice as a whole: not possible because there is no standpoint from which we could justify our concepts or practices as a whole; and not needed because those concepts and practices are expres- sions of attitudes (concerns and demands; see below) that form ‘the general framework’ of our human and essentially social nature, and that framework is, again as a whole, neither rational nor irrational. ‘Pessimist and optimist alike’, Strawson says, ‘show themselves, in different ways, unable to accept this’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 25). To help the parties reach a position that might enable this recon- ciliation, Strawson reminds them of the rich complexities inherent in the transactions in which the concept of responsibility finds application, and also of their fundamental place in human life. These reminders delineate the concept of responsibility, and in doing so reveal the thesis of determinism as irrelevant to the questions about moral responsibility that underlie the traditional compatibilism debate —irrelevant not, however, for the reasons that the optimist would think, and not because the incompatibilist’s misgivings about those reasons were misplaced. Until they accept that all parties have sought ‘in different ways, to over-intellectualize the facts’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 25). This is, in essence, Strawson’s response to the Nagel-inspired objection that, from the purely objective point of view, moral responsibility is an illusion. The illusion, Strawson retorts, is rather the belief in a ‘metaphysically absolute standpoint from which we can judge’ which of the various standpoints we can occupy allows us to see things ‘as they really are’ (Strawson 1985,p. 30). Even though the incompatibilist fails to give them coherent articulation. Should we, then, think of Strawson as a compatibilist? His remark that ‘if we sufficiently, that is radically, modify’ it (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 27), the optimist’s view is right would suggest we should. But when we consider how radical the modification needs to be, and Strawson’s V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’ REVISITED 189 To this end, Strawson relocates the discussion about responsibility to a ‘neighbouring field’, where problems sufficiently close to those at issue in the dispute appear to arise as well. This is the field of ordi- nary interpersonal interactions in the context of relationships that range ‘from the most intimate to the most casual’. Those interactions are woven from actions, but also, crucially, from reactions to how others are disposed towards us —or to how we perceive them to be disposed on account of their treatment of us. Here Strawson introduces ‘the central commonplace’ that under- pins his account of the reactive attitudes, namely, ‘the very great im- portance that we attach to the attitudes and intentions towards us of other human beings’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 5). This ‘basic con- cern’ which, he adds, various thinkers have claimed to be born from self-esteem, or the need for love and security, or a sense of dignity, and so on, gives rise to a ‘basic demand’ that others should hold atti- tudes and intentions towards us that are appropriate to the relation- ships in which we stand to them, and that they should manifest these in their interactions with us. We react to perceived attitudes of love, affection, sympathy, respect, indifference, lack of recognition, contempt, malevolence, and so on, in others towards us with what Strawson calls the ‘personal reactive attitudes’ —representative examples of which are ‘gratitude, resentment, forgiveness, love, and hurt feelings’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 5). At this point, commentators tend to emphasize the primacy Strawson gives to these reactive attitudes, in particular to their psy- chological inevitability, in so far as we are essentially emotional and social creatures shaped by the basic concern. While these are major themes in Strawson’s argument, I want to focus on something else that Strawson himself says he is concerned with, and on which he elaborates at some length, namely, the modifications that the scepticism about what exactly the thesis of determinism is, calling Strawson a compatibilist underplays these crucial elements of his position. See Watson (1987,p. 226 n.6). These are Gary Watson’s labels (2014,p. 17), but he takes exception to Strawson’s thought that the making of the demand just is the proneness to the attitudes that manifest the concern, on the grounds that the basic demand ‘need not be tied to any particular range of emotional responses’. Repudiating this equation, Watson adds, ‘creates the appealing op- tion of denying, in particular, a central place to resentment and indignation, without reject- ing responsibility or accountability itself’ (2014,p. 18). I discuss this issue, though briefly, in §v. In my view, though, the non-rational status of our moral concepts and practices, rather than just their inevitability, is the key to understanding the significance of Strawson’s ‘Humean’ naturalist remarks. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 190 II —MARIA ALVAREZ reactive attitudes are subject to and, in particular, the special consid- erations that ‘might be expected to modify or mollify’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 7), or even lead to the total suspension of, those attitudes. As is well known, Strawson argues that the manifold consi- derations that affect our reactive attitudes can, for his purposes, be divided into two groups. First, those that lead us to modify but not altogether suspend the natural ‘participant stance’ towards others characterized by the reactive attitudes. Second, considerations that lead us to suspend that stance, whether temporarily or permanently, and replace it with the ‘objective stance’, where we substitute practices of management, curing, training, and so on, for attitudes of interpersonal engagement that constitute the participant stance. I shall focus on the two groups of considerations that correspond to, and lead us to take on, those stances, rather than on the stances themselves. Starting with the second group, these are considerations about lack or defect of the capacity to engage in the participant stance, owing to such things as immaturity, or psychological abnormalities resulting from severe cognitive impairment, acute mental illness, and other conditions that compromise that capacity. These lead us naturally to take the objective stance towards that person, excluding them, temporarily or permanently, from the reac- tions typical of the participant stance though not necessarily from all interpersonal relationships. Since capacities can be possessed in degrees, agents or their behav- iour may occupy borderline areas that complicate which stance, and so whether a particular reactive attitude, is appropriate. And, partly because of this, the stances, though deeply opposed, don’t totally ex- clude each other: we may take both stances towards someone in the same situation, sometimes involving a compromise of taking each stance only partially, or shifting between them. And we typically do that, in distinctive ways, in the upbringing of children. On occasion, According to ‘Freedom and Resentment’, agents in such categories are ‘exempted’ from the reactive attitudes, when they are, not because we don’t blame (resent, etc.) them for wronging us, but rather because we deem them not capable of doing so, even while deeming them capable of harming us —and of meaning to do so. ‘In the case of the abnormal .. . our adoption of the objective attitude is a consequence of our viewing the agent as incapacitated in some or all respects for ordinary interpersonal relationships’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 13). See Watson (2014, pp. 27 ff.) for a convincing rebuttal of Wallace’s objection (1994) that Strawson conflates the distinctions between re- active and non-reactive attitudes and between the participant and the objective stances. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’ REVISITED 191 we may take something close to the objective stance towards the nor- mal and mature because their extraordinary circumstances (extreme strain, exhaustion, stress, even post-hypnotic suggestion) as good as deprived them of that capacity at the time. Moreover, we can some- times, for a while, take the objective stance towards the unimpaired normal and mature as a ‘resource’ we exploit for various practical or theoretical purposes. I now turn to the first group of considerations, which concern not agents’ capacities but rather aspects of their conduct or circumstan- ces surrounding it that alter its significance for us. These divide into two sub-types. The first sub-type includes considerations that reveal that the conduct that would (or did) elicit a particular reactive atti- tude is not, in fact, contrary to initial appearances, something that warrants that reaction. This include cases of justification when what appeared an instance of wrongdoing is no such thing: it was your umbrella you took, not mine; or you pushed me deliberately but so as to get me out of the way of oncoming traffic. (And similarly, mu- tatis mutandis, for merely apparent acts of beneficence.) And, still within this sub-type, reactive attitudes are withdrawn where there was in fact nothing that qualifies as conduct apt to elicit such atti- tudes, despite the person remaining a capable agent: you pushed me because you were forcibly and unexpectedly pushed; or the punch was the result of a spasm. There is, strictly speaking, no behaviour to warrant the initial reactive attitude in these cases, even if some harm transpires and an apology is called for. Depending on the details of these cases, the reactive attitude that seemed initially justi- fied may change valence —from resentment to gratitude, or vice versa —or be altogether dropped. The second sub-type is comprised of excusing considerations proper, which include ignorance, mis- takes, inadvertence, reluctant or forced choices, and so on, and which J. L. Austin nicely explores in ‘A Plea for Excuses’ (1957). These show that the harm done, though inflicted through one’s agency, was not meant, or at least not fully meant. Austin discusses and illustrates the distinction between, but also almost convergence of, justifications and excuses; and notes that there exist too ‘the opposite numbers of excuses — the expressions that aggravate, such as ‘deliberately’, ‘on purpose’, and so on, if only for the reason that an excuse often takes the form of a rebuttal of one of these’ (Austin 1957,p. 3). Knowing that Austin and Strawson were philosophical interlocutors, it is almost impos- sible, having read both papers, not to see ‘Freedom and Resentment’ as at least partly heed- ing Austin’s plea. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 192 II —MARIA ALVAREZ Strawson’s ‘irrelevance of determinism’ point is that the differen- ces in capacities, intentions and circumstances reflected in the range of considerations just canvassed, which lead us to suspend or modify our reactive attitudes, would in no way be abolished or otherwise af- fected, mitigated or amplified if determinism were true —or indeed, if it were false. For even if we suppose that behaviour is determined, in the sense implied by the thesis of determinism, there remains a difference between those who lack (perhaps temporarily) the requi- site capacities and are, therefore, exempted from the reactive atti- tudes, and those who have them: to paraphrase Strawson, the truth of determinism would not make us all abnormal, immature, or psy- chologically defective. And even if behaviour is determined in the relevant sense, there is a difference between behaviour that results from ignorance, mistake, duress, inadvertence, carelessness, malice, and so on, and that which does not. The same is true if all behaviour is indetermined. The final move in Strawson’s argument is to transpose these con- siderations to the field of the traditional dispute, where the reactive attitudes in question are what Strawson calls the ‘vicarious ana- logues’ of the personal ones, namely, the other-directed attitude of moral indignation or disapprobation in its various incarnations, and also the self-directed attitude of guilt or remorse, again in its various guises. The ‘basic demand’ here is made not for oneself but on behalf of everyone and anyone. Being ‘disinterested or generalized’, this demand is not shaped, as it is in the interpersonal attitudes, by the web of personal relationships. And here, again, the same sorts of considerations that result in the modulations and modifications of the attitudes, Strawson argues, would also be unaffected by the truth or falsity of determinism. To illustrate with a sort of reductio the fact that the truth of the thesis of determinism is in no way impli- cated in these considerations, Strawson notes that, if the reason, or part of the reason, why we don’t hold children morally responsible for their behaviour were that we think the latter is determined (in the sense implied by the thesis of determinism), then we would absurdly have to regard a child’s ‘progressive emergence’ as a responsible be- ing as its ‘progressive or patchy emergence from an area in which its Which, Strawson tentatively suggests, implies less tension between the objective and the participant stances in this context by comparison to the personal one (see Strawson 1962/ 2008,p. 18). V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’ REVISITED 193 behaviour is in this sense determined into an area in which it isn’t’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 21). Therefore, as I understand him, Strawson viewed the reactive attitudes as cognitive emotional attitudes: they are more or less intense emotional reactions we experience, informed by considera- tions about (a) which attitudes and intentions towards each other we deem appropriate in various contexts; (b) which atti- tudes and intentions the (potential)target ofthe attitudesactually holds and manifests; and (c) the latter’s capacities and incapacities, and the circumstances in which they act when they manifest their attitudes. I have not discussed several themes in ‘Freedom and Resentment’, such as Strawson’s insistence on the practical inconceivability of our giving up the participant stance, or his assertion that an assessment of the rationality of doing so, supposing it to be possible, would be constrained not by the truth of determinism but by weighing up the consequent gains and losses to human life. These are important ideas, but distracting for my purposes. It would be an understatement to say that the immense influence of ‘Freedom and Resentment’ has not been primarily due to the suc- cess of this reconciling aim. While I myself find it convincing, this is not the place to assess its overall success given the various objec- tions that have been levelled against it. My purpose in stressing Strawson’s original aim, his strategy in reaching that aim, and the cognitive dimension of the reactive attitudes (at least as I construe these) is to provide a background against which to address the sec- ond question about his position outlined above, and to assess his conception of blame. I start with the question. But note that Strawson’s central point is not merely that we don’t base general exemp- tions of responsibility on an assumption that the thesis is true in respect of that behaviour but rather the stronger claim that the truth of the thesis in respect of all behaviour would not affect the distinctions that dictate whether particular attitudes, or the taking of either stance, is appropriate. A point emphasized by Wallace (1994) and developed in his own account. Even many of Strawson’s most ardent admirers, for instance, Wallace, McKenna and Watson, consider the argument unconvincing. For example, Nagel (1979), Wiggins (1973), Russell (1992) and, to some extent, Watson (1987). V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 194 II —MARIA ALVAREZ IV Strawson’s Theory of Moral Responsibility? Although, as we have just seen, the aim of ‘Freedom and Resentment’ was to reconcile optimists and pessimists, and not, at least explicitly, to provide a the- ory of moral responsibility, many have claimed to find such a theory in the paper —and in it an answer to a question about the ‘priority of facts’ concerning moral responsibility, namely, ‘Which has prior- ity, the fact that someone is responsible, or the fact that someone is held responsible?’ Moreover, these commentators urge, this question shouldn’t be construed merely in epistemic terms: the question at is- sue, it is said, is about metaphysical priority. The centrality that Strawson gives to the reactive attitudes, which are ways of holding each other and ourselves responsible, has been construed by the commentators I have in mind as evidence that in ‘Freedom and Resentment’ Strawson is committed to a theory of re- sponsibility that gives metaphysical or explanatory priority to facts about holding people responsible. Watson appears to advance this interpretation when he laments that the prevailing willingness to em- brace ‘Strawsonian’ views of responsibility has not been matched by a commitment to what he takes to be Strawson’s most original con- tribution: a ‘response-dependent’, ‘anti-realist’ understanding of being responsible, against realist views that take ‘being responsible’ to be ‘an independent property evidenced or presumed by the reactive attitudes’ (Watson 2014,p. 16). Michael McKenna says his own theory is inspired by Strawson, while departing from, as McKenna thinks, Strawson’s view that ‘holding morally responsi- ble is metaphysically more basic than being morally responsible’ (McKenna 2012,p. 47); David Shoemaker (2017) attributes that theory to Strawson too, and offers an extended argument on its behalf. For detailed and helpful discussion, see McKenna (2012, pp. 39 ff.) McKenna himself argues for a third alternative: neither is metaphysically prior to the other. As Watson notes, this realist view and direction of metaphysical priority is advanced by Brink and Nelkin (2013). Although McKenna allows that he’s thereby ‘taking some interpretive liberties’ (2012,p. 40 n.10). He attributes to Strawson a non-cognitive notion of the basic reactive attitudes where, for example, reactive anger is merely ‘a natural angry response to a discernment of anoth- er’s’ will’ (Shoemaker 2017,p. 494). For reasons given in section III, I disagree with this interpretation. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’ REVISITED 195 Some have objected to the response-dependent theory attributed to Strawson on the grounds that, in making being responsible depen- dent on being held responsible, the theory does not allow for the possibility ‘that one can be held responsible even though one in fact is not responsible’ (Fischer and Ravizza 1993,p. 18). Its defenders have sought to overcome this objection by introducing a normative element: it is being held appropriately responsible that is metaphysi- cally prior to being responsible. However, without a standard of appropriateness that is independent of a community’s practices, the objector can insist, this modification still seems to leave no room for the possibility of a community’s making systematic mistakes in treat- ing whole groups as legitimate targets of the reactive attitudes when they are not, and vice versa. Is Strawson’s position vulnerable to this objection? Before addressing that issue, I want to suggest that, whatever the merits of a ‘response-dependent’ theory of responsibility, it is doubt- ful that ‘Freedom and Resentment’ commits Strawson to a view about the relative metaphysical or explanatory priority of facts about responsibility, or, a fortiori, to an answer that gives priority to facts about holding people responsible. As argued above, Strawson’s aim in drawing attention to the practice of holding peo- ple responsible inherent in the reactive attitudes is to remind us of various ‘known facts’ in order to show that the thesis of determinism is irrelevant to questions about moral responsibility, and why. Those facts include the link between the reactive attitudes, the basic concern and the basic demand; the ways in which our taking the objective or the participant stance —and within the latter, particular reactive attitudes —is constrained by the considerations about agen- tial incapacities, excuses and justifications outlined above; and the fact that this web of stances and reactions is neither susceptible to nor in need of external rational justification. Although this shows that Strawson believed that reflection on the reactive attitudes is crucial in elucidating the concept of moral re- sponsibility, and that such reflection reveals the extent to which the practice of holding people morally responsibility is an ineradicable See Shoemaker (2017) for a discussion of this issue. And that seems to be the case whether the question is about being a morally responsible agent, that is, an agent who is in principle capable of moral agency, or about being morally responsible (and perhaps blameworthy or praiseworthy) for some particular episode or as- pect of one’s conduct . V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 196 II —MARIA ALVAREZ part of our social nature, those remarks do not seem sufficient to attribute to him a belief about the metaphysical or explanatory priority of facts about holding people responsible over facts about their being morally responsible. And even if we raise the question of basicness in relation to concepts, it is doubtful that he held that ei- ther of the concepts of being responsible and of being held appropri- ately responsible is more basic than the other, so that either could be analysed in terms of the other, or indeed that they could be analysed in terms of some other more basic concept(s). In ‘Morality and Perception’, Strawson says that the ‘moral attitudes and judgements and personal reactive attitudes’ are ‘indissolubly linked with that sense of agency or freedom or responsibility which we feel in our- selves and attribute to others’ (Strawson 1985,p. 25). And in the later, complementary, and much less discussed paper ‘Freedom and Necessity’ (1992), Strawson describes the phenomenology of agency that gives rise ‘or perhaps constitutes’ our sense of freedom, which he connects to the experience of agency and the sense of self. In these texts Strawson presents freedom, agency, moral responsibility, the reactive attitudes, justifications, exemptions and excuses, and so on, as a cluster of concepts which are to be elucidated by attending to the interconnections between them but which are nonetheless all on a par. It is therefore doubtful that he held the corresponding phenomena (or related facts) to differ in explanatory or metaphysi- cal priority. Let me return to the question whether Strawson is vulnerable to the objection levelled against response-dependent theories, namely, that they lack a standard of appropriateness that is independent of a community’s practices. A full answer would require more space than I can devote to it here, but I shall sketch the reasons why I think he isn’t. Strawson’s injunction that the concept of moral responsibility is best understood by reflecting on the reactive attitudes and associ- ated practices does not imply that local customs or idiosyncrasies are immune to rational criticism. On the contrary, for as we have seen, within the human practice of holding each other and ourselves re- sponsible, the justification of a particular reactive attitude towards someone answers to the sorts of considerations about their capacities ‘The fact that we find ourselves in our desires and preferences and do not, in general, find them as alien presences within ourselves; the experience of deliberation which heightens and strengthens our sense of self; and the constantly repeated experience of agency’ (Strawson 1992,p. 135). V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’ REVISITED 197 and circumstances spelled out in §iii. And the truth of those consid- erations is independent of our taking the reactive attitude(s) in ques- tion. That leaves ample room for the possibility that we, individuals or communities, may be mistaken about a person’s or a group’s real intellectual or psychological (including emotional) capacities, or about the details and stringency of their circumstances, or the effects of the latter on their conduct, and so on. It also leaves ample room for critical reflection on, and correction of, particular manifestations of our attitudes, however socially widespread and historically entrenched, and in particular, of practices of blaming and punish- ment —the issue to which I shall turn next. While much more would need to be said to flesh out this interpretation of ‘Freedom and Resentment’ concerning Strawson’s theoretical commitments about metaphysical or explanatory priority, I hope these remarks go some way to recommend it. The Project of Civilizing Blame. Various authors have claimed that Strawson’s characterization of blame involves features that are mor- ally problematic. The worry was articulated early on by Watson, who, despite his admiration for ‘Freedom and Resentment’, saw a troubling connection in Strawson’s views between the practice of holding one another responsible and ‘retributive sentiments and hence a limitation of goodwill’ (Watson 1987,p. 256). The prob- lem, Watson argues, is that this link implies that ‘skepticism about retribution is skepticism about responsibility’ and that, on Strawson’s account, ‘holding one another responsible is at odds with one historically important ideal of love’ (1987,p. 256). The ideal is embodied by moral exemplars such as Gandhi or Martin Luther King, who, Watson adds, while unequivocally holding responsible those guilty of oppression and injustices and making appropriate demands on behalf of the victims, nonetheless ‘manage, or come much closer than others to managing, to do such things without vin- dictiveness or malice’ (1987, pp. 256–7). Watson finds this ideal in tension with Strawson’s suggestion that a ‘partial withdrawal of goodwill’ and ‘the preparedness to acquiesce in that infliction of Page references are to the reprint in Watson (2004). V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 198 II —MARIA ALVAREZ suffering on the offender which is an essential part of punishment’ are ‘all of a piece’ with the moral reactive attitudes (Strawson 1962/ 2008, pp. 23–4). To assess the aptness of the charge, we need to separate two claims implicit in it. One is that Strawson’s characterization of blame involves a problematic ‘retributivist’ view of punishment. The other is that any retributivist view of punishment, or at any rate the view allegedly embraced by Strawson, involves ‘vindictiveness or malice’. Both claims seem off-target. I start with the second. It is consistent with Strawson’s picture that moral indignation (or resentment and self-directed guilt) should not involve even an incli- nation or desire to punish, let alone vindictiveness or malice. What Strawson says is required is acquiescence to punishment —or, for the offender, the forgoing of resentment —were punishment to turn out to be appropriate. Acquiescing to punishment involves loosening ‘the general demand that another should, if possible, be spared suf- fering’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 23) —a demand we make, and so may loosen for ourselves too. But since this acquiescence may in fact be intensely reluctant it is doubtful that, for Strawson, indignation need involve vindictiveness or malice —or related unsavoury feelings (sadism, masochism, etc.). The second claim is that Strawson’s conception of blame involves a retributivist attitude to punishment. Perhaps it does but, since his conception is only minimally retributivist, I do not think it is in ten- sion with Watson’s ‘important ideal’, or otherwise problematic. Strawson himself repudiates the thought that the reactive attitudes involve a preparedness to punish by inflicting indiscriminate suffer- ing. This, I suggest, gives the sense in which his view of punishment is retributivist —that is, the sense in which it involves the idea of ‘re- payment’: punishment that is deserved by the offender and propor- tionate to the offence. On the other hand, in disallowing punishment ‘in accordance with procedures which we knew to be wholly useless’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 24) in bringing about the social goods pun- ishment aims at, Strawson’s view also disallows punishment for its own sake or punishment as a form of revenge. This position would recommend the modification or abandonment of forms of punish- ment that are counterproductive or morally compromised. It is at least consistent with, and arguably committed to, attitudes to pun- ishment that aim primarily at rehabilitation, deterrence or protection and that may arise from, or be consistent with, sympathy and V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’ REVISITED 199 compassion. One should remember that Strawson aims to incorporate the sense of desert that the pessimist is rightly shocked to find lacking in the optimist’s inadequate —because purely conse- quentialist —understanding of our practices of holding each other re- sponsible, without, in the process, losing whatever real social utility the practices may have. Because of this, I am not convinced that his view is problematic in the ways Watson and other have suggested. Where does this leave the philosophical project to ‘civilize’ blame? I think it may be helpful here to distinguish two different, though related, tasks. One is that of providing a philosophically adequate account of blame. The other is to identify the conditions that make it right or appropriate to blame someone for something, and by whom and when, and relatedly, which, if any, forms of sanctions or punish- ment would be justified. Concerning the first, as we just saw, Strawson’s account has been thought to be problematic because it is taken to validate negative, destructive emotions and a vindictive attitude that some find morally troubling. I have tried to show in my response to Watson that the worry about objectionable retributivist attitudes in Strawson’s con- ception of blame is misplaced. On the other hand, while negative sentiments of resentment, indignation and guilt are indeed central to his characterization of the blaming reactive attitudes, it is not clear that these are in themselves morally objectionable responses to wrongdoing. To be sure, the warrant for or appropriateness of an- ger or resentment may often be questionable, and excessive indul- gence in them may be destructive. Nonetheless, a degree of moral indignation or a sense of guilt in the face of egregious offenses is arguably not merely acceptable but sometimes required for both normative and instrumental reasons. To that extent, Strawson’s account of blame as instantiated in some reactive attitudes stands unimpeached. This overlaps with Bennett’s interpretation of Strawson, and with Bennett’s own theory of punishment, except that he is untroubled that his retributivist view brushes ‘up against the idea of revenge’ (Bennett 1980,p. 19). At a minimum, these practices contribute to the social organization that Strawson charac- terizes as ‘a condition of everything that matters’ in ‘Social Morality and Individual Ideal’ (1961,p. 5). I note that, in a footnote, Watson adds that trying ‘to harmonize retribution and good- will’ seems to him a possibility worth exploring (Watson 1987,p. 257 n.28); I mean these remarks to point towards a way of doing just that. Some of these are laid out in Smith (2007) and discussed by Mackenzie in her paper. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 200 II —MARIA ALVAREZ To the second task, ‘Freedom and Resentment’ makes at least two important contributions. One is to draw attention to the broad categories of exculpation (exemptions, justifications and excuses) that constrain the appropriateness of the reactive attitudes. The other is the justification of punishment canvassed above. These help to circumscribe culpability and, at least partly, the appropriateness of sanctions and punishment, and they contribute to understanding the conditions for appropriate blaming. But besides these, there are normative questions about the so-called ‘standing to blame’ and about the forms that blaming and punishment might take. It is here that many of the important questions raised by Mackenzie in her pa- per find their proper place. Her case study is a fictional character, Kya, a socially marginal- ized woman with an upbringing punctuated by abandonment and betrayal, who kills a socially privileged former lover who tried to rape her and is almost certain to try again, and she does so with care- ful premeditation. Mackenzie brings out convincingly the impor- tance of the dynamics of social power when considering, not simply who has the standing to blame her, but just how blameworthy Kya is. I agree with much of what she says about both, but I want to raise a point of disagreement and a question. I do not agree that a Strawsonian analysis of excusing conditions cannot accommodate the sorts of factors that Mackenzie thinks mitigate Kya’s blamewor- thiness. My discussion of Strawson’s view on exculpation in §ii explains why: given the threat and her marginalization —‘the struc- tural, epistemic and discursive injustices to which she is subject’ (Mackenzie, p. 000), it is not clear that she had a choice and, if she didn’t, that would mitigate her culpability. To paraphrase Strawson, we may see her acting for reasons ‘which acceptably over- ride’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 8) her general reluctance to harm. But perhaps the disagreement is superficial: I think Strawson’s analysis can accommodate them, but it may be that, as Mackenzie says, some ‘Strawsonian’ analyses can’t. The question is this. Mackenzie says that the reasons that lead Kya to kill are ‘twisted’ by her fear, her childhood experience of violence, and her being the subject of structural injustices (Mackenzie 2021,p. 000). However, in so far as In Delia Owens’s Where the Crawdads Sing (2019). The plausibility of these remarks depends on giving enough credibility to the character of Kya and her predicament, but I am putting that issue aside. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’ REVISITED 201 we agree that her predicament mitigates her guilt, isn’t that because we think that she has legitimate reasons to act as she does? And if that is right, in what sense are her reasons ‘twisted’? Towards the end of ‘Freedom and Resentment’, Strawson suggests that increased reflection on, and study of, the reactive attitudes and associated practices in social, historical and anthropological sciences should make us cautious of claiming universality for aspects of these attitudes that may be quite local in space or time. In addition, psy- chological and psychoanalytic studies increase our distrust in them because they reinforce with aseptic clarity the common wisdom that these practices are ‘a prime realm of self-deception, of the ambiguous and the shady, of guilt-transference, unconscious sadism and the rest’ (Strawson 1962/2008,p. 26). Mackenzie’s paper aptly reminds us that, in addition, these practices are a minefield of occasions for compounding the injustices that arise at least partly from pre- existing unjust social hierarchies. Department of Philosophy King’s College London Strand London wc2r 2ls uk maria.alvarez@kcl.ac.uk References Austin, J. L. 1957: ‘A Plea for Excuses’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Soci- ety, 57(1), pp. 1–30. Bennett, Jonathan 1980: ‘Accountability (ii)’. In van Straaten Zak (ed.), Phil- osophical Subjects: Essays Presented to P. F. Strawson, pp. 14–47. Ox- ford: Clarendon Press. Reprinted in McKenna and Russell 2008, pp. 47–68. Brink, David O., and Dana K. Nelkin 2013: ‘Fairness and the Architecture of Responsibility’. Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility, 1, pp. 284–313. I am indebted to Bill Brewer, Simon-Pierre Chevarie-Cossette, Ulrike Heuer, John Hyman, Felix Koch, Guy Longworth, Michael McKenna, Eliot Michaelson, David Owens, Joseph Raz, Aaron Ridley and Matt Soteriou for helpful comments on previous versions. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 202 II —MARIA ALVAREZ D. Justin, Coates, and Tognazzini Neal A. (eds.) 2013: Blame: Its Nature and Norms. Oxford: Oxford University Press. John Martin, Fischer, and Ravizza Mark (eds.) 1993: Perspectives on Moral Responsibility. Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press. Hieronymi, Pamela 2020: Freedom, Resentment, and the Metaphysics of Morals. Princeton, nj and Oxford: Princeton University Press. McGeer, Victoria 2013: ‘Civilizing Blame’. In Coatesand Tognazzini2013, pp. 162–88. McKenna, Michael 2012: Conversation and Responsibility. New York: Ox- ford University Press. — —and Russell Paul 2008: Free Will and Reactive Attitudes: Perspectives on P. F. Strawson’s ‘Freedom and Resentment’. Farnham: Ashgate. Mackenzie, Catriona: ‘Culpability, Blame, and the Moral Dynamics of Social Power’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 95, pp. 000–00. Nagel, Thomas 1979: ‘Moral Luck’. In his Mortal Questions, pp. 24–38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Owens, Delia 2019: Where the Crawdads Sing. London: Corsair. Russell, Paul 1992: ‘Strawson’s Way of Naturalizing Responsibility’. Ethics, 102(2), pp. 287–302. Shoemaker, David 2015: Responsibility from the Margins. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ——2017: ‘Response-Dependent Responsibility; or, a Funny Thing Hap- pened on the Way to Blame’. Philosophical Review, 126(4), pp. 481–527. Smith, Angela 2007: ‘On Being Responsible and Holding Responsible’. Jour- nal of Ethics, 11(4), pp. 465–84. Strawson, P. F. 1961: ‘Social Morality and Individual Idea’. Philosophy, 36(136), pp. 1–17. ——1962/2008: ‘Freedom and Resentment’. Proceedings of the British Academy, 48, pp. 187–211. Reprinted in Strawson 2008, pp. 1–25. Page references are to the reprint. 1985: ‘Morality and Perception’. In his Scepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties —The Woodbridge Lectures 1983, pp. 25–41. London: Routledge, 2008. 1992: ‘Freedom and Necessity’. In his Analysis and Metaphysics: An In- troduction to Philosophy, pp. 133–42. New York: Oxford University Press. 2008: Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays. London: Routledge. Wallace, R. Jay 1994: Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press. Watson, Gary 1987: ‘Responsibility and the Limits of Evil: Variations on a Strawsonian Theme’. Reprinted in Watson 2004, pp. 219–59. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001 ‘THE PROBLEM OF BLAME’: ‘FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT’ REVISITED 203 ——2004: Agency and Answerability. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2014: ‘Peter Strawson on Responsibility and Sociality’. Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility, 2, pp. 15–32. Wiggins, David 1973: ‘Towards a Reasonable Libertarianism’. In Honderich Ted (ed.), Essays on Freedom of Action. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. V 2021 The Aristotelian Society Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume xcv doi: 10.1093/arisup/akab001

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