Jonas Vandieken

What is the nature of moral accountability? And what does an answer to this question reveal about the correct moral theory? This paper defends the view that moral accountability is inherently relational or bipolar in nature. It does so by seeking to understand a central accountability practice—sincere apology. The paper begins by considering a challenge to a relational or bipolar view of morality, according to which such a theory cannot adequately explain the nature of accountability and its connection to morality without having to invoke non-relational concepts such as ‘moral obligation, period’ and third-personal reason. In answering this challenge, the paper argues that reflection on the practice of sincere apology reveals that appeal to non-relational concepts such as ‘moral obligation, period’ or third-personal reasons is neither necessary nor sufficient in order to adequately account for the nature of moral accountability. What these reflections show instead is that a relational or bipolar understanding of morality is best equipped to give an adequate explanation of the nature of moral accountability.

On a relational understanding of morality, the entire set of our interpersonal moral obligations is best understood as a set of directed obligations. According to this view, A owes it to B to do X, because B has a valid claim against A that A do X. The challenge for the relational understanding of morality is to explain how it can also be the business of a third-party C to hold A accountable. Morality, after all, is generally everyone’s business. To answer this challenge, I develop a relational account of third-party indignation, according to which C is best understood as acting on behalf of B when holding A accountable as an instance of normative support for B. It is a distinct advantage of the view that it can explain aspects of the moral phenomenology which non-relational accounts cannot explain, in particular the undertheorized phenomenon of third-party wrongings.

The paper elucidates a neglected relational wrong, moral indifference, which consists in ignoring or “blanking” someone such that they are deprived of the chance to make a moral difference. Typical examples include not acknowledging an apology, or refraining from expressing reactive attitudes, in relation to a capable agent. The paper identifies the distinct forms and modes in which moral indifference shows up, on the occurrent, dispositional, or structural levels, ultimately arguing that moral indifference consciously denies others the status of equally authoritative sources of valid claims. As a globalist response to another’s agential abilities, moral indifference can wrong others in more fundamental ways than other relational wrongs. In fact, it can threaten their very agency—and not just momentarily—by prompting self-questioning and agential uncertainty. In marginal cases, however, moral indifference can be a legitimate form of self-protection. The paper also has implications for current treatments of crucial moral concepts like recognition respect, basic second-person regard and the debate about the Strawsonian participant- and objective stances.

This paper provides an analysis of the phrase ‘acting on behalf of another.’ To do this, acting on behalf is first distinguished from ‘acting for the sake of another,’ the latter being a matter of other-directed motivation, the former of what we call ‘normative other-directedness’—i.e., acting on the claims and duties of the other. Second, we provide a distinction between two kinds of acting on behalf of another: representation as other-directedness plus normative replacement, and normative support as other-directedness without normative replacement. Third, the paper offers conditions of appropriateness for both types of acting on behalf.

What role do human relationships play within the moral domain? There appears to be a lot of agreement that relationships play an important role in and for morality, but certainly not any foundational one. Yet, there has been a recent interest in seeking to explain the foundation of morality in relational terms. According to these relational proposals, the very foundation of impartial morality, and in particular the domain of “what we owe to each other” can be found in the same normative structures that are characteristic of interpersonal relationships and the partial reasons they give rise to. This suggestion has been met with serious criticism, according to which any seeming appeal to a so-called moral relationship does no work in grounding morality and the obligations that we owe to each other. The present paper intends to challenge this conclusion by arguing that the objections rendered are not decisive, as a result of which we can begin to make sense of the idea that we do share a reason-giving relationship with each other in the moral sphere. The moral relationship, the paper argues, is one we simply share with each other in virtue of our shared vulnerability to attitudinal injury as rational agents.

Any complete theory of “what we owe to each other” must be able to adequately accommodate directed or bipolar obligations, that is, those obligations that are owed to a particular individual and in virtue of which another individual stands to be wronged. Bipolar obligations receive their moral importance from their intimate connection to a particular form of recognition respect that we owe to each other: respect of another as a source of valid claims to whom in particular we owe certain treatment and, at the very least, an apology if we fail to accord that treatment. While some of the most prominent accounts of interpersonal morality fail to adequately accommodate bipolar obligations, I here investigate a recent proposal that explicitly seeks to improve on these accounts—Stephen Darwall’s second-personal theory of morality. Ultimately, I object to Darwall’s theory on the grounds that his second-personal theory normatively ties bipolar obligations too closely to non-directed moral obligations or those that we are under, period. The problem for Darwall’s account is that any obligations that at first appear to be bipolar and owed to someone in particular turn out to be instances of non-directed moral obligations period that have their normative source in the representative authority of the moral community. Adequately accommodating bipolar obligations requires taking seriously a novel second-personal approach, according to which we locate the normative sources of our interpersonal obligations in the claims and demands particular persons and deliberate from what I call the pairwise or bipolar standpoint.