Topics Ethics

Question Two questions: (1) When, if ever, could the fact that I commit a wrong against another person make it the case that I have less of a right to feel morally indignant if that same person commits a wrong against me at a later time? (Assume that the wrong that she commits against me is unrelated to the prior wrong I committed against her (e.g. she did not wrong me out of revenge for my wronging her).) (2) More generally, could the fact that I have committed wrongs in the past ever make it the case that I have less of a right to feel morally indignant at the wrongs performed against me by other people generally (not just the victims of my wrongs)?

Accepted:
July 30, 2007

Comments

I'm a little uncomfortable with the idea of a "right to feel indignant" and a right that varies in magnitude. So can we just repharase this in terms of it being more or less appropriate for you to feel indignant?

The issues you raise are very important. They play a large if poorly understood role in ordinary moral thinking and they are almost entirely neglected by philosophers.

In response to your first question, I would say: almost always. When you have never wronged the person who is now wronging you, then you can express this fact in your indignation: "What have I ever done to you that you are treating me this way?" That you are able to say this makes your indignation more appropriate and its expression more forceful. When you are unable to say it, your indignation is correspondingly less compelling than it would otherwise be. The only possible exceptions I can see are cases where the present wrong she commits against you is way out of proportion to the wrong you committed against her. You once took the parking spot she was waiting for and she shoots you in the shoulder a year later, say. But even in this case, I am tempted to say, your very appropriate indignation would have been even (slightly) more appropriate if you had never wronged her at all.

I would give the same response to your second question, albeit with less confidence. The awareness that you have wronged others should always temper your indignation at least slightly, and perhaps greatly when your own wrongs are proximate and similar in character and magnitude (as when a big guy beats you up for no reason after you've just done the same to a smaller one -- here your indignation would look pretty ridiculous). As we imagine your own wrongs further back in the distant past, more different in character, and ever smaller in comparison, the effect shrinks to next to nothing. (The fact that, at age 12, you once stole another pupil's chewing gum has no discernable bearing on the indignation you may appropriately feel in response to the thug who is now assaulting you.) The question whether this effect is zero or extremely small can perhaps be set aside as purely academic.

Let me briefly flag, however, three very interesting and difficult related questions: (1*) (When) does the fact that you have wrongfully harmed her in the past make it less wrong for her to harm you now? (2*a) (When) does the fact that you have wrongfully harmed her in the past make it less wrong for her to harm third parties now? (2*b) (When) does the fact that you have wrongfully harmed her in the past make it less wrong for third parties to harm you now? I have discussed these issues a bit under the label of a "sucker exemption." But I am convinced that additional philosophical reflection could develop them much further and that such reflection would also illuminate an important aspect of ordinary moral thought and feeling.