Social Constraints On Moral Address

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 98 (1):167-189 (2017)
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Abstract

The moral community is a social community, and as such it is vulnerable to social problems and pathologies. In this essay I identify a particular way in which participation in the moral community can be constrained by social factors. I argue that features of the social world—including power imbalances, oppression, intergroup conflict, communication barriers, and stereotyping—can make it nearly impossible for some members of the moral community to hold others responsible for wrongdoing. Specifically, social circumstances prevent some marginalized people from engaging in what Stephen Darwall calls “felicitous moral address” (Darwall 2006). We should think of some members of the moral community as having “second-class moral citizenship” in ways that parallel second-class political citizenship. The injustice of second-class moral citizenship can be understood by drawing an analogy with Miranda Fricker’s notion of “epistemic injustice” (Fricker 2007). Fricker’s account of how people can be undermined in their capacity as knowers can be extended to show how people can be undermined in their capacity as makers of moral claims, which can be called “claimant injustice”.

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Vanessa Carbonell
University of Cincinnati

Citations of this work

Explaining Loss of Standing to Blame.Justin Snedegar - 2023 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 21 (3-4):404-432.
Letting go of blame.Luke Brunning & Per-Erik Milam - 2023 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 106 (3):720-740.
Demanding more of Strawsonian accountability theory.Daniel Telech - 2020 - European Journal of Philosophy 28 (4):926-941.

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References found in this work

Freedom and Resentment.Peter Strawson - 1962 - Proceedings of the British Academy 48:187-211.
Unprincipled virtue: an inquiry into moral agency.Nomy Arpaly - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Two faces of responsibility.Gary Watson - 1996 - Philosophical Topics 24 (2):227–48.
Speech acts and unspeakable acts.Rae Langton - 1993 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 22 (4):293-330.

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