Virtues of Resentment

Utilitas 13 (2):255 (2001)
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Abstract

On a consequentialist account of virtue, a trait is virtuous if it has good consequences, vicious if it has bad. Clumsiness and dimness are therefore vices. Should I resent the clumsy and the dim?, says the consequentialist, counterintuitively - at any rate, Yes’ on an accuracy measure of resentment's virtue: resentment should be an accurate response to consequentialist vice, and these are vices. On a usefulness measure of resentment's virtue, the answer may be different: whether resentment is virtuous depends on whether resentment itself is useful. Equally counterintuitive, this answer divorces resentment from assessment of vice. Consequentialism is thus mistaken not only about when resentment is virtuous, but about what resentment is. Moreover it alienates the philosopher, for whom accuracy applies, from the agent, for whom usefulness applies. But abandoning this double standard would mean giving up philosophy

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Rae Langton
Cambridge University

Citations of this work

From self-defense to violent protest.Edmund Tweedy Flanigan - 2023 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 26 (7):1094-1118.
Anger and moral judgment.Glen Pettigrove - 2014 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 92 (2):269-286.
Virtue in a time of depraved ideals.Iskra Fileva - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
Resentment of Advice and Norms of Advice.Monique Jonas - 2017 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (4):813-828.

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References found in this work

Alienation, consequentialism, and the demands of morality.Peter Railton - 1984 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 13 (2):134-171.
The schizophrenia of modern ethical theories.Michael Stocker - 1976 - Journal of Philosophy 73 (14):453-466.

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