Special Issue of *Philosophical Papers*
Guest Editor: Lucy Allais (Witwatersrand and Sussex)
Reactive attitudes are affective ways of viewing agents in response to the good or bad will that they demonstrate in their actions; retributive reactive attitudes, such as resentment, indignation, guilt, and contempt, are the subset of reactive attitudes that involve seeing the agent to whom they are directed as having done wrong. Philosophers have both defended and criticised the moral value of retributive reactive attitudes. Defenders have explored their intimate connections with self-respect, resistance to injustice, accountability, agency, and personhood, and some philosophers argue we cannot understand responsibility without these emotions. At the same time, both in philosophy and in popular culture it is often thought that dissolving or overcoming retributive emotions is both healthy and virtuous. Both views raise complex questions about the nature of retributive reactive attitudes. The aim of this special issue of *Philosophical Papers* is to explore this area, and with it, the complex role that the moral emotions play in our understanding of wrongdoing.
Possible topics for discussion include:
- Analyses of particular retributive attitudes.
- The intentional content of the retributive emotions.
- The significance and role of the 'feeling' part of retributive attitudes.
- The relation between retributive emotions and moral judgments.
- The relation between, on the one hand, having a particular emotional response to wrongdoing and, on the other hand, 'properly' grasping the wrongness of the wrong and the perpetrator's culpability and 'properly' condemning this wrong.
- The relationship between retributive emotions and responsibility.
- The relationship between retributive emotions and punishment.
- The relationship between retributive emotions and forgiveness.
- The rational or moral culpability, if any, in not having retributive emotional responses, and whether there are differences between self-directed and other-directed retributive responses.
- The extent to which the retributive emotions are optional or avoidable.
- The possibility of having 'positive' reactive attitudes (e.g., gratitude) without having retributive reactive attitudes.
The deadline for receipt of submission is 30 June 2010. This special edition of *Philosophical Papers*, which will contain both invited and submitted papers, will appear in November of 2010.
Authors are encouraged to submit manuscripts electronically, as a pdf or word-document attachment, prepared for blind review, emailed to . Authors should include their full name, affiliation, and address for email correspondence with their submission.
|
