PHIL 251 Chapter Notes - Chapter 15: Joel Feinberg, Criminal Law, Retributive Justice
10 May 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Certainly the bitterness of resentment and its air of entitlement are often felt in response to breaches of broadly moral expectations that characterize personal relationships. Within a committed or sustained relationship our interactions with persons acquire moral depth and urgency usually lacking in impersonal relations. Love and friendship involve a mutual commitment to viewing one another as free enough to do what love and friendship require. We commit ourselves to the idea that our value as a person whose interests ought to be respected, who is entitled to care and consideration, informs and guides a friend"s treatment of us. When these values fail to guide her, we find that we have dedicated ourselves, so to speak, to the possibility that she could have done otherwise under the circumstances in which she failed. Our moral reactions expressed, for example, through our resentment or hurt feelings are premised on another person"s freedom to have done otherwise.
