P. F. STRAWSON:
FREEDOM AND RESENTMENT
1. Some philosophers say they do not know
what the thesis of determinism is. Others
say, or imply, that they do know what it
is. Of these, some—the pessimists perhaps—hold
that if the thesis is true, then the concepts
of moral obligation and responsibility really
have no application, and the practices of
punishing and blaming, of expressing moral
condemnation and approval, are really unjustified.
Others—the optimists perhaps—hold that these
concepts and practices in no way lose their
raison d’être if the thesis of determinism
is true. Some hold even that the justification
of these concepts and practices requires
the truth of the thesis. There is another
opinion which is less frequently voiced:
the opinion, it might be said, of the genuine
moral sceptic. This is that the notions of
moral guilt, of blame, of moral responsibility
are inherently confused and that we can see
this to be so if we consider the consequences
either of the truth of determinism or of
its falsity. The holders of this opinion
agree with the pessimists that these notions
lack application if determinism is true,
and add simply that they also lack it if
determinism is false. If I am asked which
of these parties I belong to, I must say
it is the first of all, the party of those
who do not know what the thesis of determinism
is. But this does not stop me from having
some sympathy with the others, and a wish
to reconcile them. Should not ignorance,
rationally, inhibit such sympathies? Well,
of course, though darkling, one has some
inkling—some notion of what sort of thing
is being talked about. This lecture is intended
as a move towards reconciliation; so. is
likely to seem wrongheaded to everyone.
But can there be any possibility of reconciliation
between such clearly opposed positions as
those of pessimists and optimists about determinism?
Well, there might be a formal withdrawal
on one side in return for a substantial concession
on the other. Thus, suppose the optimist’s
position were put like this: (1) the facts
as we know them do not show determinism to
be false; (2) the facts as we know them supply
an adequate basis for the concepts and practices
which the pessimist feels to be imperilled
by the possibility of determinism’s truth.
Now it might be that the optimist is right
in this, but is apt to give an inadequate
account of the facts as we know them, and
of how they constitute an adequate basis
for the problematic concepts and practices;
that the reasons he gives for the adequacy
of the basis are themselves inadequate and
leave out something vital. It might be that
the pessimist is rightly anxious to get this
vital thing back and, in the grip of his
anxiety, feels he has to go beyond the facts
as we know them; feels that the vital thing
can be secure only if, beyond the facts as
we know them, there is the further fact that
determinism is false. Might he not be brought
to make a formal withdrawal in return for
a vital concession?
2. Let me enlarge very briefly on this, by
way of preliminary only. Some optimists about
determinism point to the efficacy of the
practices of punishment, and of moral condemnation
and approval, in regulating behaviour in
socially desirable ways. (1) In the fact
of their efficacy, they suggest, is an adequate
basis for these practices; and this fact
certainly does not show determinism to be
false. To this the pessimists reply, all
in a rush, that just punishment and moral
condemnation imply moral guilt and guilt
implies moral responsibility and moral responsibility
implies freedom and freedom implies the falsity
of determinism. And to this the optimists
are wont to reply in turn that it is true
that these practices require freedom in a
sense, and the existence of freedom in this
sense is one of the facts as we know them.
But what ‘freedom’ means here is nothing
but the absence of certain conditions the
presence of which would make moral condemnation
or punishment inappropriate. They have in
mind conditions like compulsion by another,
or innate incapacity, or insanity, or other
less extreme forms of psychological disorder,
or the existence of circumstances in which
the making of any other choice would be morally
inadmissible or would be too much to expect
of any man. To this list they are constrained
to add other factors which, without exactly
being limitations of freedom, may also make
moral condemnation or punishment inappropriate
or mitigate their force: as some forms of
ignorance, mistake, or accident. And the
general reason why moral condemnation or
punishment are inappropriate when these factors
or conditions are present is held to be that
the practices in question will be generally
efficacious means of regulating behaviour
in desirable ways only in cases where these
factors are not present. Now the pessimist
admits that the facts as we know them include
the existence of freedom, the occurrence
of cases of free action, in the negative
sense which the optimist concedes; and admits,
or rather insists, that the existence of
freedom in this sense is compatible with
the truth of determinism. Then what does
the pessimist find missing? When he tries
to answer this question, his language is
apt to alternate between the very familiar
and the very unfamiliar.(2) Thus he may say,
familiarly enough, that the man who is the
subject of justified punishment, blame or
moral condemnation must really deserve it;
and then add, perhaps, that, in the case
at least where he is blamed for a positive
act rather than an omission, the condition
of his really deserving blame is something
that goes beyond the negative freedoms that
the optimist concedes. It is, say, a genuinely
free identification of the will with the
act. And this is the condition that is incompatible
with the truth of determinism.
The conventional, but conciliatory, optimist
need not give up yet. He may say: Well, people
often decide to do things, really intend
to do what they do, know just what they’re
doing in doing it; the reasons they think
they have for doing what they do, often really
are their reasons and not their rationalizations.
These facts, too, are included in the facts
as we know them. If this is what you mean
by freedom—by the identification of the will
with the act—then freedom may again be conceded.
But again the concession is compatible with
the truth of the determinist thesis. For
it would not follow from that thesis that
nobody decides to do anything; that nobody
ever does anything intentionally; that it
is false that people sometimes know perfectly
well what they are doing. I tried to define
freedom negatively. You want to give it a
more positive look. But it comes to the same
thing. Nobody denies freedom in this sense,
or these senses, and nobody claims that the
existence of freedom in these senses shows
determinism to be false.
But it is here that the lacuna in the optimistic
story can be made to show. For the pessimist
may be supposed to ask: But why does freedom
in this sense justify blame, etc.? You turn
towards me first the negative, and then the
positive, faces of a freedom which nobody
challenges. But the only reason you have
given for the practices of moral condemnation
and punishment in cases where this freedom
is present is the efficacy of these practices
in regulating behaviour in socially desirable
ways. But this is not a sufficient basis,
it is not even the right sort of basis, for
these practices as we understand them.
Now my optimist, being the sort of man he
is, is not likely to invoke an intuition
of fittingness at this point. So he really
has no more to say. And my pessimist, being
the sort of man he is, has only one more
thing to say; and that is that the admissibility
of these practices, as we understand them,
demands another kind of freedom, the kind
that in turn demands the falsity of the thesis
of determinism. But might we not induce the
pessimist to give up saying this by giving
the optimist something more to say?
3. I have mentioned punishing and moral condemnation
and approval; and it is in connection with
these practices or attitudes that the issue
between optimists and pessimists—or, if one
is a pessimist, the issue between determinists
and libertarians—is felt to be particularly
important. But it is not of these practices
and attitudes that I propose, at first, to
speak. These practices or attitudes permit,
where they do not imply, a certain detachment
from the actions or agents which are their
objects. I want to speak, at least at first,
of something else: of the non-detached attitudes
and reactions of people directly involved
in transactions with each other; of the attitudes
and reactions of offended parties and beneficiaries;
of such things as sratitude, resentment,
forgiveness, love, and hurt feelings. Perhaps
something like the issue between optimists
and pessimists arises in this neighbouring
field too; and since this field is less crowded
with disputants, the issue might here be
easier to settle; and if it is settled here,
then it might become easier to settle it
in the disputant-crowded field.
What I have to say consists largely of commonplaces.
So my language, like that of commonplaces
generally, will be quite unscientific and
imprecise. The central commonplace that I
want to insist on is the very great importance
that we attach to the attitudes and intentions
towards us of other human beings, and the
great extent to which our personal feelings
and reactions depend upon, or involve, our
beliefs about these attitudes and intentions.
I can give no simple description of the field
of phenomena at the centre of which stands
this commonplace truth; for the field is
too complex. Much imaginative literature
is devoted to exploring its complexities;
and we have a large vocabulary for the purpose.
There are simplifying styles of handling
it in a general way. Thus we may, like La
Rochefoucauld, put self-love or self-esteem
or vanity at the centre of the picture and
point out how it may be caressed by the esteem,
or wounded by the indifference or contempt,
of others. We might speak, in another jargon,
of the need for love, and the loss of security
which results from its withdrawal; or, in
another, of human self-respect and its connection
with the recognition of the individual’s
dignity. These simplifications are of use
to me only if they help to emphasize how
much we actually mind, how much it matters
to us, whether the actions of other people—and
particularly of some other people—reflect
attitudes towards us of goodwill, affection,
or esteem on the one hand or contempt, indifference,
or malevolence on the other. If someone treads
on my hand accidentally, while trying to
help me, the pain may be no less acute than
if he treads on it in contemptuous disregard
of my existence or with a malevolent wish
to injure me. But I shall generally feel
in the second case a kind and degree of resentment
that I shall not feel in the first. If someone’s
actions help me to some benefit I desire,
then I am benefited in any case; but if he
intended them so to benefit me because of
his general goodwill towards me, I shall
reasonably feel a gratitude which I should
not feel at all if the benefit was an incidental
consequence, unintended or even regretted
by him, of some plan of action with a different
aim.
These examples are of actions which confer
benefits or inflict injuries over and above
any conferred or inflicted by the mere manifestation
of attitude and intention themselves. We
should consjder also in how much of our behaviour
the benefit or injury resides mainly or entirely
in the manifestation of attitude itself.
So it is with good manners, and much of what
we call kindness, on the one hand; with deliberate
rudeness, studied indifference, or insult
on the other. Besides resentment and gratitude,
I mentioned just now forgiveness. This is
a rather unfashionable subject in moral philosophy
at present; but to be forgiven is something
we sometimes ask, and forgiving is something
we sometimes say we do. To ask to be forgiven
is in part to acknowledge that the attitude
displayed in our actions was such as might
properly be resented and in part to repudiate
that attitude for the future (or at least
for the immediate future); and to forgive
is to accept the repudiation and to forswear
the resentment.
We should think of the many different kinds
of relationship which we can have with other
people—as sharers of a common interest; as
members of the same family; as colleagues;
as friends; as lovers; as chance parties
to an enormous range of transactions and
encounters. Then we should think, in each
of these connections in turn, and in others,
of the kind of importance we attach to the
attitudes and intentions towards us of those
who stand in these relationships to us, and
of the kinds of reactive attitudes and feelings
to which we ourselves are prone. In general,
we demand some degree of goodwill or regard
on the part of those who stand in these relationships
to us, though the forms we require it to
take vary widely in different connections.
The range and intensity of our reactive attitudes
towards goodwill, its absence or its opposite
vary no less widely. I have mentioned, specifically,
resentment and gratitude; and they are a
usefully opposed pair. But, of course, there
is a whole continuum of reactive attitude
and feeling stretching on both sides of these
and—the most comfortable area—in between
them.
The object of these commonplaces is to try
to keep before our minds something it is
easy to forget when we are engaged in philosophy,
especially in our cool, contemporary style,
viz. what it is actually like to be involved
in ordinary interpersonal relationships,
ranging from the most intimate to the most
casual.
4. It is one thing to ask about the general
causes of these reactive attitudes I have
alluded to; it is another to ask about the
variations to which they are subject, the
particular conditions in which they do or
do not seem natural or reasonable or appropriate;
and it is a third thing to ask what it would
be like, what it is like, not to suffer them.
I am not much concerned with the first question;
but I am with the second; and perhaps even
more with the third.
Let us consider, then, occasions for resentment:
situations in which one person is offended
or injured by the action of another and in
which—in the absence of special considerations—the
offended person might naturally or normally
be expected to feel resentment. Then let
us consider what sorts of special considerations
might be expected to modify or mollify this
feeling or remove it altogether. It needs
no saying now how multifarious these considerations
are. But, for my purpose, I think they can
be roughly divided into two kinds. To the
first group belong all those which might
give occasion for the employment of such
expressions as ‘He didn’t mean to’, ‘He hadn’t
realized’, ‘He didn’t know’; and also all
those which might give occasion for the use
of the phrase ‘He couldn’t help it’, when
this is supported by such phrases as ‘He
was pushed’, ‘He had to do it’, ‘It was the
only way’, ‘They left him no alternative’,
etc. Obviously these various pleas, and the
kinds of situations in which they would be
appropriate, differ from each other in striking
and important ways. But for my present purpose
they have something still more important
in common. None of them invites us to suspend
towards the agent, either at the time of
his action or in general, our ordinary reactive
attitudes. They do not invite us to view
the agent as one in respect of whom these
attitudes are in any way inappropriate. They
invite us to view the injury as one in respect
of which a particular one of these attitudes
is inappropriate. They do not invite us to
see the agent as other than a fully responsible
agent. They invite us to see the injury as
one for which he was not fully, or at all,
responsible. They do not suggest that the
agent is in any way an inappropriate object
of that kind of demand for goodwill or regard
which is reflected in our ordinary reactive
attitudes. They suggest instead that the
fact of in jury was not in this case incompatible
with that demand’s being fulfilled, that
the fact of injury was quite consistent with
the agent’s attitude and intentions being
just what we demand they should be.(3) The
agent was just ignorant of the injury he
was causing, or had lost his balance through
being pushed or had reluctantly to cause
the injury for reasons which acceptably override
his reluctance. The offering of such pleas
by the agent and their acceptance by the
sufferer is something in no way opposed to,
or outside the context of, ordinary inter-personal
relationships and the manifestation of ordinary
reactive attitudes. Since things go wrong
and situations are complicated, it is an
essential and integral element in the transactions
which are the life of these relationships.
The second group of considerations is very
different. I shall take them in two subgroups
of which the first is far less important
than the second. In connection with the first
subgroup we may think of such statements
as ‘He wasn’t himself’, ‘He has been under
very great strain recently’, ‘He was acting
under post-hypnotic suggestion’; in connection
with the second, we may think of ‘He’s only
a child’, ‘He’s a hopeless schizophrenic’,
‘His mind has been systematically perverted’,
‘That’s purely compulsive behaviour on his
part’. Such pleas as these do, as pleas of
my first general group do not, invite us
to suspend our ordinary reactive attitudes
towards the agent, either at the time of
his action or all the time. They do not invite
us to see the agent’s action in a way consistent
with the full retention of ordinary inter-personal
attitudes and merely inconsistent with one
particular attitude. They invite us to view
the agent himself in a different light from
the light in which we should normally view
one who has acted as he has acted. I shall
not linger over the first subgroup of cases.
Though they perhaps raise, in the short term,
questions akin to those raised, in the long
term, by the second subgroup, we may dismiss
them without considering those questions
by taking that admirably suggestive phrase,
‘He wasn’t himself’, with the seriousness
that—for all its being logically comic—it
deserves. We shall not feel resentment against
the man he is for the action done by the
man he is not; or at least we shall feel
less. We normally have to deal with him under
normal stresses; so we shall not feel towards
him, when he acts as he does under abnormal
stresses, as we should have felt towards
him had he acted as he did under normal stresses.
The second and more important subgroup of
cases allows that the circumstances were
normal, but presents the agent as psychologically
abhormal—or as morally undeveloped. The agent
was himself; but he is warped or deranged,
neurotic or just a child. When we see someone
in such a light as this, all our reactive
attitudes tend to be profoundly modified.
I must deal here in crude dichotomies and
ignore the ever-interesting and ever-illuminating
varieties of case. What I want to contrast
is the attitude (or range of attitudes) of
involvement or participation in a human relationship,
on the one hand, and what might be called
the objective attitude (or range of attitudes)
to another human being, on the other. Even
in the same situation, I must add, they are
not altogether exclusive of each other; but
they are, profoundly, opposed to each other.
To adopt the objective attitude to another
human being is to see him, perhaps, as an
object of social policy; as a sub ject for
what, in a wide range of sense, might be
called treatment; as something certainly
to be taken account, perhaps precautionary
account, of; to be managed or handled or
cured or trained; perhaps simply to be avoided,
though this gerundive is not peculiar to
cases of objectivity of attitude. The objective
attitude may be emotionally toned in many
ways, but not in all ways: it may include
repulsion or fear, it may include pity or
even love, though not all kinds of love.
But it cannot include the range of reactive
feelings and attitudes which belong to involvement
or participation with others in inter-personal
human relationships; it cannot include resentment,
gratitude, forgiveness, anger, or the sort
of love which two adults can sometimes be
said to feel reciprocally, for each other.
If your attitude towards someone is wholly
objective, then though you may light him,
you cannot quarrel with him, and though you
may talk to him, even negotiate with him,
you cannot reason with him. You can at most
pretend to quarrel, or to reason, with him.
Seeing someone, then, as warped or deranged
or compulsive in behaviour or peculiarly
unfortunate in his formative circumstances—seeing
someone so tends, at least to some extent,
to set him apart from normal participant
reactive attitudes on the part of one who
so sees him, tends to promote, at least in
the civilized, objective attitudes. But there
is something curious to add to this. The
objective attitude is not only something
we naturally tend to fall into in cases like
these, where participant attitudes are partially
or wholly inhibited by abnormalities or by
immaturity, It is also something which is
available as a resource in other cases too.
We look with an objective eye on the compulsive
behaviour of the neurotic or the tiresome
behaviour of a very young child, thinking
in terms of treatment or training. But we
can sometimes look with something like the
same eye on the behaviour of the normal and
the mature. We have this resource and can
sometimes use it; as a refuge, say, from
the strains of involvement; or as an aid
to policy; or simply out of intellectual
curiosity. Being human, we cannot, in the
normal case, do this for long, or altogether.
If the strains of involvement, say, continue
to be too great, then we have to do something
else -- like severing a relationship. But
what is above all interesting is the tension
there is, in us, between the participant
attitude and the objective attitude. One
is tempted to say: between our humanity and
our intelLigence. But to say this would be
to distort both notions.
What I have called the participant reactive
attitudes are essentially natural human reactions
to the good or ill will or indifference of
others towards us, as displayed in their
attitudes and actions. The question we have
to ask is: What effect would, or should,
the acceptance of the truth of a general
thesis of determinism have upon these reactive
attitudes? More specifically, would, or should,
the acceptance of the truth of the thesis
lead to the decay or the repudiation of all
such attitudes? Would, or should, it mean
the end of gratitude, resentment, and forgiveness;
of all reciprocated adult loves; of all the
essentially personal antagonisms?
But how can I answer, or even pose, this
question without knowing exactly what the
thesis of determinism is? Well, there is
one thing we do know; that if there is a
coherent thesis of determinism, then there
must be a sense of ‘determined’ such that,
if that thesis is true, then all behaviour
whatever is determined in that sense. Remembering
this, we can consider at least what possibilities
lie formally open; and then perhaps we shall
see that the question can be answered without
knowing exactly what the thesis of determinism
is. We can considçr what possibilities lie
open because we have already before us an
account of the ways in which particular reactive
attitudes, or reactive attitudes in general,
may be, and, sometimes, we judge, should
be, inhibited. Thus I considered earlier
a group of considerations which tend to inhibit,
and, we judge, should inhibit, resentment,
in particular cases of an agent causing an
injury, without inhibiting reactive attitudes
in general towards that agent. Obviously
this group of considerations cannot strictly
bear upon our question; for that question
concerns reactive attitudes in general. But
resentment has a particular interest; so
it is worth adding that it has never been
daimed as a consequence of the truth of determinism
that one or another of these considerations
was operative in every case of an injury
being caused by an agent; that it would follow
from the truth of determinism that anyone
who caused an injury either was quite simply
ignorant of causing it or had acceptably
overriding reasons for acquiescing reluctantly
in causing it or. . ., etc. The prevalence
of this happy state of affairs would not
be a consequence of the reign of universal
determinism, but of the reign of universal
goodwill. We cannot, then, find here the
possibility of an affirmative answer to our
question, even for the particular case of
resentment.
Next, I remarked that the participant attitude,
and the personal reactive attitudes in general,
tend to give place, and it is judged by the
civilized should give place, to objective
attitudes, just in so far as the agent is
seen as excluded from ordinary adult human
relationships by deep-rooted. psychological
abnormality—or simply by being a child. But
it cannot be a consequence of any thesis
which is not itself self-contradictory that
abnormality is the universal condition.
Now this dismissal might seem altogether
too facile; and so, in a sense, it is. But
whatever is too quickly dismissed in this
dismissal is allowed for in the only possible
form of affirmative answer that remains.
We can sometimes, and in part, I have remarked,
look on the normal (those we rate as ‘normal’)
in the objective way in which we have learned
to look on certain classified cases of abnormality.
And our question reduces to this: could,
or should, the acceptance of the determinist
thesis lead us always to look on everyone
exclusively in this way? For this is the
only condition worth considering under which
the acceptancc of determinism could lead
to the decay or repudiation of participant
reactive attitudes.
It does not seem to be self-contradictory
to suppose that this might happen. So I suppose
we must say that it is not absolutely inconceivable
that it should happen. But I am strongly
inclined to think that it is, for us as we
are, practically inconceivable. The human
commitment to participation in ordinary inter-personal
relationships is, I think, too thoroughgoing
and deeply rooted for us to take seriously
the thought that a general theoretical conviction
might so change our world that, in it, there
were no longer any such things as inter-personal
relationships as we normally understand them;
and being involved in inter-personal relationships
as we normally understand them precisely
is being exposed to the range of reactive
attitudes and feelings that is in question.
This, then, is a part of the reply to our
question. A sustained objectivity of inter-personal
attitude, and the human isolation which that
would entail, does not seem to be something
of which human beings would be capable, even
if some general truth were a theoretical
ground for it. But this is not all. There
is a further point, implicit in the foregoing,
which must be made explicit. Exceptionally,
I have said, we can have direct dealings
with human beings without any degree of personal
involvement, treating them simply as creatures
to be handled in our own interest, or our
side’s, or society’s—or even theirs. In the
extreme case of the mentally deranged, it
is easy to see the connection between the
possibility of a wholly objective attitude
and the impossibility of what we understand
by ordinary interpersonal relationships.
Given this latter impossibility, no other
civilized attitude is available than that
of viewing the deranged person simply as
something to be understood and controlled
in the most desirable fashion. To view him
as outside the reach of personal relationships
is already, for the civilized, to view him
in this way. For reasons of policy or self-protection
we may have occasion, perhaps temporary,
to adopt a fundamentally similar attitude
to a ‘normal’ human being; to concentrate,
that is, on understanding ‘how he works’,
with a view to determining our policy accordingly,
or to finding in that very understanding
a relief from the strains of involvement.
Now it is certainly true that in the case
of the abnormal, though not in the case of
the normal, our adoption of the objective
attitude is a consequence of our viewing
the agent as incapacitated in some or all
respects for ordinary interpersonal relationships.
He is thus incapacitated, perhaps, by the
fact that his picture of reality is pure
fantasy, that he does not, in a sense, live
in the real world at all; or by the fact
that his behaviour is, in part, an unrealistic
acting out of unconscious purposes; or by
the fact that he is an idiot, or a moral
idiot. But there is something else which,
because this is true, is equally certainly
not true. And that is that there is a sense
of ‘determined’ such that (1) if determinism
is true, all behaviour is determined in this
sense, and (2) determinism might be true,
i. e. it is not inconsistent with the facts
as we know them to suppose that all behaviour
might be determined in this sense, and
(3) our adoption of the objective attitude
towards the abnormal is the result of a prior
embracing of the belief that the behaviour,
or the relevant stretch of behaviour, of
the human being in question is determined
in this sense. Neither in the case of the
normal, then, nor in the case of the abnormal
is it true that, when we adopt an objective
attitude, we do so because we hold such a
belief. So my answer has two parts. The first
is that we cannot, as we are, seriously envisage
ourselves adopting a thoroughgoing objectivity
of attitude to others as a result of theoretical
conviction of the truth of determinism; and
the second is that when we do in fact adopt
such an attitude in a particular case, our
doing so is not the consequence of a theoretical
conviction which might be expressed as ‘Determinism
in this case’, but is a consequence of our
abandoning, for different reasons in different
cases, the ordinary inter-personal attitudes.
It might be said that all this leaves the
real question unanswered, and that we cannot
hope to answer it without knowing exactly
what the thesis of determinism is. For the
real question is not a question about what
we actually do, or why we do it. It is not
even a question about what we would in fact
do if a certain theoretical conviction gained
general acceptance. It is a question about
what it would be rational to do if determinism
were true, a question about the rational
justification of ordinary inter-personal
attitudes in general. To this I shall reply,
first, that such a question could seem real
only to one who had utterly failed to grasp
the purport. of the preceding answer, the
fact of our natural human commitment to ordinary
inter-personal attitudes. This commitment
is part of the general framework of human
life, not something that can come up for
review as particular cases can come up for
review within this general framework. And
I shall reply, second, that if we could imagine
what we cannot have, viz, a choice in this
matter, then we could choose rationally only
in the light of an assessment of the gains
and losses to human life, its enrichment
or impoverishment; and the truth or falsity
of a general thesis of determinism would
not bear on the rationality of this choice.(4)
5. The point of this discussion of the reactive
attitudes in their relation -- or lack of
it—to the thesis of determinism was to bring
us, if possible, nearer to a position of
compromise in a more usual area of debate.
We are not now to discuss reactive attitudes
which are essentially those of offended parties
or beneficiaries. We are to discuss reactive
attitudes which are essentially not those,
or only incidentally are those, of offended
parties or beneficiaries, but are nevertheless,
I shall claim, kindred attitudes to those
I have discussed. I put resentment in the
centre of the previous discussion. I shall
put moral indignation—or, more weakly, moral
disapprobation—in the centre of this one.
The reactive attitudes I have so far discussed
are essentially reactions to the quality
of others’ wills towards us, as manifested
in their behaviour: to their good or ill
will or indifference or lack of concern.
Thus resentment, or what I have called resentment,
is a reaction to injury or indifference.
The reactive attitudes I have now to discuss
might be described as the sympathetic or
vicarious or impersonal or disinterested
or generalized analogues of the reactive
attitudes I have already discussed. They,
are reactions to the qualities of others’
wills, not towards ourselves, but towards
others. Because of this impersonal or vicarious
character, we give them different names.
Thus one who experiences the vicarious analogue
of resentment is said to be indignant or
disapproving, or morally indignant or disapproving.
What we have here is, as it were, resentment
on behalf of another, where one’s own interest
and dignity are not involved; and it is this
impersonal or vicarious character of the
attitude, added to its others, which entitle
it to the qualification ‘moral’. Both my
description of, and my name for, these attitudes
are, in one important respect, a little misleading.
It is not that these attitudes are essentially
vicarious—one can feel indignation on one’s
own account—but that they are essentially
capable of being vicarious. But I shall retain
the name for the sake of its suggestiveness;
and I hope that what is misleading about
it will be corrected in what follows.
The personal reactive attitudes rest on,
and reflect, an expectation of, and demand
for, the manifestation of a certain degree
of goodwill or regard on the part of other
human beings towards ourselves; or at least
on the expectation of, and demand for, an
absence of the manifestation of active ill
will or indifferent disregard. (What will,
in particular cases, count as manifestations
of good or ill will or disregard will vary
in accordance with the particular relationship
in which we stand to another human being.)
The generalized or vicarious analogues of
the personal reactive attitudes rest on,
and reflect, exactly the same expectation
or demand in a generalized form; they rest
on, or reflect, that is, the demand for the
manifestation of a reasonable degree of goodwill
or regard, on the part of others, not simply
towards oneself, but towards all those on
whose behalf moral indignation may be felt,
i. e., as we now think, towards all men.
The generalized and non-generalized forms
of demand, and the vicarious and personal
reactive attitudes which rest upon, and reflect,
them are connected not merely logically.
They are connected humanly; and not merely
with each other. They are connected also
with yet another set of attitudes which I
must mention now in order to complete the
picture. I have considered from two points
of view the demands we make on others and
our reactions to their possibly injurious
actions. These were the points of view of
one whose interest was directly involved
(who suffers, say, the injury) and of others
whose interest was not directly involved
(who do not themselves suffer the injury).
Thus I have
spoken of personal reactive attitudes in
the first connection and of their vicarious
analogues in the second. But the picture
is not cornplete unless we consider also
the correlates of these attitudes on the
part of those on whom the demands are made,
on the part of the agents. Just as there
are personal. and vicarious reactive attitudes
associated with demands on others for oneself
and demands on others for others, so there
are self-reactive attitudes associated with
demands on oneself for others. And here we
have to mention such phenomena as feeling
bound or obliged (the ‘sense of obligation’);
feeling compunction; feeling guilty or remorseful
or at least responsible; and the more complicated
phenomenon of shame.
All these three types of attitude are humanly
connected. One who manifested the personal
reactive attitudes in a high degree but showed
no inclination at all to their vicarious
analogues would appear as an abnormal case
of moral egocentricity, as a kind of moral
solipsist. Let him be supposed fully to acknowledge
the claims to regard that others had on him,
to be susceptible of the whole range of self-reactive
attitudes. He would then see himself as unique
both as one (the one) who had a general claim
on human regard and as one (the one) on whom
human beings in general had such a claim.
This would be a kind of moral solipsism.
But it is barely more than a conceptual possibility;
if it is that. In general, though within
varying limits, we demand. of others for
others, as well as of ourselves for others,
something of the regard which we demand of
others for ourselves. Can we imagine, besides
that of the moral solipsist, any other case
of one or two of these three types of attitude
being fully developed, but quite unaccompanied
by any trace, however slight, of the remaining
two or one? If we can, then we imagine something
far below or far above the level of our common
humanity—a moral idiot or a saint. For all
these types of attitude alike have common
roots in our human nature and our membership
of human communities.
Now, as of the personal reactive attitudes,
so of their vicarious analogues, we must
ask in what ways, and by what considerations,
they tend to be inhibited. Both types of
attitude involve, or express, a certain sort
of demand for inter-personal regard. The
fact of injury constitutes a prima fade appearance
of this demand’s being flouted or unfulfilled.
We saw, in the case of resentment, how one
class of considerations may show this appearance
to be mere appearance, and hence inhibit
resentment, without inhibiting, or displacing,
the sort of demand of which resentment can
be an expression, without in any way tending
to make us suspend our ordinary interpersonal
attitudes to the agent. Considerations of
this class operate in just the same way,
for just the same reasons, in connection
with moral disapprobation or indignation;
they inhibit indignation without in any way
inhibiting the sort of demand on the agent
of which indignation can be an expression,
the range of attitudes towards him to which
it belongs. But in this connection we may
express the facts with a new emphasis. We
may say, stressing the moral, the generalized
aspect of the demand: considerations of this
group have no tendency to make us see the
agent as other than a morally responsible
agent; they simply make us see the- injury
as one for which he was not morally responsible.
The offering and acceptance of such exculpatory
pleas as are here in question in no way detracts
in our eyes from the agent’s status as a
term of moral relationships. On the contrary,
since things go wrong and situations are
complicated, it is an essential part of the
life of such relationships.
But suppose we see the agent in a different
light: as one whose picture of the world
is an insane delusion; or as one whose behaviour,
or a part of whose behaviour, is unintelligible
to us, perhaps even to him, in terms of conscious
purposes, and intelligible only in terms
of unconscious purposes; or even, perhaps,
as one wholly impervious to the self-reactive
attitudes I spoke of, wholly lacking, as
we say, in moral sense. Seeing an agent in
such a light as this tends, I said, to inhibit
resentment in a wholly different way. It
tends to inhibit resentment because it tends
to inhibit ordinary interpersonal attitudes
in general, and the kind of demand and expectation
which those attitudes involve; and tends
to promote instead the purely objective view
of the agent as one posing problems simply
of intellectual understanding, management,
treatment, and control. Again the parallel
holds for those generalized or moral attitudes
towards the agent which we are now concerned
with. The same abnormal light which shows
the agent to us as one in respect of whom
the personal attitudes, the personal demand,
are to be suspended, shows him to us also
as one in respect of whom the impersonal.
attitudes, the generalized demand, are to
be suspended. Only, abstracting now from
direct personal interest, we may express
the facts with a new emphasis. We may say:
to the extent to which the agent is seen
in this light, he is not seen as one on whom
demands and expectations lie in that particular
way in which we think of them as lying when
we speak of moral obligation; he is not,
to that extent, seen as a morally responsible
agent, as a term of moral relationships,
as a member of the moral community.
I remarked also that the suspension of ordinary
inter-personal attitudes and the cultivation
of a purely objective view is sometimes possible
even when we have no such reasons for it
as I have just mentioned. Is this possible
also in the case of the moral reactive attitudes?
I think so; and perhaps it is easier. But
the motives for a total suspension of moral
reactive attitudes are fewer, and perhaps
weaker: fewer, because only where there is
antecedent personal involvement can there
be the motive of seeking refuge from the
strains of such involvement; perhaps weaker,
because the tension between objectivity of
view and the moral reactive attitudes is
perhaps less than the tension between objectivity
of view and the personal reactive attitudes,
so that we can in the case of the moral reactive
attitudes more easily secure the speculative
or political gains of objectivity of view
by a kind of setting on one side, rather
than a total suspension, of those attitudes.
These last remarks are uncertain; but also,
for the present purpose, unimportant. What
concerns us now is to inquire, as previously
in connection with the personal reactive
attitudes, what relevance any general thesis
of determinism might have to their vicarious
analogues. The answers once more are parallel;
though I shall take them in a slightly different
order. First, we must note, as before, that
when the suspension of such an attitude or
such attitudes occurs in a particular case,
it is never the consequence of the belief
that the piece of behaviour in question was
determined in a sense such that all behaviour
might be, and, if determinism is true, all
behaviour is, determined in that sense. For
it is not a consequence of any general thesis
of determinism which might be true that nobody
knows what he’s doing or that everybody’s
behaviour is unintelligible in terms of conscious
purposes or that everybody lives in a world
of delusion or that nobody has a moral sense,
i. e. is susceptible of self-reactive attitudes,
etc. In fact no such sense of ‘determined’
as would be required for a general thesis
of determinism is ever relevant to our actual
suspensions of moral reactive attitudes.
Second, suppose it granted, as I have already
argued, that we cannot take seriously the
thought that theoretical conviction of such
a general thesis would lead to the total
decay of the personal reactive attitudes.
Can we then take seriously the thought that
such a conviction—a conviction, after all,
that many have held or said they held—would
nevertheless lead to the total decay or repudiation
of the vicarious analogues of these attitudes?
I think that the change in our social world
which would leave us exposed to the personal
reactive attitudes but not at all to their
vicarious analogues, the generalization of
abnormal egocentricity which this would entail,
is perhaps even harder for us to envisage
as a real possibility than the decay of both
kinds of attitude together. Though there
are some necessary and some contingent differences
between the ways and cases in which these
two kinds of attitudes operate or are inhibited
in their operation, yet, as general human
capacities or pronenesses, they stand or
lapse together. Finally, to the further question
whether it would not be rational, given a
general theoretical conviction of the truth
of determinism, so to change our world that
in it all these attitudes were wholly suspended,
I must answer, as before, that one who presses
this question has wholly failed to grasp
the import of the preceding answer, the nature
of the human commitment that is here involved:
it is useless to ask whether it would not
be rational for us to do what it is not in
our nature to (be able to) do. To this I
must add, as before, that if there were,
say, for a moment open to us the possibility
of such a god-like choice, the rationality
of making or refusing it would be determined
by quite other considerations than the truth
or falsity of the general theoretical doctrine
in question. The latter would be simply irrelevant;
and this becomes ironically clear when we
remember that for those convinced that the
truth of determinism nevertheless really
would make the one choice rational, there
has always been the insuperable difficulty
of explaining in intelligible terms how its
falsity would make the opposite choice rational.
I am aware that in presenting the argument
as I have done, neglecting the ever-interesting
varieties of case, I have presented nothing
more than a schema, using sometimes a crude
opposition of phrase where we have a great
intricacy of phenomena. In particular the
simple opposition of objective attitudes
on the one hand and the various contrasted
attitudes which I have opposed to them must
seem as grossly crude as it is central. Let
me pause to mitigate this crudity a little,
and also to strengthen one of my central
contentions, by mentioning some things which
straddle these contrasted kinds of attitude.
Thus parents and others concerned with the
care and upbringing of young children cannot
have to their charges either kind of attitude
in a pure or unqualified form. They are dealing
with creatures who are potentially and increasingly
capable both of holding, and being objects
of, the full range of human and moral attitudes,
but are not yet truly capable of either.
The treatment of such creatures must therefore
represent a kind of compromise, constantly
shifting in one direction, between objectivity
of attitude and developed human attitudes.
Rehearsals insensibly modulate towards true
performances. The punishment of a child is
both like and unlike the punishment of an
adult. Suppose we try to relate this progressive
emergence of the child as a responsible being,
as an object of non-objective attitudes,
to that sense of ‘determined’ in which, if
determinism is a possibly true thesis, all
behaviour may be determined, and in which,
if it is a true~ thesis, all behaviour is
determined. What bearing could such a sense
of ‘determined’ have upon the progressive
modification of attitudes towards the child?
Would it not be grotesque to think of the
development of the child as a progressive
or patchy emergence from an area in which
its behaviour is in this sense determined
into an area in which it isn’t? Whatever
sense of ‘determined’ is required for stating
the thesis of determinism, it can scarcely
be such as to allow of compromise, border-line-style
answers to the question, ‘Is this bit of
behaviour determined or isn’t it?’ But in
this matter of young children, it is essentially
a border-line, penumbral area that we move
in. Again, consider—a very different matter—the
strain in the attitude of a psycho-analyst
to his patient. His objectivity of attitude,
his suspension of ordinary moral reactive
attitudes, is profoundly modified by the
fact that the aim of the enterprise is to
make such suspension unnecessary or less
necessary. Here we may and do naturally speak
of restoring the agent’s freedom. But here
the restoring of freedom means bringing it
about that the agent’s behaviour shall be
intelligible in terms of conscious purposes
rather than in terms only of unconscious
purposes. This is the object of the enterprise;
and it is in so far as this object is attained
that the suspension, or half-suspension,
of ordinary moral attitudes is deemed no
longer necessary or appropriate. And in this
we see once again the irrelevance of that
concept of ‘being determined’ which must
be the central concept of determinism. For
we cannot both agree that this object is
attainable and that its attainment has this
consequence and yet hold (1) that neurotic
behaviour is determined in a sense in which,
it may be, all behaviour is determined, and
(2) that it is because neurotic behaviour
is determined in this sense that objective
attitudes are deemed appropriate to neurotic
behaviour. Not, at least, without accusing
ourselves of incoherence in our attitude
to psycho-analytic treatment.
6. And now we can try to fill in the lacuna
which the pessimist finds in the optimist’s
account of the concept of moral responsibility,
and of the bases of moral condemnation and
punishment; and to fill it in from the facts
as we know them. For, as I have already remarked,
when the pessimist himself seeks to fill
it in, he rushes beyond the facts as we know
them and proclaims that it cannot be filled
in at all unless determinism is false.
Yet a partial sense of the facts as we know
them is certainly present to the pessimist’s
mind. When his opponent, the optimist, undertakes
to show that the truth of determinism would
not shake the foundations of the concept
of moral responsibility and of the practices
of moral condemnation and punishment, he
typically refers, in a more or less elaborated
way, to the efficacy of these practices in
regulating behaviour in socially desirable
ways. These practices are represented solely
as instruments of policy, as methods of individual
treatment and social control. The pessimist
recoils from this picture; and in his recoil
there is, typically, an element of emotional
shock. He is apt to say, among much else,
that the humanity of the offender himself
is offended by this picture of his condemnation
and punishment.
The reasons for this recoil—the explanation
of the sense of an emotional, as well as
a conceptual, shock—we have already before
us. The picture painted by the optimists
is painted in a style appropriate to a situation
envisaged as wholly dominated by objectivity
of attitude, The only operative notions invoked
in this picture are such as those of policy,
treatment, control. But a thoroughgoing objectivity
of attitude, excluding as it does the moral
reactive attitudes, excludes at the same
time essential elements in the concepts of
moral condemnation and moral responsibility.
This is the reason for the conceptual shock.
The deeper emotional shock is a reaction,
not simply to an inadequate conceptual analysis,
but to the suggestion of a change in our
world. I have remarked that it is possible
to cultivate an exclusive objectivity of
attitude in some cases, and for some reasons,
where the object of the attitude is not set
aside from developed inter-personal and moral
attitudes by immaturity or abnormality. And
the suggestion which seems to be contained
in the optimist’s account is that such an
attitude should be universally adopted to
all offenders. This is shocking enough in
the pessimist’s eyes. But, sharpened by shock,
his eyes see further. It would be hard to
make this division in our natures. If to
all offenders, then to all mankind. Moreover,
to whom could this recommendation be, in
any real sense, addressed? Only to the powerful,
the authorities. So abysses seem to open.(5)
But we will confine our attention to the
case of the offenders. The concepts we are
concerned with are those of responsibility
and guilt, qualified as ‘moral’, on the one
hand—together with that of membership of
a moral community; of demand, indignation,
disapprobation and condemnation, qualified
as ‘moral’, on the other hand—together with
that of punishment. Indignation, disapprobation,
like resentment, tend to inhibit or at least
to limit our goodwill towards the object
of these attitudes, tend to promote an at
least partial and temporary withdrawal of
goodwill; they do so in proportion as they
are strong; and their strength is in general
proportioned to what is felt to be the magnitude
of the injury and to the degree to which
the agent’s will is identified with, or indifferent
to, it. (These, of course, are not contingent
connections.) But these attitudes of disapprobation
and indignation are precisely the correlates
of the moral demand in the case where the
demand is felt to be disregarded. The making
of the demand is the proneness to such attitudes.
The holding of them does not, as the holding
of objective attitudes does, involve as a
part of itself viewing their object other
than as a member of the moral community.
The partial withdrawal of goodwill which
these attitudes entail, the modification
they entail of the general demand that another
should, if possible, be spared suffering,
is, rather, the consequence of continuing
to view him as a member of the moral community;
only as one who has offended against its
demands. So the preparedness to acquiesce
in that infliction of suffering on the offender
which is an essential part of punishment
is all of a piece with this whole range of
attitudes of which I have been speaking.
It is not only moral reactive attitudes towards
the offender which are in question here.
We must mention also the self-reactive attitudes
of offenders themselves. Just as the other-reactive
attitudes are associated with a readiness
to acquiesce in the infliction of suffering
on an offender, within the ‘institution’
of punishment, so the self-reactive attitudes
are associated with a readiness on the part
of the offender to acquiesce in such infliction
without developing the reactions (e. g. of
resentment) which he would normally develop
to the infliction of injury upon him; i.
e. with a readiness, as we say, to accept
punishment(6) as ‘his due’ or as ‘just’.
l am not in the least suggesting that these
readinesses to acquiesce, either on the part
of the offender himself or on the part of
others, are always or commonly accompanied
or preceded by indignant boilings or remorseful
pangs; only that we have here a continuum
of attitudes and feelings to which these
readinesses to acquiesce themselves belong.
Nor am I in the least suggesting that it
belongs to this continuum of attitudes that
we should be ready to acquiesce in the infliction
of injury on offenders in a fashion which
we saw to be quite indiscriminate or in accordance
with procedures which we knew to be wholly
useless. On the contrary, savage or civilized,
we have some belief in the utility of practices
of condemnation and punishment. But the social
utility of these practices, on which the
optimist lays such exclusive stress, is not
what is now in question. What is in question
is the pessimist’s justified sense that to
speak in terms of social utility alone is
to leave out something vital in our conception
of these practices. The vital thing can be
restored by attending to that complicated
web of attitudes and feelings which form
an essential part of the moral life as we
know it, and which are quite opposed wobjectivity
of attitude. Only by attending to this range
of attitudes can we recover from the facts
as we know them a sense of what we mean,
i. e. of all we mean, when, speaking the
language of morals, we speak of desert, responsibility,
guilt, condemnation, and justice. But we
do recover it from the facts as we know them.
We do not have to go beyond them. Because
the optimist neglects or misconstrues these
attitudes, the pessimist rightly claims to
find a lacuna in his account. We can fill
the lacuna for him. But in return we must
demand of the pessimist a surrender of his
metaphysics.
Optimist and pessimist misconstrue the facts
in very different styles. But in a profound
sense there is something in common to their
misunderstandings. Both seek, in different
ways, to over-intellectualize the facts.
Inside the general structure or web of human
attitudes and feelings Of which I have been
speaking, there is endless room for modification,
redirection, criticism, and justification.
But questions of justification are internal
to the structure or relate to modifications
internal to it. The existence of the general
framework of attitudes itself is something
we are given with the fact of human society.
As a whole, it neither calls for, nor permits,
an external ‘rational’ justification. Pessimist
and optimist alike show themselves, in different
ways, unable to accept this.(7) The optimist’s
style of over-intellectualizing the facts
is that of a characteristically incomplete
empiricism, a one-eyed utilitarianism. He
seeks to find an adequate basis for certain
social practices in calculated consequences,
and loses sight (perhaps wishes to lose sight)
of the human attitudes of which these practices
are, in part, the expression. The pessimist
does not lose sight of these attitudes, but
is unable to accept the fact that it is just
these attitudes themselves which fill the
gap in the optimist’s account. Because of
this, he thinks the gap can be filled only
if some general metaphysical proposition
is repeatedly verified, verified in all cases
where it is appropriate to attribute moral
responsibility. This proposition he finds
it as difficult to state coherently and with
intelligible relevance as its determinist
contradictory. Even when a formula has been
found (‘contra-causal freedom’ or something
of the kind) there still seems to remain
a gap between its applicability in particular
cases and its supposed moral consequences.
Sometimes he plugs this gap with an intuition
of fittingness—a pitiful intellectualist
trinket for a philosopher to wear as a charm
against the recognition of his own humanity.
Even the moral sceptic is not immune from
his own form of the wish to over-intellectualize
such notions as those of moral responsibility,
guilt, and blame. He sees that the optimist’s
account is inadequate and the pessimist’s
libertarian alternative inane; and finds
no resource except to declare that the notions
in question are inherently confused, that
‘blame is metaphysical’. But the metaphysics
was in the eye of the metaphysician. It is
a pity that talk of the moral sentiments
has fallen out of favour. The phrase would
be quite a good name for that network of
human attitudes in acknowledging the character
and place of which we find, I suggest, the
only possibility of reconciling these disputants
to each other and the facts.
There are, at present, factors which add,
in a slightly paradoxical way, to the difficulty
of making this acknowledgement. These human
attitudes themselves, in their development
and in the variety of their manifestations,
have to an increasing extent become objects
of study in the social and psychological
sciences; and this growth of human self-consciousness,
which we might expect to reduce the difficulty
of acceptance, in fact increases it in several
ways. One factor of comparatively minor importance
is an increased historical and anthropological
awareness of the great variety of forms which
these human attitudes may take at different
times and in different cultures. This makes
one rightly chary of claiming as essential
features of the concept of morality in general,
forms of these attitudes which may have a
local and temporary prominence. No doubt
to some extent my own descriptions of human
attitudes have reflected local and temporary
features of our. own culture. But an awareness
of variety of forms should not prevent us
from acknowledging also that in the absence
of any forms of these attitudes it is doubtful
whether we should have anything that we could
find intelligible as a system of human relationships,
as human society. A quite different (actor
of greater importance is that psychological
studies have made us rightly mistrustful
of many particular manifestations of the
attitudes I have spoken of. They are a prime
realm of self-deception, of the ambiguous
and the shady, of guilt-transference, unconscious
sadism and the rest. But it is an exaggerated
horror, itself suspect, which would make
us unable to acknowledge the facts because
of the seamy side of the facts. Finally,
perhaps the most important factor of all
is the prestige of these theoretical studies
themselves. That prestige is great, and is
apt to make us forget that in philosophy,
though it also is a theoretical study, we
have to take account of the facts in all
their bearings; we are not to suppose that
we are required, or permitted, as philosophers,
to regard ourselves, as human beings, as
detached from the attitudes which, as scientists,
we study with detachment. This is in no way
to deny the possibility and desirability
of redirection and modification of our human
amtudes in the light of these studies. But
we may reasonably think it unlikely that
our progressively greater understanding of
certain aspects of ourselves will lead to
the total disappearance of those aspects.
Perhaps it is not inconceivable that it should;
and perhaps, then, the dreams of some philosophers
will be realized.
If we sufficiently, that is radically, modify
the view of the optimist, his view is the
right one. It is far from wrong to emphasize
the efficacy of all those practices which
express or manifest our moral attitudes,
in regulating behaviour in ways considered
desirable; or to add that when certain of
our beliefs about the efficacy of some of
these practices turn out to be false, then
we may have good reason for dropping or modifying
those practices. What is wrong is to forget
that these practices, and their reception,
the reactions to them, really are expressions
of our moral attitudes and not merely devices
we calculatingly employ for regulative purposes.
Our practices do not merely exploit our natures,
they express them. Indeed the very understanding
of the kind of efficacy these expressions
of our amtudes have turns on our remembering
this. When we do remember this, and modify
the optimist’s position accordingly, we simultaneously
correct its conceptual deficiencies and ward
off the dangers it seems to entail, without
recourse to the obscure and panicky metaphysics
of libertarianism.
NOTES
(1) Cf. P. H. Nowell-Smith, 'Freewill and
Moral Responsibility', Mind, 1948.
(2) As Nowell-Smith pointed out in a later
article, 'Determinists and Libertarians',
Mind, 1954.
(3) Perhaps not in every case just what we
demand they should be, but in any case not
just
what we demand they should not be. For my
present purpose these differences do not
matter.
(4) The question, then, of the connection
between rationality and the adoption of the
objective attitude to others is misposed
when it is made to seem dependent on the
issue of determinism. But there is another
question which should be raised, if only
to distinguish it from the misposed question.
Quite apart from the issue of determinism,
might it not be said that we should be nearer
to being purely rational creatures in proportion
as our relation to others was in fact dominated
by the objective attitude? I think this might
be said; only it would have to be added,
once more, that if such a choice were possible,
it would not necessarily be rational to choose
to be more purely rational than we are.
(5) Peered into by Mr. J. D. Mabbott, in
his article ‘Freewill and Punishment’, published
in Contemporary British Philosophy, 3rd ser.,
1956.
(6). Of course not any punishment for anything
deemed an offence.
(7) Compare the question of the justification
of induction. The human commitment to inductive
belief-formation is original, natural, non-rational
(not irrational), in no way something we
choose or could give up. Yet rational criticism
and reflection can refine standards and their
application, supply ‘rules for judging of
cause and effect’. Ever since the facts were
made clear by Hume, people have been resisting
acceptance of them.
'Freedom and Resentment' is published in,
among other things, Strawson's Freedom and
Resentment and other Essays. Given the little
mistakes that get into scanned versions,
you should refer back to the original make
sure any quotations are correct. For Galen
Strawson's thoughts, turn to ' Free Will'.
Peter Frederick Strawson (born November 23,
1919 in London) is a philosopher associated
with the ordinary language philosophy movement
within analytical philosophy. He was the
Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy
at the University of Oxford from 1968 to
1987. Strawson first became well known with
his article “On Referring” (1950), a criticism
of Russell’s Theory of Descriptions (see
also Definite descriptions).
Strawson's important publications include:
Introduction to Logical Theory, Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics, The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant’s Critique
of Pure Reason and Entity and Identity.
Strawson was knighted in 1977, so he is also
known as Sir Peter Strawson. His son, Galen
Strawson, is also a philosopher.
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Evans Experientialism 
