The focus of this essay is on how we overcome the past by dealing with it. In this setting, the analysis is of the relationship between ‘moral transactions’ concerning blame, guilt, responsibility, apology and forgiveness and the possibility of transition away from states of trauma. The first section draws on previous work to set out a position on human love as the basis for an understanding of guilt and the ‘moral grammar’ of justice. The second section considers Martha Nussbaum’s claim (...) in Anger and Forgiveness that the idea of transition should be prioritized at the cost of a moral transactional analysis that would engage the moral grammar of blame, guilt, responsibility, apology and forgiveness. The latter is seen as potentially obstructing the transition to a better world. I suggest to the contrary there are grounds for thinking that a successful transition requires relevant moral transactions. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging interview Alan Norrie discusses how he became involved with Critical Realism, his work on Dialectical Critical Realism, and responses to it amongst the Critical Realist communi...

The focus of this essay is on how we overcome the past by dealing with it. In this setting, the analysis is of the relationship between ‘moral transactions’ concerning blame, guilt, responsibility, apology and forgiveness and the possibility of transition away from states of trauma. The first section draws on previous work to set out a position on human love as the basis for an understanding of guilt and the ‘moral grammar’ of justice. The second section considers Martha Nussbaum’s claim (...) in Anger and Forgiveness that the idea of transition should be prioritized at the cost of a moral transactional analysis that would engage the moral grammar of blame, guilt, responsibility, apology and forgiveness. The latter is seen as potentially obstructing the transition to a better world. I suggest to the contrary there are grounds for thinking that a successful transition requires relevant moral transactions. (shrink)

The focus of this essay is on how we overcome the past by dealing with it. In this setting, the analysis is of the relationship between ‘moral transactions’ concerning blame, guilt, responsibility, apology and forgiveness and the possibility of transition away from states of trauma. The first section draws on previous work to set out a position on human love as the basis for an understanding of guilt and the ‘moral grammar’ of justice. The second section considers Martha Nussbaum’s claim (...) in Anger and Forgiveness that the idea of transition should be prioritized at the cost of a moral transactional analysis that would engage the moral grammar of blame, guilt, responsibility, apology and forgiveness. The latter is seen as potentially obstructing the transition to a better world. I suggest to the contrary there are grounds for thinking that a successful transition requires relevant moral transactions. (shrink)

This article critiques conspicuous displays of morality within public discourse, recently framed as ‘moral grandstanding’, from the perspective of an intersubjective Critical Realist theory of ethics. Drawing on Honneth’s recognition theory as the basis of a ‘qualified explanatory critique’, I argue that these practices are not mere aberrations within moral discourse, but a necessary consequence of the neoliberal imperative to turn all aspects of the self into market assets. Neoliberal commodity fetishism also and especially involves the commodification of moral character (...) as a means of economic competition, as exemplified in recent discussions of ‘ethical capital’. This objectification categorically precludes intersubjectivity as the basis of ethical life, and produces a cognitive structure resembling narcissistic pathology, characterized by the pervasive objectification of self and other. Critical Realists should therefore reject moral grandstanding not only for its detrimental effects on public discourse, but because in subordinating morality to the market, it is fundamentally anti-ethical. (shrink)