If I’m resenting the things that I should resent and not resenting the things that I should not resent, I’ll resent you for just up and insulting me out of nowhere. But I won’t resent you for insulting me if you have good reason (or reason of the right kind) to insult me. Similarly, if you negligently do me harm or knowingly (or intentionally) harm me.*

If, as I think we should, we read ‘you have good reason (or reason of the right kind) to insult me’ as referring to fact-relative or objective normative support for the insulting, then appropriate resentment (and non-resentment) is sensitive, in part, to the reasons of (or what matters to) the person who would insult one. And that, I think, is an important result, for it implies that “taking the interests of others into account” (a rough but apt phrase) is built into the standards that govern our reactive attitudes (or at least this reactive attitude). I think this is an interesting way of explaining our taking others into account – as agents, as rational beings, as beings with things that matter to them, not just as ordinary furniture of the universe or generic circumstances relevant to setting goals and making plans – at a basic psychological and normative level.

However, before embracing this result, we need to make sure we actually have it. For, intuitively, in appropriately resenting others for what they do, we respond most fundamentally to their motivation and reasoning (their mindsets, their attitudes), not (not in this fundamental way) to the the objective normative reasons that they have. We should sort this out, then, to make sure that the relevant sensitivity is to (objective) normative reasons, not motivating reasons.

Consider Good Insult, Bad Motivation. You insult me, but, unbeknownst to you, there is good reason (or reason of the right kind) for you to insult me (perhaps I have done something to you that, given my intentions, was terrible, but you don’t see it as the terrible thing that it is). And so, relative to the facts or objectively, it is inappropriate for me to resent you for insulting me (or, intuitively: your insult is appropriate, I deserve to be insulted by you). However, because you don’t rationalize your insult by reference to the facts that are good and sufficient reasons to support it, your mindset is as if you just up and insulted me for no good reason. This warrants my resentment, but the sensitivity here is to your motivation or motivating reasons in insulting me, not to there being normative reason (or not) for you to insult me. I think we should say the following about this sort of case: it is inappropriate for me to resent you for insulting me, but appropriate for me to resent you for, in insulting me, expressing the mindset of unprovoked insult. In the first respect of appropriateness, I’m responsive, in part, to the objective normative support that you have for insulting me. In the second respect, I’m responsive to the motivating reasons behind your insulting me.** And so this sort of case does not gainsay the idea that implicit in the standards of appropriate resentment is a kind of taking account of the interests (or more precisely the reasons) of others.***

I suspect that the other reactive attitudes work in the same way (and are governed by similar normative standards). This result is potentially important, not only in providing the (or a) basic grounding for a kind of basic respect for others (or for persons), but also in helping provide an account of what it is to wrong another person (and what makes an action morally wrong) — Scanlon’s project in WWO. However, this latter result is in view only if warranted resentment (and warrant for other reactive attitudes) is prior to (say, constitutive of) actions being wrongings (or being morally wrong) instead of the other way around. That requires interpreting the ‘because’ in ‘it was right to resent her not showing up because her doing that was wrong’ in an epistemic (or understanding-related) light, not in a metaphysical-determination light. I think that is right, but this seems to me a tricky and hard perennial sort of question. (Scanlon as well needs the order of explanation to go from his story (roughly, of a kind of hypothetical consensus conditioned by reasonable rejection of principles of what we are to allow or disallow) to actions being wrong. I’m hopeful that my kind of story (roughly, of the standards governing the reactive attitudes, including resentment and hence objection/rejection of types of actions others do or might perform) is better-positioned as a good “complaint theory” type of explanans for what makes an action morally wrong.)

FOOTNOTES

*These three patterns seem to cover, however roughly, quite a lot of the territory of resentment-warranting actions (and hence wrongings of persons). We gain some cognitive economy – but perhaps not any explanatory power – in putting all three of these patterns (and any other important ones that constitute appropriate resentment) under the umbrella of actions (and attitudes) that lack respect for others or for persons or some such.

**Plausibly, it is defeasibly appropriate for me to resent a person who is insulting me, precisely because they are expressing a certain hostile or demeaning attitude toward me. But that the person has the right kind of normative support for insulting me is a defeating condition: if they have and express this bad attitude, but objectively speaking there is the right kind of normative backing for their doing so, then resenting them for the insult is inappropriate. Plausibly, as well, the nature of the attitude changes in relevant ways – such that resentment of the person’s mindset is no longer warranted – if the person doing the insulting takes the insult to be backed up by the right kind and strength of reason or normative support (this would be a Good Insult/Good Motivation case).

***To fill things out, consider Bad Insult/Good Motivation. Roughly and intuitively: I insult you, thinking I’m justified in doing so, but (relative to the facts) I am not. In this case, it is appropriate for you to resent me for insulting you. And, again, it seems that, although there is a certain hostility in insulting someone in any case (such that one is defeasibly resented for having or expressing such a mindset toward someone), the nature of the overall motivation changes when I take myself to have the right kind of reason for issuing the insult (such that it is no longer appropriate for the patient to resent the agent for the mindset she expressed in insulting the patient).