Abstract

According to Peter Strawson’s reactive attitudes approach toward moral responsibility, reactive attitudes constitute the foundation of moral responsibility. The content of reactive attitudes determines the scope, i.e., its narrowness and broadness, of moral responsibility. When it comes to the question of which moral emotions are identified as reactive attitudes, it is well-accepted by Strawsonians that guilt is a reactive attitude, but many of them deny that shame is a reactive attitude even though shame and guilt are closely related. The main reason for denying shame as a reactive attitude is that they suppose that people are only morally responsible for things within their voluntary control, but people can feel ashamed of things that they have no voluntary control over. This paper argues that those who deny shame as a reactive attitude hold a narrow understanding of reactive attitudes and moral responsibility. The biggest issue underlying this narrow understanding of moral responsibility is that it commits to what Bernard Williams calls “the morality system” and its peculiar assumption, which distorts our ordinary understanding of moral responsibility. Based upon Strawson’s relatively less famous article “Social Morality and Individual Ideal”, this paper then develops an alternative account of reactive attitudes, i.e., reactive attitudes are emotional responses to the violation or fulfillment of social ethical expectations. This new definition of reactive attitudes covers shame as a reactive attitude and promotes a broader understanding of moral responsibility, which reflects our ordinary understanding of moral responsibility.