Daniel Vanello

The aim of this article is to articulate and defend the intuition that the experience of being morally wronged affords one a distinctive understanding of the moral wrongness of what one experiences. In section 1, I clarify and motivate this claim. In section 2, I articulate the distinctive kind of understanding of moral wrongness that I argue is afforded to those who experience being morally wronged. In section 3, I spell out the epistemic ability that is acquired and exercised in the generation of the relevant understanding of moral wrongness. In section 4, I respond to the objection that understanding what it is like to be wronged in the relevant way does not provide one with an understanding that goes beyond the experience itself to the objective wrong-making features of the experienced event. In section 5, I articulate what I call the educational role of the experience of being wronged by showing how the epistemic ability afforded to those who have experienced being wronged in the relevant way can be used to develop morally relevant epistemic abilities in those who have not undergone the relevant experience. Section 6 concludes by drawing the implications of my account for the responsibility of acquiring an understanding of the relevant moral wrongs for those who do not undergo the relevant experiences.

Moral identity theorists argue that moral action is explained by the centrality of moral values to a person’s identity. Moral identity theorists refer to moral integration as both the process by which moral values become central to a person’s identity and the state an individual is in when a given moral value is central to their identity. While moral identity theorists appeal to autobiographical narratives to determine the state of moral integration in an individual, they have little to say about the role of autobiographical narratives in articulating the process of moral integration. The aim of this paper is to argue that appealing to autobiographical narratives supports the view that moral integration is a learning process the outcome of which is the acquisition of an understanding of moral concepts that is exercised in moral deliberation. Since moral identity theorists argue that moral integration is empirically correlated to a sustained commitment to moral action, the upshot of the argument of this paper is an account that elucidates the relationship between moral identity, moral action and moral deliberation.