Overview

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.

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9780198903789

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Reviews

"In this book, Derk Pereboom provides further elaboration and defense of his long-standing vision of a world without retributivism ... The result is exactly what we have come to expect from Pereboom: a dialectically engaged, avowedly revisionist, humanely pursued vision of life after ""basic desert"" ... His claims and ideas will resonate further, interacting with a variety of thinkers from a broader swath of philosophy. I recommend it for those near and far. * Pamela Hieronymi, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews * This is a terrific book. It will be of serious interest to those working on free will and moral responsibility, those working on moral emotions, philosophers of religion, legal theorists interested in criminal responsibility and punishment, and ethicists working on defensive harm and war ethics among others. The book offers original and important contributions on topics in all of these areas, and they are unified by being parts of the exploration of the implications of free will skepticism and providing a coherent and mutually supporting picture what our emotional and ethical lives should be like. * Dana Nelkin, Professor of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego * In Wrongdoing and the Moral Emotions Pereboom offers a new and wide-ranging account of what remains when we reject the idea that people are at least sometimes - and in at least one important sense - morally responsible for what they do ... As always, Pereboom is inventive, nuanced, and scrupulously responsive to critics of his views. No book this radical in its aims can hope to secure widespread agreement, but it will undoubtedly be a landmark for future discussions of culpability, moral psychology, hope, and the philosophy of punishment. * Manuel Vargas, The Philosophical Review *"

In this book, Derk Pereboom provides further elaboration and defense of his long-standing vision of a world without retributivism ... The result is exactly what we have come to expect from Pereboom: a dialectically engaged, avowedly revisionist, humanely pursued vision of life after ""basic desert"" ... His claims and ideas will resonate further, interacting with a variety of thinkers from a broader swath of philosophy. I recommend it for those near and far. * Pamela Hieronymi, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews * This is a terrific book. It will be of serious interest to those working on free will and moral responsibility, those working on moral emotions, philosophers of religion, legal theorists interested in criminal responsibility and punishment, and ethicists working on defensive harm and war ethics among others. The book offers original and important contributions on topics in all of these areas, and they are unified by being parts of the exploration of the implications of free will skepticism and providing a coherent and mutually supporting picture what our emotional and ethical lives should be like. * Dana Nelkin, Professor of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego * In Wrongdoing and the Moral Emotions Pereboom offers a new and wide-ranging account of what remains when we reject the idea that people are at least sometimes - and in at least one important sense - morally responsible for what they do ... As always, Pereboom is inventive, nuanced, and scrupulously responsive to critics of his views. No book this radical in its aims can hope to secure widespread agreement, but it will undoubtedly be a landmark for future discussions of culpability, moral psychology, hope, and the philosophy of punishment. * Manuel Vargas, The Philosophical Review *

Author Information

Derk Pereboom (Ph.D. UCLA) is the Susan Linn Sage Professor in the Philosophy Department at Cornell University and Senior Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities in Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences. His areas of research include free will and moral responsibility, philosophy of mind, and early modern philosophy, especially Kant. He is the author of Living without Free Will (Cambridge 2001), Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism (Oxford 2011), and Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life (Oxford 2014). He has published articles on free will and moral responsibility, consciousness and physicalism, nonreductive materialism, and on Kant's metaphysics and epistemology.

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