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Print Price: $60.50

Format:
Hardback
256 pp.
135 mm x 216 mm

ISBN-13:
9780198833604

Publication date:
April 2019

Imprint: OUP UK

Ways to be Blameworthy

Rightness, Wrongness, and Responsibility

Elinor Mason

There must be some connection between our deontic notions, rightness and wrongness, and our responsibility notions, praise- and blameworthiness. Yet traditional approaches to each set of concepts tend to take the other set for granted. This book takes an integrated approach to these questions, drawing on both ethics and responsibility theory, and thereby illuminating both sets of concepts. Elinor Mason describes this as "normative responsibility theory": the primary aim is not to give an account of the conditions of agency, but to give an account of what sort of wrong action makes blame fitting. She presents a pluralistic view of both obligation and blameworthiness, identifying three different ways to be blameworthy, corresponding to different ways of acting wrongly. First, ordinary blameworthiness is essentially connected to subjective wrongness, to acting wrongly by one's own lights. Subjective obligation, and ordinary blame, apply only to those who are within our moral community, who understand and share our value system. By contrast, detached blame can apply even when the agent is outside our moral community, and has no sense that her act is morally wrong. In detached blame, the blame rather than the blameworthiness is fundamental. Finally, agents can take responsibility for some inadvertent wrongs, and thus become responsible. This third sort of blameworthiness, "extended blameworthiness", applies when the agent understands the objective wrongness of her act, but has no bad will. In such cases, the social context may be such that the agent should take responsibility, and accept ordinary blame from the wronged party.

Readership : Scholars, researchers, and advanced students in philosophy.

1. Introduction
2. Subjective Obligation
3. Trying to do Well by Morality
4. Ordinary Praiseworthiness and Blameworthiness
5. Praise and Blame
6. Excuses
7. Exemptions
8. Taking Responsibility

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Elinor Mason is Senior Lecturer in philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. She works on a wide range of issues in ethics, moral responsibility, and feminist philosophy.

Making Sense - Margot Northey
Responsibility from the Margins - David Shoemaker

Special Features

Takes a novel approach to questions about praiseworthiness and blameworthiness, integrating work in ethics with work on responsibility theory.
Contributes to a new way of thinking about responsibility: normative responsibility theory.
Includes a sustained examination of underexplored area such as praise and praiseworthiness.
Makes sense of some blame practices that we engage in, but seem difficult to defend philosophically.