Philosophy at St Andrews: Events

What's the Point of Blame?

Wed 24th April 2013 16:15

Room 104, Edgecliffe

Miranda Fricker (Birkbeck)

Both remorse and blame are clearly negative moral emotions. But while few have considered remorse to be an unhelpfully negative moral sentiment, the idea that blame is pointlessly negative, even cruel, is frequently expressed, with the implication that moral life would be better without it. I identify certain key pathologies of blame, which should obviously be avoided, but go on to offer a vindication of a certain style of blame I take to originate in our most basic reactive attitudes, which I call Communicative Blame. This kind of blame is the second-personal mirror of remorse. I argue that together they have a transformative and ameliorative impetus, which consists in the fact that together these emotions serve to bring the different parties’ moral understanding into greater alignment, and so to create a greater alignment of moral reasons. In doing this, they serve to continuously (re-)generate our shared moral life.

I also argue, however, that there remains a dark side to blame about which we should remain troubled. The account given of Communicative Blame reveals that this kind of blame can have a constructive power which, in the wrong hands, might bring the blamee’s moral understanding and practical reasons into greater alignment with the bad. Whether or not a given practice of even Communicative Blame in fact serves the good therefore depends significantly on who is doing the blaming.

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What's the Point of Blame?

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