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GUILT, GRIEF, AND THE GOOD

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2019

Dana Kay Nelkin
Dana Kay Nelkin*
Affiliation:
Philosophy, University of California, San Diego
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Abstract:

In this essay, I consider a particular version of the thesis that the blameworthy deserve to suffer, namely, that they deserve to feel guilty to the proper degree (a thesis I call "Desert-Guilt"). Two further theses have been thought to explicate and support the thesis, one that appeals to the non-instrumental goodness of the blameworthy receiving what they deserve (in this case, the experience of guilt), and the other that appeals to the idea that being blameworthy provides reason to promote the blameworthy receiving what they deserve (again, in this case, the experience of guilt). I call the first "Good-Guilt" and the second "Reason-Guilt.” I begin by exploring what I take to be the strongest argument for Good-Guilt which gains force from a comparison of guilt and grief, and the strongest argument against. I conclude that Good-Guilt might be true, but that even if it is, the strongest argument in favor of it fails to support it in a way that provides reason for the thesis that the blameworthy deserve to feel guilty. I then consider the hypothesis that Reason-Guilt might be true and might be the more fundamental principle, supporting both Good-Guilt and Desert-Guilt. I argue that it does not succeed, however, and instead propose a different principle, according to which being blameworthy does not by itself provide reason for promoting that the blameworthy get what they deserve, but that being blameworthy systematically does so in conjunction with particular kinds of background circumstances. Finally, I conclude that Desert-Guilt might yet be true, but that it does not clearly gain support from either Good-Guilt or Reason-Guilt.

Keywords

guiltresponsibilitydesertblameworthinessretributivismcaringgrieffittingness
Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , Summer 2019 , pp. 173 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 2019 

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Footnotes

*

I am indebted to Michael McKenna for editing this journal issue. I received invaluable written comments from both Michael and Randy Clarke whose work helped spark my own thinking on the topic, very challenging and insightful feedback from Ellie Mason and David Shoemaker, and excellent questions from the other contributors to this volume, Santiago Amaya, Macalaster Bell, Justin Capes, Chris Franklin, Meghan Griffith, Robert Kane, Kelly McCormick, Kristin Mickelson, Mirja Pérez de Calleja, Michael Robinson, and Chandra Sripada. I am also very grateful to a number of people for comments and discussion that greatly improved the essay, including audiences at the Summer Program for Women in Philosophy, University of California San Diego, June 2016, the Moral and Political Philosophy Seminar, University of California San Diego, April 2017, the UC Riverside Graduate Student Conference on Agency, June 2017, the University of Mainz, June 2017, the Workshop on Responsibility at the Gothenburg Responsibility Project, June 2017, and the Conference on Moral Responsibility, University of Arizona, December 2017. For very helpful comments and discussion on the essay and related topics, special thanks to Julia Annas, Richard Arneson, Christopher Bennett, Gunnar Björnsson, David Brink, Andreas Carlsson, Kathleen Connelly, Taylor Cyr, Cory Davia, Elizabeth Harman, Bob Hartman, Agnieszka Jaworska, Kathryn Joyce, Robert Kane, Keith Lehrer, Ben Matheson, Joe Metz, Per-Erik Milam, Fred Miller, Derk Pereboom, Sam Rickless, Connie Rosati, Carolina Sartorio, Jeffrey Seidman, Houston Smit, David Schmidtz, Manuel Vargas, Steve Wall, Eric Watkins, and Monique Wonderly.

References

1 See, for example, Shoemaker, David, Responsibility From the Margins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 For this formulation, see Clarke, Randolph, “Moral Responsibility, Guilt, and Retributivism,” Journal of Ethics 20 (2016): 121–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 For example, Clarke, Randolph, “Some Theses on Desert,” Philosophical Explorations 16 (2013): 153–64;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Clarke, “Moral Responsibility, Guilt, and Retributivism,” 121–37; Michael McKenna, “Punishment and the Value of Deserved Suffering” (in preparation); McKenna, Michael, Conversation and Responsibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); andCrossRefGoogle Scholar Brekke Carlsson, Andreas, “Blameworthiness as Deserved Guilt,” Journal of Ethics 21 (2017): 89–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For something like this idea applied in the context of criminal punishment, see Antony Duff (“Restoration and Retribution,” in Restorative Justice and Criminal Justice: Competing or Reconcilable Paradigms , ed. Andreas von Hirsch, Julian Roberts, Anthony E. Bottoms, Kent Roach, Mara Schiff [Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2003]): “Talk of retribution conjures up in many minds the image of a vindictive attempt to inflict hardship—to ‘deliver pain’ . . . ‘for its own sake’; and who could argue in favour of that? I will argue, however, that the retributivist slogan—that ‘the guilty deserve to suffer’—does express an important moral truth; and that in the case of the criminally guilty it is the state’s proper task to seek to ensure that they suffer as they deserve . . . First, he deserves to suffer remorse: he should come to recognize and repent the wrong that he did—which is necessarily a painful process. Second, he deserves to suffer censure from others…; this, too, if taken seriously must be painful” (p. 182).

4 McKenna, “Punishment and the Value of Deserved Suffering.”

5 Sometimes this thesis is taken to be inspired by Kant: “Now inasmuch as virtue and happiness together constitute possession of the highest good in a person and happiness distributed in exact proportion to morality (as the worth of a person and his worthiness to be happy) constitutes the highest good of a possible world, the latter means the whole, the complete good, in which, however, virtue as the complete condition is always the supreme good, since it has no further condition above it, whereas happiness is something that . . . is not of itself absolutely and in all respects good, but always presupposes morally lawful conduct as its condition” (Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Practical Reason, ed. Gregor, Mary [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1788/1997], 5: 111).Google Scholar

6 See, e.g., McKenna, Conversation and Responsibility. McKenna takes something like the combination of the two principles to be a “desert thesis.” More recently, McKenna describes similar principles as “an indirect way of defending a basic desert thesis for blameworthiness” (McKenna, Michael, “Defending Conversation and Responsibility: Reply to Dana Nelkin and Holly Smith,” Philosophical Studies 171 [2014]: 82) andCrossRefGoogle Scholar “a way to understand a basic desert thesis” (Michael McKenna, “Basically Deserved Blame and Its Value” [in preparation], 11). Christopher Bennett offers a defense of the goodness of the suffering of guilt as part of an overall defense of retributivism. For Bennett, the pain of guilt is one of at least three varieties of suffering that make up the retributive experience, which is non-contingently good. Explaining the particular varieties of suffering that are deserved in this way is thus part of the larger case for retribution, as he sees it. (See Bennett, Christopher, “The Varieties of Retributive Experience,” Philosophical Quarterly 52 [2002]: 145–63.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Randy Clarke has suggested (in correspondence) that once we have focused on guilt as the thing that is fundamentally deserved, we should instead focus on reasons to feel, rather than on reasons to induce feelings as in Reason-Guilt. I believe that we can do both, and indeed that they are related. One reason for continuing to focus on Reason-Guilt is that it is an instantiation of Reason-Desert, while a related thesis about reasons to feel would not be. Since Reason-Desert has been taken to support Desert, and since reasons to feel do not have as direct a connection to the justification of overt blame and punishment—both of which involve actions—it seems important in the context of an exploration of alternatives to traditional retributive views to consider Reason-Guilt in particular. Further, it seems that the kinds of reasons in having reasons to feel are related to having reasons to bring about a feeling. While I am skeptical that there is a straightforward inference from the premise that one has reasons to feel E in a given situation to the conclusion that there is some pro tanto reason to promote one’s feeling E, in many situations it will be the case that the reasons for feeling something will also serve as reasons to promote one’s feeling it.

8 In previous work, I argued against the more general claim of Good-Desert. Those arguments apply to the more specific Good-Guilt. However, there are special arguments in favor of Good-Guilt in particular that need addressing on their own terms, and I acknowledge that there is a special appeal of Good-Guilt such that the best argument for the more general claim, it seems to me, would be an argument in favor of Good-Guilt. (See Kay Nelkin, Dana, “Desert, Fairness, and Resentment,” Philosophical Explorations 16 [2003]: 117–32.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Bok, Hilary, Freedom and Responsibility (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 174–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Clarke, Randolph, “Some Theses on Desert,” Philosophical Explorations 16 (2013): 156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 See also David Shoemaker, who, while not defending Good-Guilt directly, also connects guilt and caring. In the context of rebutting a Kantian claim about the distinctness between motivation and caring, Shoemaker says specifically that “it is constitutive of guilt that one cares about the ideals or values one has betrayed, however reluctantly” (Shoemaker, David, “Caring, Identification, and Agency,” Ethics 114 [2003]: 99).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 See Moller, Dan (“Love and Death,” Journal of Philosophy 104 [2007]: 301–16)CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a nuanced view that something important is regrettably lost when people quickly cease to grieve the death of those close to them, whom McKenna approvingly cites. But see Wonderly, Monique (“On Being Attached,” Philosophical Studies 173 [2016]: 223–42)CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a compelling argument that grief is a manifestation, not of (mere) care, but of security-based attachment. Consistent with this conclusion is that care constitutively involves emotional vulnerability of some sort; just not (by itself) the sort associated with grief.

13 McKenna, “Punishment and the Value of Deserved Suffering.”

14 This label is an oversimplification since there is more than emotional vulnerability involved in caring. But it captures a central element, and one that is especially important for our purposes.

15 Jaworska, Agnieszka, “Caring and Internality,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (2007): 560.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Harry Frankfurt: “A person who cares about something is, as it were, invested in it. He identifies himself with what he cares about in the sense that he makes himself vulnerable to losses and susceptible to benefits depending on whether what he cares about is diminished or enhanced” (“The Importance of What We Care About,” Synthese 53 [1982]: 260).

16 Note that one might care about some of these objects without caring about others, though they very often go together. Very young children might care about another person without having the capacity to care about not wronging them. In that case, they would be emotionally vulnerable to a state of suffering, but not, perhaps, to guilt in particular. Other such cases might include certain forms of dementia. It appears that one could care about a person without caring about not wronging them if one lacked the conceptual resources to do so. At the same time, it is an interesting question whether someone with the capacity to care about wrongdoing could care about other individuals without caring about not wronging them.

17 At first glance, this account of caring, together with the plausible claim that caring is an important noninstrumental good, might seem to offer a kind of solution to the problem of evil. But precisely because one can care—and so have that good—without its manifesting in the particular way of suffering, this will not ultimately contribute even partially to a solution.

18 This might need some qualification. Notably, Clarke’s claim is that when we have done wrong and we care properly, we “typically” respond with guilt. And this qualification seems apt for the reason that we might have a disposition to suffer guilt, but we are too depressed or exhausted or distracted in the circumstances, say, to actually feel guilty. In such a case, the disposition essential to caring would be masked, but not missing. Still, we might say that it is a good thing when such dispositions are manifested, and I take it that this would be what is technically needed for the argument to go through.

19 Harman, Gilbert, “Guilt-Free Morality,” Oxford Studies in Metaethics 4 (2009): 203–214.Google Scholar

20 It is worth noting a thought experiment in many ways parallel to this one concerning a set of creatures who do not experience grief at the loss of loved ones, presented by Moller, Dan (“Love and Death,” Journal of Philosophy 104 [2007]: 301–16).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 See Michael McKenna for a defense of the idea that what is essential to get clear on is not what is conceptually possible, but what is possible given life as we know it (McKenna, Conversation and Responsibility, 110–12).

22 See, e.g., ibid., and McKenna, “Basically Deserved Blame and Its Value.”

23 Pereboom, Derk, “Responsibility, Regret, and Protest,” Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).Google Scholar

24 Michael McKenna, “Basically Deserved Blame and Its Value.”

25 Andreas Brekke Carlsson, “Blameworthiness as Deserved Guilt,” 89–115.

26 Clarke suggests something similar, namely, the fact that we have reason to feel guilt has conceptual priority over its being good to feel guilt, where the reason in question is a reason of justice (Randolph Clarke, “Some Theses on Desert,” 153–64).

27 Kay Nelkin, Dana, “Accountability and Desert,” Journal of Ethics 20 (2016): 173–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 The Look is in some ways similar to Kant’s case of the last murderers in a state that is dissolving and where no further good effects can be delivered by executing them. (See Immanuel Kant, Metaphysics of Morals 6: 33.) Kant famously answers that they ought to be executed, and that this would require a parallel response in the Look, namely, that one ought to give the Look. Note, first, that Kant offers his verdict as an implication of the conclusion of a subtle argument; it is not presented as a thought experiment. Second, Kant’s case concerns state punishment, and while I believe that there are important connections between Desert and the justification of punishment, questions about whether one has reasons to promote the experience of guilt and whether the state has reasons to punish (and, more specifically, punish with death) are quite distinct. For these reasons, I set aside Kant’s case here, while noting the interesting parallels.

29 See Gert, Joshua, “Requiring and Justifying: Two Dimensions of Normative Strength,” Erkenntnis 59 (2003): 5–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Ibid., 15–16.

31 This is controversial. But the illustration (or one like it) supports the objection to my use of the thought experiment, and my response to the objection does not require settling this controversy here.

32 Notably, Gert shares this assessment; in his view, there is a non-zero value of requiring strength in the orphan case. And, more importantly, he explicitly recognizes that his argument does not have implications for the sort of case at hand in which there are reasons on one side and none on the other. See Joshua Gert, “Requiring and Justifying: Two Dimensions of Normative Strength,” 7.

33 See Dana Kay Nelkin (“Desert, Fairness, and Resentment,” 117–32 and “Accountability and Desert,” 173–89) for development of this view, which shares some features with the view that Feinberg calls “Fault Forfeits First” ( Feinberg, Joel, “Sua Culpa,” in Doing and Deserving: Essays in the Theory of Responsibility [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970], 187–221). See alsoGoogle Scholar Arneson, Richard, “Resolving the Responsibility Dilemma,” in The Ethics of War: Essays, ed. Bazargan-Forward, Saba and Rickless, Samuel C. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), andGoogle Scholar Arneson, , “Just Warfare Theory and Non-Combatant Immunity,” Cornell International Law Journal 39 (2006): 663–88.Google Scholar

34 Randy Clarke (in correspondence) has suggested a possible connection between reasons and desert that appeals to a distinction between what he calls “reasons that permit” and “reasons that require.” An example of the first is given by my giving you permission to do a thing. I thereby acquire a reason favoring doing it, despite not being required to do it. In the case of the Look, there might be reasons that permit, but that are non-requiring reasons. And such reasons to permit are such as could enter into deliberation about what one should and should not do. This is an interesting suggestion, and it might in fact be compatible with the suggestion in the text, depending on how exactly we are to understand a “permissive” reason. As I understand the suggestion, the permissive reason is not a positively weighted reason to perform an action, but instead merely “cancels” a negative reason that might otherwise be in place. So it is not a pro tanto reason. It seems a bit odd to my ear to call this a reason favoring the action. But insofar as it cancels a reason against a certain action, then I believe I can accept the suggestion as consistent with the proposal in the text.