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- Title
In defense of guilt‐tripping.
- Authors
Achs, Rachel
- Abstract
It is tempting to hold that guilt‐tripping is morally wrong, either because it is objectionably manipulative, or because it involves gratuitously aiming to make another person suffer, or both. In this article, I develop a picture of guilt according to which guilt is a type of pain that incorporates a commitment to its own justification on the basis of the subject's wrongdoing. This picture supports the hypothesis that feeling guilty is an especially efficient means for a wrongdoer to come to more deeply understand why her behavior was wrong; it is precisely because guilt is painful and involves a self‐reflexive justificatory element that it is able to play this role. Such a picture, moreover, preserves the possibility that deliberately making others feel guilty needn't involve aiming gratuitously to harm them and needn't be objectionably manipulative. It follows that we should be surprisingly sanguine about the practice of inducing guilt in wrongdoers as a means of facilitating their moral edification.
- Subjects
PHILOSOPHICAL research; BEHAVIOR; THEORY of knowledge; DEVELOPMENTAL continuity; THEORY of self-knowledge
- Publication
Philosophy & Phenomenological Research, 2024, Vol 108, Issue 3, p792
- ISSN
0031-8205
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/phpr.13009