There are many familiar reasons why you might not blame someone who wronged you: you may think they aren’t culpable, or believe you lack the standing to blame them, or you might forgive them. But there’s another phenomenon, which has received little attention so far: you might simply stand above the fact that they wronged you. In this paper, I examine what this attitude is, and when (if ever) we should adopt it. I suggest you stand above a wrong if (...) you don’t care about it as a ground for blame—partly because you don’t care about the wrongdoer as answerable for their attitudes to you, and partly because you care about something that’s worthy of more of your care. I argue that that’s appropriate if and only if the wrongdoer’s attitudes aren’t important in your relationship to them. Our phenomenon thus implicates large questions about the import of interpersonal relations. More generally, it suggests that to live well is to tread rightly on the path between immersion and violability on the one hand, and self-sufficiency, independence and composure on the other. (shrink)

In recent decades, P. F. Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment” (1962) has had an enormous influence on philosophical views of moral responsibility. Many contemporary views follow Strawson in centering questions of responsibility on the appropriateness of certain attitudes in our interpersonal relations, especially attitudes of blame and anger, rather than on the abstract nature of free will. Strawson’s influence has in many ways been beneficial, but the prevailing Strawsonian views have taken on some of the more dubious tendencies of contemporary moral (...) philosophy. Among them is the tendency to think of our ethical relations narrowly in terms of the sort of respect that we owe friends and strangers alike, while neglecting attitudes of concern and understanding. This tendency distorts our views of our ethical relations and how we should respond to one another’s wrongful conduct. To correct those distortions, I retrieve insights from older traditions of ethical thought—especially Platonic, Stoic, and Christian traditions—which give love and understanding a central place in our ethical relations, along with respect. These traditions, which have profoundly shaped the development of Western ethical thought, are unduly neglected in contemporary moral philosophy. By joining the insights of these traditions with the insights of Strawsonian views of responsibility, I believe we can articulate a more complete and compelling view of ethical life and responsibility. (shrink)