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Virtues of Resentment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Rae Langton
Rae Langton
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Abstract

On a consequentialist account of virtue, a trait is virtuous if it has good consequences, vicious if it has bad. Clumsiness and dimness are therefore vices. Should I resent the clumsy and the dim? ‘Yes’, says the consequentialist, counterintuitively - at any rate, Yes’ on an accuracy measure of resentment's virtue: resentment should be an accurate response to consequentialist vice, and these are vices. On a usefulness measure of resentment's virtue, the answer may be different: whether resentment is virtuous depends on whether resentment itself is useful. Equally counterintuitive, this answer divorces resentment from assessment of vice. Consequentialism is thus mistaken not only about when resentment is virtuous, but about what resentment is. Moreover it alienates the philosopher, for whom accuracy applies, from the agent, for whom usefulness applies. But abandoning this double standard would mean giving up philosophy.

Type
Character and Consequentialism
Information
Utilitas , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , July 2001 , pp. 255 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2001

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References

1 Hume, David, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A., revNidditch, P. H., Oxford, 1975, p. 279Google Scholar; Driver, Julia, ‘Virtues and Human Nature’, How Should One Live?, ed. Crisp, Roger, Oxford, 1986Google Scholar; Uneasy Virtue, Cambridge, 2001Google Scholar. Uneasy Virtue was the recent subject of an Edinburgh reading group, from which this paper (and its author) considerably benefited; thanks are due to Julia Driver both for making her work available, and for useful comments on earlier drafts. For other comments I owe thanks to Richard Holton. Elizabeth Ashford's paper, ‘Utilitarianism with a Humean Face’ (forthcoming), I found helpful; and Roger Crisp's ‘Modern Moral Philosophy and the Virtues’, How Should One Live?.

2 I don't do justice here to a vast and relevant literature, but see Railton, Peter, ‘Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, xiii (1984)Google Scholar, repr. Consequentialism and its Critics, ed. Samuel Scheffler, Oxford, 1988; and on one way of making a distinction between objective and subjective approaches to virtue (‘actualist’ vs. ‘expectabilist’), Slote, Michael, From Morality to Virtue, New York, 1992Google Scholar.

3 My discussion of reactive attitudes draws of course upon Strawson, P. F., ‘Freedom and Resentment’, Freedom and Resentment, London, 1974Google Scholar; and also on Korsgaard, Christine, ‘Creating the Kingdom of Ends: Responsibility and Reciprocity in Personal Relations’, Philosophical Perspectives 6: Ethics, ed. Tomberlin, James, Atascadero, CA, 1992Google Scholar; I discuss them further in ‘Duty and Desolation’, Philosophy, lxvii (1992)Google Scholar. I have also learnt from Christopher Bennett, whose work on the retributive aspect of reactive attitudes emphasizes the painfulness of such attitudes to all parties (‘Some Varieties of Retributive Experience’, Philosophical Quarterly, forthcoming).

4 A parallel for the objective consequentialist would be a case where resentment is inappropriate on the accuracy measure, but appropriate on the usefulness measure: suppose Kate were to have a harmless, even mildly virtuous, habit of giving me small presents; but if I were to resent this habit, she would spend the money more usefully on aid to the hungry. This is a version of consequentialism's traditional problem about punishing the innocent when it is useful.

5 See, e.g., Railton; Stocker, Michael, ‘The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories’, Journal of Philosophy, lxxiii (1976)Google Scholar.