Legal Theory Workshop: Jay Wallace

LEGAL THEORY WORKSHOP

presents

Jay Wallace
University of California, Berkeley
Department of Philosophy

Trust, Anger, Resentment, Forgiveness: On Blame and its Reasons

Friday, March 1, 2019
12:30 - 2:00
Room FL219 (John Willis Classroom)
Flavelle House
78 Queen's Park
 

A discussion of the scope that exists for the normative assessment of blame. The paper starts from the assumption that blame is to be understood in terms of the reactive attitudes. A particular crux is the question of whether blame can be assessed critically if conditions are in place that render the reactive attitudes apt or warranted. The paper argues that even warranted blame can be managed critically, and that this is something we often have reason to do, given the oppositional nature of reactive blame. The point is illustrated through a discussion of forgiveness and hypocrisy. A further claim is that, once reasons for reactive blame are distinguished from distinct reasons for managing it in different ways, space opens up for interesting global challenges to reactive blame, even when it is internally apt or warranted.

R. Jay Wallace is Judy Chandler Webb Distinguished Chair in the Philosophy Department at the University of California, Berkeley. He works in moral philosophy, and his research has focused on responsibility, moral psychology, normative ethics, and the theory of practical reason. He is the author of Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (Harvard, 1994), Normativity and the Will (Oxford, 2006), The View from Here: On Affirmation, Attachment, and the Limits of Regret (Oxford, 2013), and The Moral Nexus (Princeton, 2019).

To be added to the paper distribution list, please send an email to events.law@utoronto.ca.  For further information, please contact Professor Larissa Katz (larissa.katz@utoronto.ca) and Professor Sophia Moreau (sr.moreau@utoronto.ca).