The Unique Badness of Hypocritical Blame

Abstract

It is widely agreed that hypocrisy can undermine one's moral standing to blame. According to the Nonhypocrisy Condition on standing, R has the standing to blame some other agent S for a violation of some norm N only if R is not hypocritical with respect to blame for violations of N. Yet this condition is seldom argued for. Macalester Bell points out that the fact that hypocrisy is a moral fault does not yet explain why hypocritical blame is standingless blame. She raises a challenge: one must explain what is distinct about hypocritical blame such that the hypocritical blamer lacks the standing to blame, even if the arrogant or petty blamer does not. Of those writing on hypocrisy, only we offer a direct response to Bell's challenge. Recently, however, our account has come under criticism. We argue here that (1) our account can handle these criticisms and that (2) no other rival account adequately addresses Bell's challenge of explaining what is uniquely objectionable about hypocritical blame. Because answering Bell's challenge is a necessary component of any plausible account of the relationship between hypocrisy and standing, our account remains the best on offer.

Two Problems of Self-Blame for Accounts of Moral Standing

“…We go further, claiming that the moral equality of persons grounds the right to blame, and that in rejecting the former, one forfeits the latter. Since the standing to blame is equivalent to the (undefeated) right to blame, in rejecting the moral equality of persons through their differential disposition to blame, the hypocritical blamer forfeits the right to blame others for violations of the relevant norm (Fritz & Miller 2018;2019a). Other variations could undoubtedly be developed that explain how the hypocrite violates or rejects the moral equality of persons and why this results in loss of standing, but these two accounts have garnered the most attention for ME.…”

“…1 Two established accounts offer different explanations for this fact. The moral equality account (ME) maintains that hypocrites lack the standing to blame for relevantly similar faults in virtue of the fact that their hypocrisy involves a violation or implicit rejection of the moral equality of persons (Wallace 2010;Fritz & Miller 2018;2019a;2019b). 2 The taking norms seriously account (TNS), on the other hand, maintains that hypocrites lack the standing to blame because they fail to be sufficiently committed to the norms they blame others for violating (Rossi 2018;Todd 2019;Riedener 2019;Lippert-Rasmussen 2020).…”

“…2. Elsewhere, we have referred to ME as the "Equality of Persons view" (Fritz & Miller 2019a), but here we follow Lippert-Rasmussen (2020) and Tierney (2021) in their naming convention.…”

Hypercrisy and standing to self-blame

“…However, see Piovarchy (forthcoming) for a discussion of the different uses of standing in the literature. 2 For competing accounts, seeCohen 2013, Fritz & Miller 2018, 2019a, 2019b, Isserow & Klein 2017, Piovarchy forthcoming, Rossi 2018, Scanlon 2008, Todd 2019and Wallace 2010. And, for criticism of the claim that hypocrites lack standing, seeBell 2013 andKing 2019.…”

A Second-Personal Solution to the Paradox of Moral Complaint

“…Though it's up for debate what constitutes sufficient motivation, as some (e.g Fritz and Miller 2019). have noted regarding Todd's (2019) account.…”