Drishtti Rawat
University of Graz
According to R. Jay Wallace and several Strawsonian accounts, an agent is blameworthy if and only if it is appropriate to blame them for their action (1994). In this paper, I first present the two different notions of appropriateness that Wallace uses in his accounts of excuse and exemption. It is inappropriate to blame agents with excuses because blame towards them is unfitting. And, it is inappropriate to blame agents with exemptions because blame towards them is unreasonable, despite being fitting. Next, I discuss Wallace’s more recent account of managerial stances such as hypocritical blame and forgiveness, which he characterises as stances that attend to considerations other than the fittingness of blame (2019). I argue that this characterisation is problematic because it also applies to exemptions. It ultimately raises a dilemma: either our attitudes towards exemptions are managerial stances and exemptions do not affect an agent’s blameworthiness, or managerial stances work like attitudes towards exemptions and the considerations to which they attend also affect an agent’s blameworthiness. I suggest that the first option is too costly. Therefore, I develop a sketch of the second option of the dilemma and argue that it is not as undesirable as it first seems since it provides us with acceptable accounts of hypocritical blame and forgiveness. On this sketch, an agent’s blameworthiness does not change by the fact that it is hypocritical to blame them. However, some considerations that encourage forgiveness can be understood to do so by affecting an agent’s blameworthiness because they are considerations from the reasonableness of blame. Finally, I provide two related positive reasons to accept the second option of the dilemma. I argue that a reasonableness notion of appropriateness helps us better understand the workings of reparative actions and effectively addresses the ‘paradox of forgiveness’ (Zaibert 2009; Hallich 2013).
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SOPhiA 2026 