Agnès Baehni

In this article, I try to resolve a contradiction arising from the combination of two theses: (1) self‐forgiveness is sometimes morally justified and (2) only victims can rightly forgive. As has been pointed out by other philosophers, both are plausible, but the two taken together are inconsistent. In the literature, self‐forgiveness is painted as an “imperfect” form of forgiveness or as a “second‐best option” because it entails a violation of the victim‘s prerogative to forgive. So far, this view has not directly been challenged. Instead, philosophers have focused on the task of giving a plausible account of self‐forgiveness while leaving the claim according to which forgiveness is among the victim‘s prerogative unchallenged. In this paper, I argue that self‐forgiveness is largely independent from the victim‘s forgiveness both morally and conceptually.

This paper offers a positive account of moral duties to past-selves, based on two plausible beliefs, (1) we have moral duties toward persons who are no longer present; and (2) we have moral duties toward ourselves. Specifically, our inquiry centers on moral duties toward our past-selves. We begin by addressing various objections challenging the viability of such duties and subsequently present three arguments supporting their plausibility. These arguments draw from hypothetical time-travel scenarios and the arbitrary exclusion of past-selves from the moral framework. In conclusion, we argue that recognizing moral duties to our past-selves is paradoxically crucial for combating moral egocentrism in its temporal dimension.

The functionalist approach to blame seeks to tell us what blame is by looking at what blame does. This approach is promising as it seems important to know what we are doing when we are blaming. However, a challenge arises from the inadequacy of existing views in addressing self-blame. In this paper, I first show how self-blame cannot be accurately understood on existing functionalist accounts of blame. Then, I suggest a remedy to this problem by arguing that the point of self-blame is not to protest a wrongdoing, to communicate one’s disapproval, to instill remorse in the wrongdoer or to signal one’s commitment to moral norms, but rather to commit oneself, morally and psychologically, to acting differently in the future. In essence, I will contend that self-blame bears close resemblance to the concept of self-promise.

Un parallèle est fréquemment établi entre le blâme de soi et le blâme d'autrui. Cet article cherche à montrer que celui-ci est infondé et que le blâme de soi et le blâme d’autrui ne sont que superficiellement analogues. Pour ce faire, nous montrerons qu’aucun des rapprochements défendus dans la littérature contemporaine n’est concluant. Nous commencerons par distinguer la phénoménologie du blâme de soi de celle du blâme d’autrui. Dans un second temps, nous distinguerons la fonction du blâme de soi de celle du blâme d’autrui. Finalement, nous montrerons que le blâme de soi est moralement acceptable dans des cas où le blâme d’autrui est interdit. À travers cette discussion, nous espérons montrer que le blâme de soi est une attitude fondamentalement différente du blâme d’autrui et qu’il mérite notre attention en tant que phénomène distinct. A parallel is often drawn between self-blame and interpersonal blame. This article seeks to show that this parallel is unfounded and that self-blame and interpersonal blame are only superficially analogous. To this end, we will show that none of the comparisons defended in contemporary literature is conclusive. We will begin by distinguishing the phenomenology of self-blame from that of interpersonal blame. Second, we will distinguish the function of self-blame from that of interpersonal blame. Finally, we will show that self-blame is morally permissible in cases where interpersonal blame is prohibited. With this discussion, we hope to show that self-blame is a fundamentally different attitude from interpersonal blame and that it deserves our attention as a distinct phenomenon.

This paper seeks to determine the extent to which individuals with borderline personality disorders can be held morally responsible for a particular subset of their actions: disproportionate anger, aggressions and displays of temper. The rationale for focusing on these aspects lies in their widespread acknowledgment in the literature and their plausible primary association with blame directed at BPD patients. BPD individuals are indeed typically perceived as “difficult patients” (Sulzer 2015:82; Bodner et al. 2011), significantly more so than schizophrenic or depressive patients (Markam 2003). The “responsibility question” for patients with BPD has already been raised (Martin 2010; Zachar and Potter 2009; Bray 2003), but this paper tackles it from a novel perspective. First, I narrow down the category of things for which the responsibility question is specific to individual with BPD. After that, I argue that some of the diagnosis criteria of BPD such as emotional instability or impulsivity might serve as excusing factors targeting the “control condition” on moral responsibility. Second, this paper also considers another widely accepted condition on moral responsibility: the epistemic condition. The view defended in the paper is that the answer to the responsibility question for individuals with BPD, concerning both the control condition and the epistemic condition, hinges on an understanding of their epistemic profile.

Paul Schofield’s Duty to Self (2021) is an excellent contribution to recent moral philosophy. It is a much-needed addition to a literature that has, up until now, largely ignored the possibility of reflexive moral relationships. Thorough and challenging, the book is an indispensable read for students and scholars with an interest in ethics, metaethics and political philosophy. In this review, I outline what I perceive to be the book’s main contributions and discuss some areas of concern about Schofield’s innovative framework.

In this article, I try to resolve a contradiction arising from the combination of two theses: (1) self‐forgiveness is sometimes morally justified and (2) only victims can rightly forgive. As has been pointed out by other philosophers, both are plausible, but the two taken together are inconsistent. In the literature, self‐forgiveness is painted as an “imperfect” form of forgiveness or as a “second‐best option” because it entails a violation of the victim‘s prerogative to forgive. So far, this view has not directly been challenged. Instead, philosophers have focused on the task of giving a plausible account of self‐forgiveness while leaving the claim according to which forgiveness is among the victim‘s prerogative unchallenged. In this paper, I argue that self‐forgiveness is largely independent from the victim‘s forgiveness both morally and conceptually.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an answer to the following question: should we blame ourselves more than we blame others, like some of Taylor’s song such as High Infidelity, Would’ve, Could’ve Should’ve, Afterglow or Anti-Hero seem to suggest? In order to settle this question, I discuss an asymmetry in our intuitions about the ethics of self-blame and other-blame. The asymmetry is this: for a given wrongdoing, let us say arriving late to a concert, it often seems morally appropriate for an agent to blame herself more than it would be morally appropriate for others to blame her.

The role that the first-person perspective is allowed to play in moral reasoning is a major source of contemporary debate between partialists and impartialists. The discussion usually revolves around the question of partiality’s justification when it is intended to benefit our loved ones. Surprisingly, the issue of partiality to oneself is rarely addressed directly and its link with egoism is left unexplored. This is a gap that this paper attempts to fill by focusing on some of the difficulties raised by the idea of justified partiality to oneself.