We encounter offense through various media: an intended facetious remark, a protester’s photographic image of an aborted fetus, an epithet, a stereotypical joke of a minority racial group. People say things that cause offense all of the time. And causing offense can have serious consequences, both personal and professional; the offending party is subject to termination, suspension, or social isolation and public opprobrium. Since the stakes are so high we should have a better understanding of the mechanisms (...) of offense involved in these media and how they work. In this dissertation I focus on two mechanisms for communicating offense—i.e. racial and ethnic slurs and racial humor. First, I lay out a few distinctions concerning the particular kind of offense being targeted, objective versus subjective offense, and when state involvement might be appropriate for penalizing offensive behavior. Next, I discuss racial slurs and the conditions of their offensiveness. I offer a non-content based view of slurs’ offense, which contradicts the consensus view held by most philosophers of language and linguists working on this issue. Also, I look more closely at a purportedly non-offensive use of slurring language, so-called linguistic appropriation, and determine that appropriated uses are permissible in certain settings only under certain conditions. And finally, I propose a tri-partite analysis of racial jokes that provides conditions for when they are merely racial, racially insensitive, or racist. (shrink)

A central aim within criminal justice ethics is to give a plausible justification concerning which type of acts ought to be criminalized by the state. One of the principles of criminalization which has been presented and critically discussed in the philosophical literature is the Offense Principle. The primary aim of this paper is to argue that unless a rather special and implausible objective list theory of well-being is accepted, the Offense Principle should be subsumed in the Harm Principle.

The second volume in Joel Feinberg's series The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, Offense to Others focuses on the "offense principle," which maintains that preventing shock, disgust, or revulsion is always a morally relevant reason for legal prohibitions. Feinberg clarifies the concept of an "offended mental state" and further contrasts the concept of offense with harm. He also considers the law of nuisance as a model for statutes creating "morals offenses," showing its inadequacy as a model (...) for understanding "profound offenses," and discusses such issues as obscene words and social policy, pornography and the Constitution, and the differences between minor and profound offenses. (shrink)

The second volume in Joel Feinberg's series The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, Offense to Others focuses on the "offense principle," which maintains that preventing shock, disgust, or revulsion is always a morally relevant reason for legal prohibitions. Feinberg clarifies the concept of an "offended mental state" and further contrasts the concept of offense with harm. He also considers the law of nuisance as a model for statutes creating "morals offenses," showing its inadequacy as a model (...) for understanding "profound offenses," and discusses such issues as obscene words and social policy, pornography and the Constitution, and the differences between minor and profound offenses. (shrink)

Joel Feinberg’s Offense to Others is the most comprehensive contemporary work on the significance of offense in a liberal legal system. Feinberg argues that being offended can impair a person’s liberty, much like a nuisance, and that it is therefore legitimate in principle to regulate conduct because of its offensiveness. In this article, I discuss some overlooked considerations that give us reason to resist Feinberg’s conclusion, even while granting this premise. My key claim is that the regulation of (...) offense can inadvertently increase the incidence of offense, by nurturing offense-taking sensibilities. In the course of defending this claim and spelling out its implications, I explain why concerns about the inadvertent nurturing of offense are now more pressing, given the identity–political character of contemporary offense-based social conflicts, and I discuss why a reluctance to legally regulate offensive conduct need not be insensitive to the identity–political issues that animate those conflicts. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive study of the nature and significance of offense and offensiveness. It incorporates insights from moral philosophy and moral psychology to rationally reconstruct our ordinary ideas and assumptions about these notions. -/- When someone claims that something is offensive, others are supposed to listen. Why? What is it for something to be offensive? Likewise, it’s supposed to matter if someone claims to have been offended. Is this correct? In this book, Andrew Sneddon argues that we (...) should think of offense as a moralized bad feeling. He explains offensiveness in terms of symbolic value. We tend to give claims of both offense and offensiveness more credence than they deserve. While it is in principle possible for there to be genuine moral problems of offense and offensiveness, we should expect such problems to be rare. -/- Offense and Offensiveness: A Philosophical Account will be of interest to scholars and students working in moral philosophy and moral psychology. (shrink)

This essay considers and rejects both the irrationalist and the supra-rationalist interpretations of Kierkegaard, arguing that a new category---Kierkegaard as “anti-rationalist”---is needed. The irrationalist reading overemphasizes the subjectivism of Kierkegaard’s thought, while the suprarationalist reading underemphasizes the degree of tension between human reason (as corrupted by the will’s desire to be autonomous and self-sustaining) and Christian faith. An anti-rationalist reading, I argue, is both faithful to Kierkegaard’s metaphysical and alethiological realism, on the one hand, and his emphasis on the continuing (...) opposition between reason and faith, on the other, as manifested in the ongoing possibility of offense (reason’s rejection of the Christian message) in the life of the Christian. (shrink)

This chapter examines one intuitively appealing legal practice for which retributivist accounts struggle to find justification: multiple-offense sentencing discounts. It also considers several proposed strategies for justifying bulk discounts on the basis of retributivism. Three strategies are discussed: those that appeal to an absolute punishment maximum, those that appeal to interpersonal practices of blame and making amends, and those that suggest that perpetrators of multiple offenses sometimes have reduced culpability. The chapter argues that each of these strategies either is (...) implausible as a ground for bulk-sentencing discounts or is plausible only insofar as it incorporates nonretributivist considerations into its account — thus is in fact a hybrid view. It concludes by looking at hybrid theories as an alternative, suggesting that such approaches not only can provide justification for bulk-sentencing discounts, but are also more plausible in general than is generally assumed. (shrink)

According to the offense principle, the fact that wrongs are offensive makes them eligible for criminalization. Section “Introduction” unpacks this principle. Section “Offense and Offensiveness” discusses what it is for X to be offensive. Section “Offensiveness and Criminalization” argues that, whether we interpret offensiveness subjectively or objectively, the offense principle is not a sound principle. The fact that a wrong is objectively offensive does not bear on whether it should be criminalized. The fact that a wrong is (...) subjectively offensive is no reason to tackle it using the criminal law. Section “The Value of Offense” considers the conditions under which offense has value. It argues that, under some conditions, the fact that X is subjectively offensive counts against criminalizing X, while the fact that X is not subjectively offensive counts in favor of criminalization. Feinberg’s version of the offense principle—which holds that subjective offensiveness gives us reason to criminalize—is something close to the opposite of the truth. (shrink)

With its provocative title, Blumenthal-Barby’s (2024) Target Article is an important addition to the critical work on using ‘personhood’ in bioethics. I suggest it bears on any philosophical discus...

We are all familiar with claims about being offended. There is reason to think that taking offense is particularly characteristic of the moral psychology of our times. When someone claims offense, others are supposed to take notice. This suffices to make offense a topic of philosophical and practical interest. However, we lack a persuasive account of the nature of offense. The present partial theory of offense portrays typical offense experiences as negative feelings interpreted as (...) responses to something offensive. (shrink)

Potential military applications of nanotechnology will evolve in the next few decades. The implications for both defense and offense should be carefully assessed. Nanotechnology can push major changes in stability, and shape the consequences of future conflict.

The feeling of being offended, as a moral emotion, plays a key role in issues such as slurs, the offense principle, ethics of humor, etc. However, no adequate theory of offense has been developed in the literature, and it remains unclear what questions such a theory should answer. This paper attempts to fill the gap by performing two tasks. The first task is to clarify and summarize the questions of offense into two kinds, the descriptive questions (e.g., (...) what features differentiate offense from similar moral states like anger?) and the normative questions (e.g., what are the conditions for taking offense to be apt?). The second task is to answer these questions by developing what I call ‘the violated norm theory of offense’. According to this theory, feeling offended entails that the norm one endorses is judged to be violated by the offender. Appealing to the violated norm enables this theory to answer the descriptive questions (e.g., taking offense differs from anger because of features like not requiring victims and the difficulty of animal offense) and the normative questions of offense (e.g., taking offense is apt only if the violated norm is universalizable). (shrink)

A microaggression is a small insulting act made disproportionately harmful by its part in an oppressive pattern of similar insults. How should you respond when made the victim of a microaggression? In this paper I survey several morally salient factors, including effects upon victims, perpetrators, and third parties. I argue, contrary to popular views, that ‘growing a thicker skin’ is not good advice nor is expressing reasonable anger always the best way to contribute to confronting oppression. Instead, appropriately responding to (...) microaggression involves difficult application of practical wisdom that does not easily fall under a simple prescription. (shrink)

An analytic investigation of Antioch's "Sexual Offense Policy.".

There is growing recognition of the need to understand societal impacts of nanotechnology. Global interest in nanotechnology implies many nations will see a need to seek out advantages for military use. Militarization will inevitably include consideration of both offensive and defensive goals. This presents emerging implications for military forces in the near future, and will greatly influence the nature of warfare and peacekeeping in the distant future. The development of nanotechnology creates possibilities for both beneficial opportunities and adverse consequences as (...) a result of application to the military strategies of both large and small nations.The promise of nanotechnology for military and security roles derives from several innate characteristics. For example, further improvements in sensors are expected and already there are numerous reports of successful developments in research and development. Material properties can be tailored on a fine scale through nanomachining, scanning force microscopy, molecular self-assembly, and other techniques. (shrink)

Taboo terms offer a playground for linguistic creativity in language after language, and sign languages form no exception. The present paper offers the first investigation of taboo terms in sign languages from a cognitive linguistic perspective. We analyze the linguistic mechanisms that introduce offense, focusing on the combined effects of cognitive metonymy and iconicity. Using the Think Aloud Protocol, we elicited offensive or crass signs and dysphemisms from nine signers. We find that German Sign Language uses a variety of (...) linguistic means to introduce and enhance offense, many of which rely on iconic properties of the taboo sign. In conjunction with cross-linguistically common metonymic word-formation strategies, the degree of visual explicitness of a sign increases its potential to offend. Semantically similar taboo signs based on the same metonymic anchor but differing in their degree of iconicity also differ in offensiveness. This allows for creating dysphemisms and euphemisms via phonological changes to a sign. We further show that embodiment creates modality-enhanced ‘vicarious embarrassment’ in the viewer that results in the respective signs being judged obscene or offensive. Further, lexical blending and non-manual enhancement play a role in the creation of dysphemisms in DGS. Lastly, we propose that iconicity as a cognitive structuring principle of linguistic expressions constrains the possible semantic extensions of iconic taboo terms. (shrink)

A popular view in philosophy of science contends that scientific reasoning is objective to the extent that the appraisal of scientific hypotheses is not influenced by moral, political, economic, or social values, but only by the available evidence. A large body of results in the psychology of motivated-reasoning has put pressure on the empirical adequacy of this view. The present study extends this body of results by providing direct evidence that the moral offensiveness of a scientific hypothesis biases explanatory judgment (...) along several dimensions, even when prior credence in the hypothesis is controlled for. Furthermore, it is shown that this bias is insensitive to an economic incentive to be accurate in the evaluation of the evidence. These results contribute to call into question the attainability of the ideal of a value-free science. (shrink)

Offense to Others, the second in Joel Feinberg's four volume series The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, provides the most extensive discussion to date of the problem of offensive conduct. Much that is here has been presented before in various places, which is not surprising as Feinberg has written as much, if not more on this subject than anyone else. But much that is here is new, and goes beyond just the discussion of whether the so called (...) class='Hi'>offense principle is a legitimate basis for legislation. (shrink)

This is my reply essay (1000 words) to Travis Timmerman's "A Case for Removing Confederate Monuments" in Bob Fisher's _Ethics, Left and Right: The Moral Issues That Divide Us_ volume (2020). In it, I explain why I think the mere harm from the racial offense a monument may cause does not justify removing it.

This paper explores the Offence Principle. It discusses whether two constraints, additional to the criteria stated in conventional analysis, ought to be met before the Offense Principle can be satisfied: (i) that offensive conduct must be a wrong, and (ii) that the conduct must also lead to harm. The nature of the Harm Principle, and its relationship to the Offense Principle, are also considered. The paper suggests that, even if all cases in which offense should be criminalized (...) also involve harm, nonetheless there may be good reasons to retain a separate Offense Principle. (shrink)

In Christ the Heart of Creation, Rowan Williams argues that Christology as expounded by the classical tradition in Western theology holds a bounty for thinking in Christian ontology about the God-world relation. In particular, he uses the work of Søren Kierkegaard throughout to show that the relation between finite and infinite, immanent and transcendent, is not competitive, and thus there need be no metaphysical problem when holding that the incarnate God-man is both fully human and divine. This essay argues, however, (...) that Kierkegaard’s own pseudonymous work cited by Williams holds the incarnation to be far more paradoxical and intellectually offensive than Williams allows. However, such priority of offense does not put an end to Christ’s central ontological position but rather shifts it to new directions in our thinking about theological ontology. Rather than Williams’ own conception of a cosmos in which the divine and non-divine are compatible and harmonious, Kierkegaard presents a doctrine of existence in which God and the human are in constant, dynamic engagement and in which temporal being bears ultimate primacy for Christian existence. (shrink)

Torture porn has been vilified on grounds that are at best unconvincing and at worst incoherent. The subgenre’s remonstrators too often ignore the content of the films themselves, and fail to make sufficiently detailed connections between the subgenre and the cultural sphere. Reactions to torture porn rarely consider what values the films apparently contravene, and why, if the films are offensive, they are simultaneously so popular. The central derisive mechanism in operation is the ill-conceived combination of ‘torture’ and ‘porn’ itself. (...) The use of ‘porn’ as a label works to illegitimate torture porn and demand that body-horror retreat to its more ‘fitting’ position on the outskirts of the cultural radar. However, this approach is too busy pointing at violence, and fails to deal with the fact that sex is displaced. If violence is now pornographic, it is unclear what position sexual portrayals occupy, or whether they are still perceived as more offensive than violent representations. Furthermore, it is uncertain how we are to describe sexual images if that is the case, since the lexicon of offense has been waylaid. Torture porn’s critics commonly fail to account for the new context of ‘porn plus horror’, and what that combination says about visual representation and its limits. This chapter is a step towards rectifying that oversight. (shrink)

Recent arguments trying to justify further free speech restrictions by appealing to harms that are allegedly serious enough to warrant such restrictions regularly fail to provide sufficient empirical evidence and normative argument. This is also true for the attempt made by Bonotti and Seglow. They offer no valid argument for their claim that it is wrong to direct “religiously offensive speech” at “unjustly disadvantaged” minorities (thereby allegedly undermining their “self-respect”), nor for their further claim that this is not the case (...) when such speech is directed at “established majorities.” Moreover, their account has either counter-intuitive moral implications or succumbs to logical or pragmatic incoherence. Thus, they have not adduced convincing reasons to further restrict speech. In fact, some of the reasons for this failure provide, in turn, positive reasons in support of free speech. Two important (not new, but newly confirmed) reasons are that restricting free speech undermines both equal civic standing as well as fact-guided (as opposed to blindly ideological) policies. Free speech, in contrast, is indispensable for both. (shrink)

Review of Hazard Adams, The Offense of Poetry. For the Comparative Literature Edition of MLN (2009).

The article shows the “Appendix” to Søren Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments to be a response to Ludwig Feuerbach’s critique of Christianity. While previous studies have detected some influence by Feuerbach on Kierkegaard, they have so far discovered little in the way of specific responses to Feuerbach’s ideas in Kierkegaard’s published works. The article first makes the historical argument that Kierkegaard was very likely reading Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity while he was writing Philosophical Fragments, as several of Kierkegaard’s journal entries from that (...) period discuss Feuerbach in relation to central ideas in Fragments. The article then shows how Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes Climacus inverts Feuerbach’s projection theory, turning it against critics like Feuerbach. At the heart of Feuerbach’s critique of Christianity is the claim that religion is a conceptual illusion, whereby the individual projects his or her personal limits onto the species and then projects the unlimited onto a supposed divine being. Furthermore, Feuerbach sees Christianity as rife with absurdities that tell against its reasonableness. In exploring a hypothetical transcendent avenue toward the truth, Climacus inverts both of these philosophical moves. He argues that on the transcendent hypothesis, the immanentist critic is himself a victim of an “acoustical illusion”: the absolute paradox of the appearance of the god in time is in fact not judged by, but rather judges, the critic as absurd. In inverting and not repudiating Feuerbach’s critique, Climacus reveals the critic as a Socratic figure who displays the heights—and ultimately, the limits—of secular philosophy’s capabilities. (shrink)

The second volume in Joel Feinberg's series The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, Offense to Others focuses on the "offense principle," which maintains that preventing shock, disgust, or revulsion is always a morally relevant reason for legal prohibitions. Feinberg clarifies the concept of an "offended mental state" and further contrasts the concept of offense with harm. He also considers the law of nuisance as a model for statutes creating "morals offenses," showing its inadequacy as a model (...) for understanding "profound offenses," and discusses such issues as obscene words and social policy, pornography and the Constitution, and the differences between minor and profound offenses. (shrink)

Fred S. Berlin, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine --Book Jacket.

Unabridged dictionaries are dangerous books. In their pages man’s evilest thoughts find means of expression. Terms denoting all that is foul or blasphemous or obscene are printed there for men, women and children to read and ponder. Such books should have their covers padlocked and be chained to reading desks, in the custody of responsible librarians, preferably church members in good standing. Permission to open such books should be granted only after careful inquiry as to which word a reader plans (...) to look up, and how he plans to use it. (shrink)

Urban sprawl and aggressive driving are two problems that afflict many of America’s major cities. The two affect Atlanta to a notoriously high degree. The two problems are connected. Aggressive driving is not so much a symptom of “road rage” as it is an attempt to communicate with slower drivers. The aggressive driver tailgates other drivers with the intention of letting them know that they are impeding the flow of faster traffic. Aggressive drivers are engaged in what “New Chicago School” (...) legal theory calls “norm seeding.” These drivers are trying to get others to conform to a different norm than what the posted speed limit dictates. The posted speed limit, which is the legal norm, reflects legislative judgments based on concerns of safety and fuel economy. The higher, informal, speed limit reflects something else: the impatience many drivers feel as they drive larger distances and spend correspondingly greater amounts of time in traffic. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Human DNA as Cultural Property The Genetic Appropriation of Culture Community Identity, Cultural Offense and Control of Genetic Information Conclusion References.

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Moral violation often takes the form of material harm, which might lead us to suppose that it consists essentially in the harm done. And yet we might suffer the same harm through nature or accident without feeling morally offended. If a hurricane destroys my property, I suffer harm but no offense. If another person deliberately damages my property, I am offended. But why? Wherein lies the difference? My essay employs Arthur Schopenhauer’s ethic of egoism and Paul Tillich’s theology of (...) love to explore the ontological basis of moral offense. I argue that moral offense has its roots, not in a concern for material well-being, but in a fundamental drive for Unity, unity with others and with our own ontological ground. This drive is both conditioned by, and frustrated by, our ontological separateness as individual beings. (shrink)

The internalist-externalist debate about semantic and mental contents concerns whether the contents of certain claims and beliefs depend on facts external to the people having those beliefs or not. However, rather than just join up with either side, I argue for re-casting the debate so as to allow for hybrid internalist-externalist views, on the grounds that such views can help explain certain phenomena associated with slurs and pejoratives. If the debate can indeed be recast in this way and if hybrid (...) views offer significant explanatory power, then they deserve further exploration. (shrink)

In a now classic paper, Karen Carr argues that Kierkegaard is a religious “anti-rationalist”: He holds that reason and religious truth exist in necessary tension with one another. Carr maintains that this antagonism is not a matter of the logical incoherence of Christianity, but rather the fact that genuine submission to Christ precludes approaching him through demonstration. In this essay, we argue that while Kierkegaard is in fact an anti-rationalist, the literature has failed to appreciate the full strength of his (...) position. It is not just that reason and obedience are in tension; rather, Kierkegaard holds the stronger view that reason is actively offended by Christianity’s primary claims. Not only is reason incapable of generating any positive evidence for the truth of Christianity, more radically, it provides evidence against it. In order to make this case, we offer a close reading of Practice in Christianity, developing a typology of Kierkegaard’s account of Christ’s “offense.” Finally, having motivated Kierkegaard’s strong anti-rationalism, we consider why, on his account, anyone would want to be a Christian. (shrink)