Relation to others· Morals

Keeping no accounts

Axis: Moral responsibility — Should we assign blame and credit?

We should let go of assignment itself: no one is the ultimate author of what they are, and our acts issue from us as fruit from a tree. In place of reproach and pride come other responses: to understand, to pity, to rejoice or to laugh, as one responds to the beauty of a gesture or the sorrow of a shipwreck, without seeking a culprit. This is not indifference: it is the end of the tribunal, not the end of feeling.

Foundations and implications

↑ What grounds it

A leaf — an application that grounds nothing further here.

↑ What grounds it

Freedom of the will

If every act follows from prior causes, no one is the ultimate author of what they do, and imputation loses its ground: this is the path leading from Spinoza to Nietzsche toward the innocence of becoming. The link is not necessary: Spinoza himself keeps sanction as an instrument, and P.F. Strawson holds our reactive attitudes to be independent of the determinist thesis.

↓ What it implies

A leaf — an application that grounds nothing further here.

Problems

Descriptive Question
The lottery of merit
Two identical reckless drivers, a child crosses in front of only one: chance makes one a killer and the other lucky. And what we praise, talents, character, was no more chosen: if luck pervades everything, what remains of merit properly one's own?
the part of luck in merit
Descriptive
Responsible for one's character?
The drunk man no longer controls himself, but he made himself so, glass after glass: for Aristotle, we impute the disposition one has let grow. Yet to be accountable for one's character, would one not have to have chosen it, and so on to infinity?
the acquired disposition
Descriptive
Does understanding all excuse all?
If every act has its causes, the excuse valid for one, the tumour, the constraint, should hold for all, and no one would be to blame. Unless the excuse precisely distinguishes between causes, and understanding is not excusing.
the universal excuse
PrescriptiveMoral
Can we give up resentment?
Would a world cured of resentment be gentler or less human? To give up holding things against people, is that an attainable wisdom, or the end of person-to-person relations?
resentment