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The Journal of Value Inquiry

01.09.2009

The Logic of Excuses and the Rationality of Emotions

verfasst von: John Gardner

Erschienen in: The Journal of Value Inquiry | Ausgabe 3/2009

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Sometimes emotions excuse. Fear and anger, for example, sometimes excuse under the headings of, respectively, duress and provocation. Although most legal systems draw the line at this point, the list of potentially excusatory emotions outside the law seems to be longer. We can readily imagine cases in which, for example, grief or despair could be cited as part of a case for relaxing or even eliminating our negative verdicts on people who performed admittedly unjustified wrongs. The availability of such excuses depends on what wrong we are trying to excuse. No excuse is available in respect of all wrongs. Some wrongs, indeed, are inexcusable. This throws up the interesting question of what makes a particular emotion apt to excuse a particular wrong. Why is fear, for example, more apt to excuse more serious wrongs than, say, pride or shame? This question leads naturally to another. Why are some emotions, such as lust, greed, and envy, apparently not apt to furnish any excuses at all? One possibility is that we cannot be overcome by them, that they cannot drive us to wrongdoing as readily as fear and grief. Another possibility is that, although lust, greed, and envy are no less powerful than their potentially excusatory counterparts, they are less defensible. …

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See Dan Kahan and Martha Nussbaum in “Two Conceptions of Emotion in Criminal Law,” Columbia Law Review 96 (1996) p. 269.

See J.L. Austin, “A Plea for Excuses,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 57 (1956); see also H.L.A. Hart, “Legal Responsibility and Excuses” in Sidney Hook, ed., Determinism and Freedom in the Age of Modern Science (New York: University Institute of Philosophy, 1958).

See John Gardner “The Gist of Excuses” and “The Mark of Responsibility,” in Offences and Defences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

See Peter Westen, “An Attitudinal Theory of Excuse,” Law and Philosophy 25 (2006), pp. 348–350, and John Gardner “Reply to Critics,” in op. cit., pp. 256–258.

See John Gardner, “In Defence of Defences” and “Justifications and Reasons,” in Gardner, op. cit.

See Cynthia Lee, Murder and the Reasonable Man (New York: New York University Press, 2003), esp. ch. 10.

Robert Adams, “Motive Utilitarianism,” Journal of Philosophy 73 (1976), pp. 470–471.

Cf. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 27–28, 505.

See Fred Feldman, “On the Consistency of Act- and Motive-Utilitarianism: a Reply to Robert Adams,” Philosophical Studies 70 (1993); see also Bart Gruzalski, “Parfit’s Impact on Utilitarianism,” Ethics 96 (1986).

See O.H. Green, “Is Love an Emotion?” in Roger Lamb, ed., Love Analyzed (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997); see also George Pitcher, “Emotion,” Mind 74 (1965), and D.W. Hamlyn, “The Phenomena of Love and Hate,” Philosophy 53 (1978).

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. W.D. Ross, rev. J.L. Ackrill and J.O. Urmson (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1980), bk. II, s. 5,1105b21ff.

See Robert Gordon, The Structure of Emotions (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

See Gabrielle Taylor, “Love,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 76 (1976), pp. 147–148.

See Ronald De Sousa, The Rationality of Emotions (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987), p. 122.

See Bernard Williams, “Persons, Character, and Morality,” in Amelie Rorty, ed., The Identities of Persons (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1976), p. 214.

See Joseph Raz, “Respect for Law,” in The Authority of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979).

Cf. Samuel Pillsbury, “Emotional Justice: Moralizing the Passions of Criminal Punishment,” Cornell Law Review 74 (1988); see also Jeffrie Murphy and Jean Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1988), and John Gardner, “Crime: in Proportion and in Perspective” in Gardner, op. cit.

See Richard Holton, “How is Strength of Will Possible” in Sarah Stroud and Christine Tappolet, eds., Weakness of Will and Practical Irrationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 55–56.

Aristotle, Rhetoric, in Lane Cooper, trans., The Rhetoric of Aristotle (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1932), bk. II, s, 2, 1378a20.

Mark Platts, Ways of Meaning (London: Routledge, 1979), p. 257.

Ibid.

Cf. John Broome, “Normative Requirements,” Ratio 12 (1999).

See Elizabeth Anscombe, Intention (Oxford: Blackwell, 1957), p. 56; see also I.L. Humberstone, “Direction of Fit,” Mind 101 (1992).

See Joseph Raz, “Reasons: Practical and Adaptive” in David Sobel and Stephen Wall, eds., Reasons for Action (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press), forthcoming.

See Bernard Williams, “Deciding to Believe,” in Problems of the Self (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 136.

Cf. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 3.

Cf. Ronald de Sousa, “Emotional Truth,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 76 (2002); see also Mikko Salmela, “True Emotions,” Philosophical Quarterly 56 (2006), and Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 46.

Michel Vaucaire and Charles Dumont, “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” (1956), Piaf rec. 1961.

See Williams, “Deciding to Believe,” op. cit., pp. 147–151.

Cf. John Gardner and Timothy Macklem, “Reasons,” in Jules Coleman and Scott Shapiro, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

See Williams, “Morality and the Emotions,” in Williams, op. cit., pp. 223–224.

See John Gardner, “Introduction” in H.L.A. Hart, Punishment and Responsibility 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. xiii–xvii.

See Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson, “The Moralistic Fallacy: On the ‘Appropriateness’ of Emotions,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (2000), pp. 82–83.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. II, s. 6, 1106b16-24.

See Michael Stocker, Valuing Emotions (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 169.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. III, s. 5, 1114a4-10.

See Gardner, “The Gist of Excuses,” in Gardner, op. cit.

David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature 2nd ed., ed. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 415.

Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge, England, Cambridge 1996), p. 204.

Ibid, p. 216.

See Kahan and Nussbaum, op. cit., p. 280.

See Gordon, op. cit., pp. 110–121.

Kant, 1784-1785 Lectures on Anthropology, transcribed Mrongovius, qtd. Maria Borges in “Kant on Sympathy and Moral Motives,” Ethic@ 1 (2002).

See Irving Singer, The Nature of Love: Plato to Luther 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 15–16.

This article was written while I was on leave at Princeton University in Spring 2008 and at the Australian National University in Summer 2008. I would like to thank colleagues and students at both institutions for helpful criticisms and suggestions.

Titel: The Logic of Excuses and the Rationality of Emotions
verfasst von: John Gardner
Publikationsdatum: 01.09.2009
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: The Journal of Value Inquiry / Ausgabe 3/2009
Print ISSN: 0022-5363
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-0492
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-009-9181-9

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