Abstract
This paper points out neglected considerations about the standing to blame. It starts from the observation that the standing to blame debate largely focusses on factors concerning the blamer or the relation of blamer and wrongdoer, mainly hypocrisy and meddling, while neglecting the victim of wrongdoing. This paper wants to set this right by pointing out how considerations about the victim can impact a third party’s standing. The first such consideration is the blamer’s personal relation to the victim. It is argued that persons close to the victim thereby gain standing even in the presence of factors that would normally undermine it. Arguing from the well-known sexual assault case of Chanel Miller and the public reactions to it, the paper then introduces two more considerations about standing hitherto neglected. First, given that blame has an expressive function and serves to contradict expressive aspects of wrongdoings, it is argued that third-party blame can morally support the victim in the face of wrongdoing and that such support matters to victims. It is argued that this importance of third-party blame can ground standing. Thirdly and relatedly, the paper argues that insufficient collective responses to wrongdoing, i.e. when other bystanders do not respond with sufficient blaming responses, can equally ground standing of third parties. It is argued that these considerations are relevant not only for an ethics of blame broadly conceived but also for standing to blame in particular. Thereby, the paper establishes that considerations about the victim are central for discussion of the standing to blame.
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Notes
For the purposes of this paper, I will not distinguish between “standing to blame”, “standing to hold responsible” and “standing to hold accountable”. Also, nothing I say hinges on a particular understanding of blame. I take my arguments to apply to any form of holding another accountable.
Manne (2018) draws much from this case in her analysis of misogyny. She is concerned specifically with which misogynistic patterns surface in the treatment and reactions Miller was subjected to, whereas I am here interested in more general features of victimhood. I do not think Manne’s and my concerns are at odds here but rather focus on somewhat different moral and societal issues.
For a classic discussion of the difference between fittingness and appropriateness, see D'Arms and Jacobson (2000).
Some authors argue that there can also be a standing condition on non-expressed blame, i.e. the mere internal experiencing of certain reactive attitudes (cf. Todd 2019: 349–350). I remain neutral on this question, and this paper will focus on overt blame exclusively.
See Herstein (2017) for discussion of what deflection of reasons may entail.
Edwards (2019) argues that standing concerns specifically whether someone has an agent-relative duty not to blame and so seems to suggest that standing refers to the agent-relative subset of moral considerations on whether to blame. For one thing, however, he also argues that standing is about the normative power to hold another to account, and it is not clear to me whether and if so why this normative power necessarily goes together with specifically an agent-relative privilege to blame. For another, it eludes me why the subset of agent-relative considerations merits specific attention.
Edwards (2019: 444–445) mentions an example of students who are holding another student responsible for failing to prepare for class by blocking the classroom door, locking them out. He contends that holding their fellows responsible is a thing they have the standing to do while they nonetheless lack the standing to hold them responsible by locking them out.
To some it may seem natural to distinguish epistemic conditions (2) and proportionality conditions (3) from standing conditions. However, neither of the two ways of understanding “standing” I discussed above in itself justifies such a distinction. Since this paper does not put forward a substantive view of the nature of standing I will leave this issue aside.
Todd (2019) develops a different account of hypocrisy concerned with whether the blamer is committed to the norms their blame rests on, and King (2020) argues that the wrong of hypocrisy consists in confused priorities since the hypocrite should rather address their own faults than those of another. While these are not, like other accounts, concerned with the blamer-perpetrator relation, neither Todd nor King mention the victims of wrongdoing.
Duff (2010: 138–139) is an exception here. Within a discussion of the judiciary’s standing to try criminals in an unjust society, he points to the victims’ interest that crimes be prosecuted and wrongs done to them be recognised and responded to appropriately. He concludes that this requires the state to develop fora to address injustices in order to avoid being hypocritical in the prosecution of criminals. Extending this point to the issue of standing to blame suggests that victim’s interests in appropriate responses by third-parties may give these reason to address their own wrongdoings so that they are then well-placed to blame others. He does not consider any direct bearing of the victim’s situation on someone’s standing however.
Priest (2016) mentions the victim in yet another respect. She argues that a certain kind of blame, which she calls associate blame, is possible only for those close to the victim and will be inappropriate after the victim has forgiven the wrong. Since this concerns merely a specific kind of blame, and not the standing to blame in general, I will leave this aside.
Wertheimer (1998: 499) mentions, in a sub clause, that “personal attachments or identifications with the victims” may justify blame, but he does not pursue the issue further.
This degree, of course, may change over time, e.g. if your child grows up or your relationship to a friend grows more or less intimate.
This may not be the case in very dysfunctional parent–child-relationships. Setting these aside, however, the case seems pretty clear.
This is not to say that having a close relation to the victim makes blaming all-things-considered appropriate. There may be moral reasons to refrain from blaming nonetheless. Sometimes, third-party blame might be unwelcome to the victim or, given the context, be belittling towards or disempower the victim. Equally, the blamer might fail on the epistemic condition on blame (Coates 2016). Nonetheless, strong personal relations to the victim can often ground standing.
Cohen (2006) discusses in much detail the case of an Israeli spokesperson condemning Palestinian terrorist attacks on civilians. He makes a powerful case that Israel and its spokespersons lack the standing to condemn such terrorism both because they are guilty of comparable crimes (hypocrisy) and because they have put Palestinians in a situation where they lack means other than terrorism to pursue their legitimate political cause (involvement).
While I am sympathetic to Cohen’s view, and consider the points he makes well taken, it does strike me as odd that he has nothing to say about the fact that the victims of Palestinian terror were (mainly) Israeli citizens and that this might well give some right to spokespersons of Israel to condemn these acts. This would not be the case if victims had only been non-Israelis.
Priest argues that some forms of blame have to cease once the victim has forgiven their perpetrator. Thus, she agrees with Radzik (2011: 594–596) that sometimes blaming or at least certain forms of it can undermine the victim’s standing to autonomously determine how to respond to a wrong so that such forms of blaming would further wrong the victim (Priest 2016: 629–630). I agree that this can happen. But this focus on blaming being overdone obscures that blame may also be underdone, and the victim be harmed thereby also. This is the claim I am arguing for here.
Although legal sanctions are a central part of this example, I do not want to put forward a view of blame as primarily a kind of sanction. Rather I contend that blame and legal sanctions can share a function of protesting wrongdoing and marking it out as such.
In fact, I contend, this shows that in at least some cases there will be an obligation for third-parties to ally themselves with the victim by blaming a wrongdoer. As an anonymous reviewer pointed out to me, however, this is a strong claim that might require further discussion. For the purposes of this paper I am happy to set this claim aside, maintaining only the weaker claim that whether blame supports a victim plays a role in an ethics of blame and, as I will argue below, also specifically bears on third parties’ standing to blame.
It is not actually clear to me that this is desirable. Clearly Aliyah has reason to engage with her moral history and make up for her wrongdoings, but in a situation where someone else is being wronged and the perpetrator is not being held accountable, Aliyah’s past does not seem to have priority.
As a reviewer for this journal pointed out to me I am here in disagreement with Radzik (2011: 597) who discusses a parallel case of third-party blame after bullying. Radzik emphasises the importance of victims standing up for themselves while I have argued for the relevance of third-party responses on a victim’s behalf. I think that both are important points and their relative strength depends on context, especially on whether victims successfully stand up for themselves.
As an anonymous reviewer pointed out to me, Dover (2019) also argues against withholding criticism that might be hypocritical. Unlike me she does not do so by pointing to additional considerations that might outweigh hypocrisy but by denying that hypocrisy per se is a fault at all.
An editor for this journal pointed out to me that hypocrisy, too, might not be overridden by victim-focussed considerations if the blamer had previously wronged the very same victim. Thus, Aliyah would not have standing to blame Brian had she herself bullied Carlos before. This seems plausible, and might also be explained by the fact that such blame could not send the message of unambivalent acknowledgement of the wrong to the victim.
In this respect I agree with King (2020), who, though with a somewhat different focus, also argues that neither meddling nor hypocrisy always makes blame inappropriate.
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Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank Monika Betzler, Ben Matheson, and Jonas Vandieken for their support and their feedback on earlier versions of this paper. An editor and two reviewers for the Journal of Ethics have also provided very helpful feedback. An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the Practical Philosophy Research Colloquium at LMU Munich.
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Edlich, A. What About the Victim? Neglected Dimensions of the Standing to Blame. J Ethics 26, 209–228 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-021-09369-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-021-09369-z