Wrongdoing and the Moral Emotions provides an account of how we might effectively address wrongdoing given challenges to the legitimacy of anger and retribution that arise from ethical considerations and from concerns about free will. The issue is introduced in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 asks how we might conceive of blame without retribution, and proposes an account of blame as moral protest, whose function is to secure forward-looking goals such as the moral reform of the wrongdoer and reconciliation (...) in relationships. Chapter 3 considers whether it's possible to justify effectively dealing those who pose dangerous threats if they do not deserve to be harmed, and contends that wrongfully posing a threat is the core condition for the legitimacy of defensive harming. Chapter 4 provides an account of how to treat criminals without a retributive justification for punishment, and argues for an account in which the right of self-defense provides justification for measures such as preventative detention. Chapter 5 considers how we might forgive if wrongdoers don't basically deserve the pain of being resented, which forgiveness would then renounce, and proposes that forgiveness be conceived instead as renunciation of the stance of moral protest. Chapter 6 considers how personal relationships might function without retributive anger having a role in responding to wrongdoing, and contends that the stance of moral protest, supplemented with non-retributive emotions, is sufficient. Chapter 7 surveys the options for theistic and atheistic attitudes regarding the fate of humanity in a deterministic universe, and defends an impartial hope for humanity. (shrink)

Organizations are increasingly embedded with consultants and other non-employees who have the opportunity to engage in wrongdoing. However, research exploring the reporting intentions of employees regarding the discovery of wrongdoing by consultants is scant. It is important to examine reporting intentions in this setting given the enhanced presence of consultants in organizations and the fact that wrongdoing by consultants changes a key characteristic of the wrongdoing. Using an experimental approach, the current paper reports the results of (...) a study examining employees' reporting intentions subsequent to their discovery of wrongdoing by a consultant. The results of the study indicate that perceptions about the seriousness of a wrongdoing, personal costs and personal responsibility related to reporting a wrongdoing, and moral-equity judgments are significantly associated with reporting intentions for a normal reporting channel. Only perceptions of seriousness and personal costs are significantly associated for an anonymous reporting channel. Lastly, while personal costs for the anonymous reporting channel were lower than the normal reporting channel, reporting intentions were similar across the two channels. (shrink)

Some believe that the mere beneficiaries of wrongdoing of others ought to disgorge their tainted benefits. Others deny that claim. Both sides of this debate concentrate on unavoidable beneficiaries of the wrongdoing of others, who are presumed themselves to be innocent by virtue of the fact they have neither contributed to the wrong nor could they have avoided receiving the benefit. But as we show, this presumption is mistaken for unavoidable beneficiaries who intend in certain ways to benefit (...) from wrongdoing, and who have therefore done something wrong in forming and acting on such an intention. (shrink)

Addressing organizational wrongdoing (OW) is crucial for sustainable development. However, there seems to be a lack of structured analysis of this concept within the realm of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). This study aims to map the economic, business, and management literature on OW in relation to the SDGs using metadata extracted from 374 journal articles indexed in the Web of Science database for the period 2000–2023. This study highlights the need for a more systematic approach to (...) understanding complex OW phenomena in the sustainable context. It proposes the foundation for a novel conceptual framework and suggests future research directions. Additionally, this study emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary research for developing comprehensive strategies that align organizational practices with sustainable development objectives. (shrink)

Could even the most ideal love justify betrayal? The author invites the reader to examine Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago through the lens of wrongdoing and forgiveness. She ponders whether Lara Antipova and Yura Zhivago can justify their actions with the beauty and the force of their love. In the light of the moral consequences of their actions, she finds such justification to be impossible. In her view the novel, culminating in the main characters’ deaths, opens itself to a transcendental (...) sphere in which wounded people are laid bare in their humanity before themselves, free of the baggage of guilt and harm, ready for conciliation. (shrink)

Contrasts utilitarian, Kantian, and deep retributive views about the relations between wrongdoing and suffering because of one's wrongdoing. Kant maintains that, although wrongdoers are intrinsically liable to suffer self‐reproach and moral disapproval of others, wrongdoing does not entail “deserving to suffer” in a sense providing intrinsic practical reasons to inflict suffering. Arguably, even Kant's most infamous remarks on punishment fail to prove otherwise. Contrary to common impressions, Kant is best understood as holding a mixed theory in which (...) the retributive policies that Kant endorses lack deep retributive justification. Some implications for the justice of current practices of punishment are explored. (shrink)

How a person perceives a wrongdoing being committed by a coworker will affect whether the incident is reported within the organization. A significant factor that may influence the decision to report a wrongdoing is the perceived intentionality of the wrongdoer. This study sought to examine if differences in perceptions of a wrongdoing could affect the disclosure of unethical behavior. Three hundred seventy-two registered nurses (N = 372) responded to a survey consisting of both intentional and unintentional wrongdoings (...) that could occur by a nurse. Results of a paired t-test were as predicted. More wide ranging revelations found that respondents were more likely to discuss the unintentional wrongdoings with the wrongdoer in lieu of officially reporting to an immediate supervisor, or a member of upper management. Discussion, limitations, and suggestions for future research are provided. (shrink)

There has been little scholarly attention given to explaining exactly how and why Socrates thinks that wrongdoing damages the soul. But there is more than a simple gap in the literature here, we shall argue. The most widely accepted view of Socratic moral psychology, we claim, actually leaves this well-known feature of Socrates’ philosophy absolutely inexplicable. In the first section of this paper, we rehearse this view of Socratic moral psychology, and explain its inadequacy on the issue of the (...) damaging consequences of wrongdoing. We then go on to provide our own account of the way in which injustice damages the soul, and then draw conclusions about how Socratic moral psychology should be understood. (shrink)

The final volume of Feinberg's four-volume work, The Moral Limits of Criminal Law examines the philosophical basis for the criminalization of so-called "victimless crimes" such as ticket scalping, blackmail, consented-to exploitation of others, commercial fortune telling, and consensual sexual relations.

Abstract:We analyzed data from a survey of employees of a large military base in order to assess possible differences in the whistle-blowing process due to type of wrongdoing observed. Employees who observed perceived wrongdoing involving mismanagement, sexual harassment, or unspecified legal violations were significantly more likely to report it than were employees who observed stealing, waste, safety problems, or discrimination. Further, type of wrongdoing was significantly related to reasons given by employees who observed wrongdoing but did (...) not report it, across all forms of wrongdoing. However, the primary reason that observers did not report it was that they thought nothing could be done to rectify the situation. Finally, type of wrongdoing was significantly related to the cost of the wrongdoing, the quality of the evidence about the wrongdoing, and the comprehensiveness of retaliation against the whistle-blower. These findings suggest that type of wrongdoing makes a difference in the whistle-blowing process, and it should be examined in future research. (shrink)

This chapter investigates the moral status of agents who innocently benefit from the wrongdoing of others. We commonly think that perpetrators should not benefit from their wrongdoings. But sometimes wrongdoings benefit third parties. Clearest examples are historical wrongdoings, such as colonialism and slavery, which have long lasting effects to this very day, benefitting some while harming others. Recent attempts to identify those who should address such wrongdoings suggest that their beneficiaries, even though they have done not taken part in (...) the original wrongdoing, have duties to relinquish the wrongful benefit and/or to compensate the victim. If correct, this view has important practical implications for identifying who should address pressing moral challenges such as climate change, reparations for slavery and global poverty. The chapter explores the normative underpinnings of the ‘principle of wrongful benefits’, and some of the theoretical and practical challenges to it. (shrink)

In this article we describe our approach to understanding wrongdoing in medical research and practice, which involves the statistical analysis of coded data from a large set of published cases. We focus on understanding the environmental factors that predict the kind and the severity of wrongdoing in medicine. Through review of empirical and theoretical literature, consultation with experts, the application of criminological theory, and ongoing analysis of our first 60 cases, we hypothesize that 10 contextual features of the (...) medical environment (including financial rewards, oversight failures, and patients belonging to vulnerable groups) may contribute to professional wrongdoing. We define each variable, examine data supporting our hypothesis, and present a brief case synopsis from our study that illustrates the potential influence of the variable. Finally, we discuss limitations of the resulting framework and directions for future research. (shrink)

Many Christians believe that, because of divine grace, any person who repents of sin, accepts Christianity, and has genuinely authentic faith in God is forgiven for her sins and spared completely of the torments of hell. I argue that this idea is difficult to reconcile with certain Christian doctrines and common, though not universal, moral intuitions about wrongdoing and punishment. The main steps are as follows. The violation of an obligation creates a moral debt that requires correction by compensation, (...) punishment, and/or forgiveness; a wrong that is never punished, compensated, or forgiven perpetuates a continuing injustice by leaving a debt unpaid. If it is true that one person’s forgiveness cannot release the wrongdoer of a moral debt owed to someone else, then God’s forgiveness cannot release a wrongdoer from the moral debts she owes to human victims of her wrongs. Something must be done, as a moral matter, to deal with those existing moral debts before a saved sinner can enjoy the eternal bliss promised to the faithful. (shrink)

It is sometimes suggested that victims of unjust harm should take priority over victims of other forms of harm. We explore four arguments for this view: that victims of unjust harm experience greater suffering; that prioritizing victims of unjust harm would help prevent unjust harm in the future; that it is good for perpetrators that their victims be prioritized; and that it is impersonally better that victims of unjust harm are prioritized. We argue that the first three arguments fail but (...) that the fourth argument succeeds. Moral agents have a reason to prioritize victims of wrongdoing because this secures the impersonal value of corrective justice. However, this reason can be activated differently for different agents depending on how they are situated relative to the wrongdoing, and it may be outweighed by other factors, such as the extent of the harm that could be alleviated. (shrink)

Sometimes you risk contributing to a wrongdoing occurring in ways that are themselves wrong. Some would however say that you have not done anything wrong, just so long as you retain control over whether or not the wrongdoing occurs. There may be good pragmatic reasons for legal codes to be written in that way, but morally there are no good principled reasons for – and strong ones against – endorsing that view.

This paper aims at exploring the relationship between corporate wrongdoing and CEOs’careers. We hypothesize that the managerial labor market does not punish CEOs of companies involved with wrongdoing. The analysis of data on 16 companies charged by the SEC supports this hypothesis.

Is there a reason to prevent deontological wrongdoing—an action that is wrong due to the violation of a decisive deontological constraint? This question is perplexing. On the one hand, the intuitive response seems to be positive, both when the question is considered in the abstract and when it is considered with regard to paradigmatic cases of deontological wrongdoing such as Bridge and Transplant. On the other hand, common theoretical accounts of deontological wrongdoing do not entail this answer, (...) since not preventing wrongdoing does not necessarily amount to doing harm or intending harm, for example. The puzzle is reinforced due to the fact that the intuitive response to other cases seems to be different, namely that there is no reason in favour of preventing deontological wrongdoing. This question is thus interesting in itself. It might also shed light on additional questions such as the “paradox of deontology” and the appropriate response to wrongful actions more generally. Yet, despite its importance, this question is typically overlooked. The paper explores this question. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Bart Streumer argues that a certain variety of consequentialism – he calls it ‘semi-global consequentialism’ – is false on account of its falsely implying the possibility of ‘blameless wrongdoing’. This article shows (i) that Streumer's argument is nothing new; (ii) that his presentation of the argument is misleading, since it suppresses a crucial premiss, commonly called ‘agglomeration’; and (iii) that, for all Streumer says, the proponent of semi-global consequentialism may easily resist his argument by rejecting agglomeration.

Philosophers theorizing about ‘evil’ usually distinguish evil actions from acts of ordinary wrongdoing. They either attempt to isolate some quality or set of qualities shared by all evil actions that is not found in other wrongful actions, or they concede that their account of evil is only distinguished by capturing the very worst acts on the scale of moral wrongness. The idea that evil is qualitatively distinct from wrongdoing has recently been under contention. We explore the grounds for (...) this contention, and argue that there is a third option that might be useful for a variety of philosophical accounts of evil. The alternate form of distinctness we propose is called quality of emphasis distinctness. We illustrate this form of concept distinctness with a modified version of Hillel Steiner’s account of evil. We then explain how QE distinctness could also be applied to more complex theories of evil, such as the theories proposed by Claudia Card, John Kekes, and Todd Calder. (shrink)

In this article I argue that it is possible to be blameworthy for doing something that was not objectively morally wrong. If I am right, this would have implications for several debates at the intersection of metaphysics and moral philosophy. I also float a view about which actions can serve as legitimate bases for blame that allows for the possibility of blameworthiness without objective wrongdoing and also suggests an explanation for the appeal of the commonly held view that blameworthiness (...) requires objective wrongdoing. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been increasing concern about unethical conduct within corporate business, not least because of the scandalous behavior of former chief executives at top blue chip companies such as Enron, Worldcom, Parmalat, and Volkswagen. These scandals have not only threatened the privileged position of senior corporate employees but also the solvency of the companies they manage and lead. The high profile cases of corporate crime and corruption that occurred in the early 2000s together with the 2008 Wall (...) Street bailouts and the growth in criminal prosecutions since have raised the profile of business ethics to an unprecedented level. Greater public sensitivity toward and awareness about the unlawful and immoral conduct of firms in the United States and elsewhere, has created demand for organizations to become more accountable and socially responsible and prompted greater regulatory scrutiny. It has also served to highlight the embryonic and delimited state of research and scholarship on business ethics, where the focus has tended to remain on leadership. A neglected, though important, line of ethical enquiry concerns followership. Corporate wrongdoing would be less formidable and extensive if it was not aided and abetted. Two key questions arise. First, what prompts followers to support rather than oppose bad leaders? Second, what can be done to stem or at least curtail their allegiance to bad leaders? (shrink)

I argue against the standard view that it is possible to describe extensionally different consequentialist theories by describing different evaluative focal points. I argue that for consequentialist purposes, the important sense of the word act must include all motives and side effects, and thus these things cannot be separated.

This book presents a new classification system for acts of wrongdoing, sanctions imposed on the people who commit those acts, and the aims these sanctions intend to achieve.

Peer reporting is a specific form of whistelblowing in which an individual discloses the wrongdoing of a peer. Previous studies have examined situational variables thought to influence a person's decision to report the wrongdoing of a peer. The present study looked at peer reporting from the individual level. Five hypotheses were developed concerning the relationships between (1) religiosity and ethical ideology, (2) ethical ideology and ethical judgments about peer reporting, and (3) ethical judgments and intentions to report peer (...) wrongdoing.Subjects read a vignette concerning academic cheating, and were asked to respond to a question-naire concerning the vignette. Data were analyzed using structural equation methodology. (shrink)

The stigma of reporting wrongdoing at work: When doing right is perceived as wrong The act of reporting unethical, illegal and illegitimate practices at work, whistleblowing, can be associated with a stigma for the individual in question. This article presents the stigmatizing position of reporting wrongdoing at work, types of wrongdoing and individual antecedents. Since empirical studies have shown very few systematic results regarding individual differences, one way to decrease societal stigma can be to relate the act (...) of reporting to other known acts that are perceived upon as more positive within society. We therefore also discuss similarities and differences between the idea of whistleblowing and other concepts such as Organizational Citizenship Behaviour, in-role, and extra-role behaviour before we make some concluding remarks. (shrink)

The principle of wrongful benefits prescribes that beneficiaries from wrongdoing incur duties towards the victims of the wrongdoing. The principle focuses on involuntary beneficiaries, demanding that they disgorge their tainted benefit. However, it overlooks the duties of beneficiaries who are not straightforwardly involuntary. The article addresses this gap in the literature. It explores the duties of ‘voluntary beneficiaries’, who could avoid receiving the tainted benefit; and the duties of ‘welcoming beneficiaries’, who cannot avoid receiving the tainted benefit but (...) welcome it. The article demonstrates that in both cases, the duties of the beneficiary towards the victim of the original wrongdoing are not limited to the disgorgement of the benefit. Rather, voluntary and welcoming beneficiaries are themselves involved in the commission of wrongdoing against the victim of the original wrongdoing, and hence may owe the victim compensation that exceeds the level of their own benefit. This argument has various practical implications, e.g. in specifying the duties of companies who benefit from human rights violations down their supply chain. (shrink)

Bracket out the wrong of committing a wrong, or conspiring or colluding or conniving with others in their committing one. Suppose you have done none of those things, and you find yourself merely benefiting from a wrong committed wholly by someone else. What, if anything, is wrong with that? What, if any, duties follow from it? If straightforward restitution were possible — if you could just ‘give back’ what you received as a result of the wrongdoing to its rightful (...) owner — then matters are morally more straightforward. But in real-world cases that is often impossible, and questions of ‘how much, from whom and to whom?’ become far more vexing. The beneficiary disgorging all benefits of the wrong is part of the story, but where that is not possible or will not suffice to compensate the victim of wrongdoing we discuss various ways of allocating the cost of making the victim whole, including supplementation from public coffers. (shrink)

Some writers, such as John Fischer and Michael McKenna, have recently claimed that an agent can be morally responsible for a wrong action and yet not be blameworthy for that action. A careful examination of the claim, however, suggests two readings. On one reading, there are further conditions on blameworthiness beyond freely and wittingly doing wrong. On another innocuous reading, there are no such further conditions. Despite Fischer and McKenna’s attempts to offer further conditions on blameworthiness in addition to responsibility (...) for wrongdoing, I argue that only the innocuous reading is plausible. Once we distinguish between blame being deserved and blame being all-things-considered appropriate, we need not appeal to further conditions on blameworthiness. This discussion has important upshots regarding how compatibilists respond to certain manipulation arguments and how proponents of derived responsibility respond to criticism that agents are responsible even for outcomes that are not reasonably foreseeable. (shrink)

Medieval thinkers were both puzzled and fascinated by the capacity of human beings to do what is morally wrong. In this book, Colleen McCluskey offers the first comprehensive examination of Thomas Aquinas' explanation for moral wrongdoing. Her discussion takes in Aquinas' theory of human nature and action, and his explanation of wrong action in terms of defects in human capacities including the intellect, the will, and the passions of the sensory appetite. She also looks at the notion of privation, (...) which underlies Aquinas' account of wrongdoing, as well as his theory of the vices, which intersects with his basic account. The result is a thorough exploration of Aquinas' psychology which is both accessible and illuminating, and will be of interest to a wide range of readers in Aquinas studies, medieval philosophy, the history of theology, and the history of ideas. (shrink)

I examine recent work on moral dilemmas and argue that there are no moral dilemmas which issue in inescapable wrongdoing . In the first three chapters I examine some important arguments for and against tragic dilemmas---arguments from deontic logic, Martha Nussbaum's view that vulnerability is essential to human values, Bernard Williams' argument from guilt , and the argument from the fragmentation of value---and show that these arguments for and against are inconclusive. ;In Chapter 4 I attempt to provide a (...) reason to reject tragic dilemmas which will have force for those most inclined to accept dilemmas---those, such as Williams and Nussbaum, who are engaged in a critique of modern moral philosophy. Central to their critique is their denial of the distinction between moral and nonmoral reasons and of the primacy of the moral. I show that an account of practical deliberation which can accommodate the possibility of tragic dilemmas has the effect, not of undermining the distinction between moral and nonmoral reasons and the primacy of the moral, but of strengthening that distinction and that primacy. This is because a picture of practical deliberation which can accommodate the possibility of tragic dilemmas makes moral reasons distinct from nonmoral reasons in how they achieve their deliberative weight. ;In Chapter 5 I present an alternative picture of practical deliberation which I commend to these critics. In my alternative picture, moral reasons have deliberative weight for an agent for the same reason nonmoral reasons do: because the agent sees things from a point of view from which such reasons are important. My picture takes seriously the critics' view that moral value is continuous with other sorts of value and is not overriding and supremely regulative; but my picture does not accommodate the possibility of tragic dilemmas. I conclude that their project of criticizing modern moral philosophy is better served by accepting my picture and thus rejecting the possibility of tragic dilemmas. (shrink)

Moral Repair examines the ethics and moral psychology of responses to wrongdoing. Explaining the emotional bonds and normative expectations that keep human beings responsive to moral standards and responsible to each other, Margaret Urban Walker uses realistic examples of both personal betrayal and political violence to analyze how moral bonds are damaged by serious wrongs and what must be done to repair the damage. Focusing on victims of wrong, their right to validation, and their sense of justice, Walker presents (...) a unified and detailed philosophical account of hope, trust, resentment, forgiveness, and making amends - the emotions and practices that sustain moral relations. Moral Repair joins a multidisciplinary literature concerned with transitional and restorative justice, reparations, and restoring individual dignity and mutual trust in the wake of serious wrongs. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThere are two distinct types of legal wrongdoing: civil and criminal. This article demonstrates in three ways that Immanuel Kant's Universal Principle of Right, properly interpreted, offers a plausible and resilient account of this important distinction. First, Kant's principle correctly identifies attempted crimes as crimes themselves even when they do not violate the rights of any individual. Second, it justifies our treatment of reckless endangerment as a crime by distinguishing it from ordinary negligence, traditionally thought to be only civilly (...) wrong. Third, it explains and justifies differences between the features of traditional criminal punishments and the features of civil remedies. Moreover, the Universal Principle of Right yields a Kantian standard for criminal wrongdoing that is compelling enough to inform future philosophical inquiries into the nature and limits of the state's criminal lawmaking authority. (shrink)

One of the biggest challenges of the study and practice of ethics is that of the moral dilemma, e.g. how should a compassionate person deal with injustice? This paper attempts to resolve this thorny issue from the perspective of Buddhist philosophy. I firstly introduce the 14th Dalai Lama’s distinction between act and actor and suggest a way to denounce wrongful acts without harboring hatred towards the perpetrator. Secondly, I argue that the philosophical grounds of this distinction can be traced back (...) to ancient Buddhist texts on Non-Self and Emptiness, which take all things as being in a constant state of change. Thirdly, I point out that a unique feature of the ‘empty ethics’ of Buddhism is that it inspires a middle way approach which allows for congruity between justice and compassion, between the realistic and the idealistic, and between rationality and sentimentality. Based on this, I suggest that it has much to contribute to contemporary ethics. (shrink)

In this introduction to the special issue ‘Epistemic Injustice and Collective Wrongdoing,’ we show how the eight contributions examine the collective dimensions of epistemic injustice. First, we contextualize the articles within theories of epistemic injustice. Second, we provide an overview of the eight articles by highlighting three central topics addressed by them: i) the effects of epistemic injustice and collective wrongdoing, ii) the underlying epistemic structures in collective wrongdoing, unjust relations and unjust societies, and iii) the remedies (...) and strategies of resistance to epistemic injustice. We close by pointing to connections and issues that may motivate further research. (shrink)

This is a public philosophy piece that explores some questions around heroes, trauma, and wrongdoing.

People are often offended by beliefs, expect apologies for beliefs, apologize for their own beliefs. In many mundane cases, people are morally criticized for their beliefs. Intuitively, then, beliefs seem to sometimes wrong people. Recently, the philosophical literature has picked up on this theme, and has started to discuss it under the heading of doxastic wrongdoing. In this paper we argue that despite the strength of such initial intuitions, at the end of the day they have to be rejected. (...) If it can be ever truthfully asserted that beliefs wrong, this is always derivative – beliefs wrong only in virtue of other things (like evidence-gathering actions) wronging. We distinguish between modest and ambitious doxastic wrongdoing theories (the former deny, while the latter accept, the possibility of a morally wrong yet epistemically permissible belief); we argue that each of these options faces insurmountable problems; and we offer partly debunking explanations of the intuitions purportedly supporting doxastic wrongdoing. (shrink)

Some normative theorists believe that there is a principled moral reason not to retain benefits realized by injustice or wrongdoing. However, critics have argued that this idea is implausible. One purported problem is that the idea lacks an obvious rationale and that attempts to provide one have been unconvincing. This paper articulates and defends the idea that the principled reason in question has an expressive quality: it gets its reason-giving force from the symbolic aptness of such an act as (...) an expressive response to wrongdoing. The paper thus argues that at least in a certain subset of cases, renouncing benefits realized by injustice amounts to a powerful and uniquely apt expression of protest against the disrespect for the victim that is implied by the wrongdoer’s actions. The paper shows how this idea can inform the question of reparations for slavery and its aftermath in the United States. Lastly it develops an important objection to the argument presented and gives an account of how this objection can be met. (shrink)

Some moral theorists argue that innocent beneficiaries of wrongdoing may have special remedial duties to address the hardships suffered by the victims of the wrongdoing. These arguments generally aim to simply motivate the idea that being a beneficiary can provide an independent ground for charging agents with remedial duties to the victims of wrongdoing. Consequently, they have neglected contexts in which it is implausible to charge beneficiaries with remedial duties to the victims of wrongdoing, thereby failing (...) to explore the limits of the benefiting relation in detail. Our aim in this article is to identify a criterion to distinguish contexts in which innocent beneficiaries plausibly bear remedial duties to the victims of wrongdoing from those in which they do not. We argue that innocent beneficiaries incur special duties to the victims of wrongdoing if and only if receiving and retaining the benefits sustains wrongful harm. We develop this criterion by identifying and explicating two general modes of sustaining wrongful harm. We also show that our criterion offers a general explanation for why some innocent beneficiaries incur a special duty to the victims of wrongdoing while others do not. By sustaining wrongful harm, beneficiaries-with-duties contribute to wrongful harm, and we ordinarily have relatively stringent moral requirements against contributing to wrongful harm. On our account, innocently benefiting from wrongdoing _per se_ does not generate duties to the victims of wrongdoing. Rather, beneficiaries acquire such duties because their receipt and retention of the benefits of wrongdoing contribute to the persistence of the wrongful harm suffered by the victim. We conclude by showing that our proposed criterion also illuminates why there can be reasonable disagreement about whether beneficiaries have a duty to victims in some social contexts. (shrink)

According to the received account of guilt in the philosophical literature, one cannot feel guilt unless one takes oneself to have done something morally wrong. But ordinary people feel guilt in many cases in which they do not take themselves to have done anything morally wrong. In this paper, I focus on one kind of guilt without perceived wrongdoing, guilt about being merely causally responsible for a bad state-of-affairs. I go on to present a novel account of guilt that (...) explains guilt about mere causal responsibility, according to which guilt represents part of the self as bound up with what is bad. (shrink)

On the classical understanding, an agent is fully excused for an action if and only if performing this action was a case of faultless wrongdoing. A major motivation for this view is the apparent existence of paradigmatic types of excusing considerations, affecting fault but not wrongness. I show that three such considerations, ignorance, duress and compulsion, can be shown to have direct bearing on the permissibility of actions. The appeal to distinctly identifiable excusing considerations thus does not stand up (...) to closer scrutiny, undermining the classical view and giving us reason to seek alternative ways of drawing the justification/excuse distinction. (shrink)

To forgive a person for a wrong he has done has often been valued as morally good and as indicative of a benevolent and merciful character. But while forgiveness has been recognized as valuable its nature as a moral response has largely been ignored by modern moral philosophers who work outside the confines of a religious context. 1 Where it has been discussed, forgiveness has been thought particularly difficult to define, and some have thought the forgiving response paradoxical or even (...) impossible. I shall discuss some of these difficulties and suggest firstly that the value of forgiveness lies in the fact that it essentially requires a recognition of the wrongdoer's responsibility for his action, and secondly that forgiveness typically involves an effort on the part of the one wronged: a conscious attempt to improve oneself in relation to the wrongdoer. (shrink)