This paper argues that moral distress is a distinctive category of reactive attitudes that are taken to be part and parcel of the social dynamics for recognition. While moral distress does not demonstrate evidence of wrongdoing, it does emotionally articulate a demand for normative attention that is addressed to others as moral providers. The argument for this characterization of the deontic power of moral distress builds upon two examples in which the cognitive value of the victim’s emotional experience is controversial: (...) the case of micro-aggression, and the case of misplaced distress. In contrast to appraisal and perceptual models of distress, it is argued that its epistemic and normative value is dialogical rather than evidential, in that it presses claims that engage the audience in a normative discussion about the normative standing of the claimant, the proper grounds of the attitude, and the normative standards used to assess them. (shrink)

The article presents an original needs-based partial theory of human injustice and shows its relationship to existing theories of human need and human liberation. The theory is based on an original typology of three social structural sources of human injustice, a partial theorization of the mechanisms of human injustice, and a needs-based theorization of the nature of human injustice, as experienced by individuals. The article makes a sociological contribution to normative social theory by clarifying the relationship of human injustice to (...) human needs, human rights, and human liberation. The theory contends that human injustice is produced when oppression, mechanistic dehumanization, and exploitation create systematic inequality in opportunities to address human needs, leading to wrongful need deprivation and the resulting serious harm. In one longer sentence, this needs-based partial theory of the sources, mechanisms, and nature of human injustice contends that three distinct social systemic sources—oppression, mechanistic dehumanization, and exploitation—produce unique and/or overlapping social mechanisms, which create systematic inequality in opportunities to address universal human needs in culturally specific ways, thus producing the nature of the human injustice theorized here: wrongfully unmet needs and serious harm. (shrink)