Most would agree that if no one is responsible, then there are many ways in which we must act toward and conceive of one another differently, including adapting existing social practices to fit this reality. One such practice is taking reactive attitudes toward one another, in particular blaming attitudes like resentment, indignation, and guilt. Abolitionism is the view that if no one is responsible, we ought to abandon the reactive attitudes and take an entirely non-reactive stance toward one another – what P.F. Strawson called the ‘objective attitude’ ([Reference Strawson and Watson1962] Reference Strawson and Watson1982). There are two powerful reasons, one moral and one epistemological, for this obligation. Just as it’s wrong to punish those who are not blameworthy, so it’s wrong to blame those who are not blameworthy, all else being equal. Moreover, if we’re not responsible, then taking reactive attitudes toward one another gets the facts wrong. When we resent one another, we ascribe properties, abilities, and capacities that the other does not actually have.
Objections to abolitionism fall into two main categories: impossibility challenges claim that we cannot abandon the reactive attitudes and so cannot be required to do so; outcome challenges claim that it would be worse, all things considered, to do so.Footnote 1 In this paper, I defend abolitionism against what I take to be its strongest objection, a combined impossibility and outcome challenge. This objection states that abandoning the reactive attitudes precludes the formation and maintenance of valuable personal relationships. The importance of these relationships gives us a decisive reason not to abandon the reactive attitudes, even if we have other good reasons for doing so. Moreover, because it’s inconceivable that we could forego personal relationships, it’s also inconceivable that we could abandon the reactive attitudes on which they depend. Proponents of this argument claim (a) that a person who takes a wholly non-reactive stance is unable to take personally others’ attitudes and actions regarding her and (b) that taking personally is necessary for certain valuable relationships. I dispute both claims. In particular, I argue that this objection exaggerates the role of reactive attitudes and underestimates the importance of non-reactive emotions, like disappointment and regret, in the formation and maintenance of close relationships. In his seminal discussion of the reactive attitudes, Strawson writes, ‘What is above all interesting is the tension there is, in us, between the participant attitude and the objective attitude. One is tempted to say: between our humanity and our intelligence’ ([Reference Strawson and Watson1962] Reference Strawson and Watson1982, 67). I hope to show that by massaging our conception of the objective attitude, we can alleviate this tension and live in accordance with both our humanity and our intelligence.
This debate about abolitionism concerns more than just the nature of personal relationships. Painting a positive picture of a world without reactive attitudes is a central part of what might be called optimistic responsibility skepticism (Pereboom Reference Pereboom2001; Sommers Reference Sommers2007). Even more importantly, the Personal Relationships Argument (PRA), which concludes that abandoning the reactive attitudes precludes the formation of such relationships, is a crucial element of Strawson’s compatibilist project. Given the importance and influence of Strawson’s view on contemporary accounts of responsibility, these are high stakes indeed. In Section 1, I introduce the PRA and explain its importance for Strawson’s account. I focus in particular on Shabo’s (Reference Shabo2012a and Reference Shabo2012b) formulation of this argument and explicate its key premises. In Section 2, I evaluate the argument, conclude that it is unsound, and identify what I take to be its weaknesses. I also identify three tasks that any adequate PRA must accomplish and argue both that none of them is accomplished in the formulation I present and that other formulations of it are unlikely to fare any better. Finally, in Section 3, I raise a general methodological worry about the debate thus far between abolitionists and anti-abolitionists on the matter of personal relationships.
1. The PRA
I contend that the fact (if it is one) that no one is responsible requires that we revise our judgments and adapt our practices in such a way that they are consistent with this reality. One required change is that we abandon the reactive attitudes, specifically the blaming attitudes resentment, indignation, and guilt.Footnote 2 (To abandon these attitudes and adopt a sustained objective attitude is to prevent and eliminate instances of reactive attitudes, as well as the disposition to respond with such attitudes to mistreatment by others. And it is to disavow the judgments implicit in such attitudes – i.e. that the person is blameworthy – if they do arise. It might also require replacing reactive attitudes with non-reactive attitudes that can play a similar role in our moral lives. For example, a parent might be indignant and blame her teenage child for mistreating a classmate. However, she might instead respond to his moral failure with disappointment, which may express her moral criticism but not blame him for it.) Opponents of abolitionism deny that we are required to take this seemingly radical step. One reason for their disagreement is the belief that we cannot abandon the reactive attitudes without losing much more. Some have suggested that radically changing our behavior toward and conceptions of others would preclude the formation, or at least diminish the value, of the relationships we have with one another. Strawson connects this concern to an impossibility worry. He says that the human isolation entailed by adopting an entirely objective stance, ‘does not seem to be something of which human beings would be capable, even if some general truth were a theoretical ground for it’ ([Reference Strawson and Watson1962] Reference Strawson and Watson1982, 68; Reference Strawson1985, 32). And further, ‘[I]n the absence of any forms of these [reactive] attitudes it is doubtful whether we should have anything that we could find intelligible as a system of human relationships, as human society’ ([Reference Strawson and Watson1962] Reference Strawson and Watson1982, 80; Reference Strawson1985, 34).Footnote 3
Susan Wolf (Reference Wolf1981) eloquently and provocatively describes a world in which we have abandoned the reactive attitudes in the following way.
We can see that the abandonment of all the reactive attitudes would make a very great difference indeed. To replace our reactive attitudes with the objective attitude completely is to change drastically – or, as most would say, reduce – the quality of our involvement or participation in all our human relationships. (390)
She continues, saying that
A world in which human relationships are restricted to those that can be formed and supported in the absence of the reactive attitudes is a world of human isolation so cold and dreary that any but the most cynical must shudder at the idea of it. (391)
The picture she paints connects the absence of reactive attitudes to an absence of emotional warmth, depth, and richness that are plausibly necessary for valuable relationships. It is a feature of her impoverished world that the individuals who inhabit it are unable to form personal relationships.
These are strong claims – that our most fulfilling relationships would be impossible without the reactive attitudes and that, since we cannot help pursuing such relationships, we cannot help taking a reactive stance – but neither Strawson nor Wolf provides arguments for them. Recently, however, Seth Shabo has become the spokesperson for this crucial but neglected element of the Strawsonian project. He develops the descriptions given by Strawson and Wolf into an account of the requirements for close relationships that support their shared worry about the abolitionist position advocated by, among others, Derk Pereboom (Reference Pereboom2001, Reference Pereboom2014) and Tamler Sommers (Reference Sommers2007). The claim is that, ‘suspending these attitudes by consistently viewing others in this way [i.e. from the objective stance] would compromise our ability to form and maintain meaningful personal relationships’ (Shabo Reference Shabo2012a, 137). Assuming that personal relationships are a particularly valuable part of human life, the inconceivability of such relationships undermines the abolitionist case for abandoning the reactive attitudes. (This is the outcome challenge.)
Shabo argues that two important types of relationship are inconceivable if we abandon the reactive attitudes. Specifically, he argues that abandoning the reactive attitudes renders ‘personal relationships, ’ i.e., ‘mature friendship and reciprocal love, ’ impossible (Reference Shabo2012a, 133). The reason that abandoning the reactive attitudes purportedly precludes such relationships is that lacking a disposition to the reactive attitudes precludes taking others’ actions personally. And a relationship in which the parties do not take one another’s attitudes and actions personally is an emotionally impoverished relationship and cannot be a mature friendship or reciprocal romance.
On Shabo’s view, personal relationships require that each party care what the other does, that each cares which attitudes the other has, and that both care in a way that is not required by more superficial relationships. For, while it may not matter to one teammate that another would rather spend time with a third acquaintance than with him, it will presumably matter to one romantic partner that his partner prefers to spend time with friends rather than with him. A romantic relationship may require that it matters to Sally whether Jesse finds her sexually attractive. And mature friendship may require that it matters to Jesse whether Raphael is a source of comfort in hard times. Whatever is in fact required, Shabo argues that a person who is not disposed to take reactive attitudes toward her purported friend cannot take personally her failure to feel and behave as a friend should.Footnote 4 He asks, ‘To what extent can we share in the struggles, joys, and sorrows of someone about whose thoughts and feelings towards us we don’t care in this way’ (Reference Shabo2012a, 140)? On his view, Jesse cannot care – she cannot take personally – that Raphael is not a source of comfort if she is not disposed to respond with, say, resentment to his callousness and indifference.
Shabo’s Strawsonian argument that abandoning the reactive attitudes precludes the formation and maintenance of personal relationships can be understood in the following way (Reference Shabo2012a, 140; Reference Shabo2012b, 111–113).
(1) If one is not disposed at all to take reactive attitudes toward an agent, then one will not be disposed to take her actions or attitudes personally.
(2) If one is not disposed to take an agent’s actions or attitudes personally, then one cannot have a personal relationship with her.
(3) Therefore, if one is not disposed at all to take reactive attitudes toward an agent, then one cannot have a personal relationship with her.
This is a powerful challenge to abolitionism. Its force comes from strong claims about the role of reactive attitudes in personal relationships, especially friendship and romantic love. However, close friendships and romances come in a variety of forms and are shaped to a significant degree by the idiosyncrasies of the friends or lovers involved, particularly by their needs, expectations, and ways of engaging with one another (Grayling Reference Grayling2013, 189–190). We should therefore be skeptical of strong claims about what such relationships require. And, in the next section, I will argue that this argument is unsound.
The PRA is also a crucial element of Strawsonian compatibilism (Shabo Reference Shabo2012a, 131). Rather than offer a compatibilist analysis of ‘could have done otherwise’ or defend our practice of holding one another responsible on grounds of expedience, Strawson argued that the reactive attitudes are constitutive of our entire framework of moral responsibility (Strawson [Reference Strawson and Watson1962] Reference Strawson and Watson1982; Russell Reference Russell1992). However, ‘Lying at the heart of Strawson’s naturalistic strategy is...the claim that it is psychologically impossible altogether to suspend or abandon our reactive attitudes’ (Russell Reference Russell1992, 292). A crucial challenge facing any Strawsonian is to justify this claim and, if successful, the PRA would do exactly that. If personal relationships require the reactive attitudes, and foregoing these relationships in practically inconceivable, then abandoning the reactive attitudes is also inconceivable (Shabo Reference Shabo2012a, 132). (This is the impossibility challenge.) When we also reflect on the possibility of a life without these relationships, it becomes clear that PRA offers a substantial dual challenge to the abolitionist position.Footnote 5 Nonetheless, I shall argue that it’s a challenge that the abolitionist can meet.
2. A defense of abolitionism
There are three claims, over and above the premises that comprise the argument itself, that any PRA must establish. In this section, I consider each of them and argue both that Shabo fails to establish them and that no formulation of the PRA is likely to fare any better than his. First, any adequate PRA must establish that some type of relationship, in this case personal relationships, is precluded by abandoning the reactive attitudes. (Shabo provides one argument, but one might make a different argument to the same conclusion.) Call this the Incompatibility Problem. Second, it must delineate the class of precluded relationships and explain why it is those and only those that require the reactive attitudes. If the PRA implies that relationships in addition to mature friendships and reciprocal romances are impossible, then the burden on each of the premises to support this conclusion is greater than it initially seemed. Call this the Scope Problem. Finally, it must demonstrate that the threatened relationships are indeed valuable and that their loss is a significant sacrifice – i.e. that personal relationships are much better than whatever would replace them if we did abandon the reactive attitudes. For if no one is responsible, it’s not obvious that a relationship built on reactive attitudes has the same value it’s typically thought to have. And, if personal relationships are not valuable, then the PRA, even if sound, should not compel us to reject abolitionism – unless the relationships themselves are a ‘condition of our humanity’ (Strawson Reference Strawson1985, 33). Call this the Value Problem. Shabo, for his part, makes his value claim as modest as possible by delineating the class of important relationships in advance and by identifying types of relationships – mature friendship and reciprocal love – that are intuitively the most valuable. Nonetheless, I argue that all three problems undermine the PRA and pose a serious obstacle to establishing any alternative formulation of the argument.
However, before I address the PRA directly, it is worth noting that my opponent can accept that some relationships are consistent with abandoning the reactive attitudes. The emotional repertoire consistent with a non-reactive stance is sufficient for some interpersonal relationships – e.g. in order to be a good teammate, coworker, or parishioner, one need only be a helpful member of a team, office, or congregation, respectively. Nor is it only membership-based relationships that are available to those who abandon the reactive attitudes. Doing so is consistent with being a lover, a companion, or a caregiver. Sally can have a fulfilling sexual relationship with Jesse; Jesse can be an enjoyable vacation companion to Raphael; and Raphael can be an attentive and compassionate caregiver to Sally. Each of these relationships is possible even if the parties are not disposed to take reactive attitudes toward one another.
The significance of this point should not be underestimated. Occupational, recreational, accidental, and occasional relationships constitute the majority of the relationships that most people will form in their lives. Moreover, half of our non-sleeping hours are spent at work, so unless one is lucky enough to work with one’s close friends or romantic partner – and even if one is able to form close relationships with some colleagues – a significant portion of our time will be spent with those who are not close friends or romantic partners.
2.1. The Incompatibility Problem
Let me begin with a case that highlights the three challenges facing the PRA, as well as the worry that it gives an implausible account of how personal relationships work. Imagine you have a kind and considerate friend, Raphael. In fact, to the best of your knowledge, he almost never does anything wrong. (He’s no saint, of course. He doesn’t donate his spare organs to strangers or give away all of his excess income. He just lives a simple virtuous life.) The only exception is that he always flakes out on plans you’ve made together. He cancels at the last minute or just doesn’t show up. Earlier in your friendship you would resent him on these occasions – you feel kind of lame playing mini golf by yourself – but as you’ve come to know him better you’ve decided that he’s not responsible for this frustrating habit. He has a relatively severe social anxiety that you think explains and excuses his actions. Suppose that, as time goes by, your disposition to resent him for these bad actions diminishes and eventually disappears. You’re no longer at all disposed to resent him when he bails on game night or pub quiz. (And, because this is really the only bad thing he does, in a sense you’re not really disposed to resent him at all.)
This scenario seems plausible, though we might want to flesh out various details. It seems to me, though, that the proponent of the PRA has to say a few implausible things about this friendship. The argument implies that you cease to be friends when your disposition to resent him disappears. But it is not clear what ability that disposition confers that is necessary for maintaining the friendship or how having the disposition confers that ability independently of actual feelings of resentment. It also implies that your friendship becomes less important, valuable, or fulfilling as you cease to resent him. And it implies that you’d be better off with a friend who culpably mistreated you than with him because you’d retain your disposition to resent. Indeed, it seems to imply that a world in which everyone always treated one another kindly – or kindly enough that our disposition to resent became unnecessary – would be worse than a world in which people were sufficiently mean to one another (or mean sufficiently often) that they occasionally resented one another. Even if we suppose that your disposition to resent would remain in the Raphael case, the PRA seems to imply that your friendship is better in virtue of this fact – i.e. one friendship without resentment is better than another if the friends are still disposed to resent one another. But this doesn’t seem right. Thus, while this case is by no means decisive against the PRA, it does highlight the challenges its proponents face.
In this section, I defend the abolitionist position against the PRA by arguing that premise 1 is false and that premise 2 is questionable. Premise 1 is false if one can lack the disposition to take reactive attitudes toward an agent and still take personally her actions and attitudes. For example, it is false if the following scenario is likely or even conceivable. Sally and Jesse are friends. When Jesse insults Sally, Sally understands that she is not responsible for choosing to do this and is not disposed to resent her for it. However, Sally nonetheless recognizes that it was Jesse’s intention to insult her and her hope that the insult would make Sally upset. Moreover, she knows that Jesse would never speak to her other friends like this. These facts – intention, ill will, and being a unique target – lead Sally to take Jesse’s insult personally. Such a case strikes me as consistent and plausible.
Of course, premise 1 does have some intuitive pull. Consider two paradigmatic reasons for taking a non-reactive stance toward a person, immaturity of the agent and a pragmatic need for an impersonal relationship. The fact that one is often not disposed to resent an immature agent may sometimes seem to preclude taking her objectionable actions personally. For example, a father who is not disposed to resent his young daughter may not take it personally when she claims to love her mother more than him. Similarly, when one is not reactively disposed toward a person because of the type of relation between the two of you, this may seem to preclude taking the other’s action personally. Indeed, Strawson’s conception of the objective stance as a ‘refuge from the strains of involvement’ suggests that, by taking it, one is not taking personally the other’s attitudes or actions ([Reference Strawson and Watson1962] Reference Strawson and Watson1982, 67), as when a psychiatrist takes a non-reactive stance toward a patient and refrains from taking what the patient says personally (Shabo Reference Shabo2012a, 139).
In these cases not being reactively disposed appears to preclude taking the offender’s actions personally. But this appearance is deceiving. In the psychiatrist case, Shabo is right to notice a correlation between the non-reactive stance and taking personally, but it does not follow that the former precludes the latter. The non-reactive stance she takes toward her patient in order to treat him might preclude taking his arrogance or contempt personally, but she may still take it personally when his insults hit upon undisclosed insecurities and vulnerabilities. A refuge from the strains of involvement is not an impregnable fortress of solitude. The case of incapacity might be different. In such cases, the reason why one party does not take the other’s actions personally might be that she is unable to relate to the other in the appropriate ways, which, in turn, is explained by the latter’s disability or incapacity. For example, one might be unable to form a close relationship with a victim of a severe stroke because typical forms of social interaction have become impossible. One may be unable to relate to her because of her diminished language ability. Short-term memory problems may prevent one from advancing any bonds formed from day to day. It may well be true that one is not disposed to take reactive attitudes toward her for these reasons. However, even if the person’s disabilities or incapacities didn’t preclude the reactive attitudes, they would still preclude forming and maintaining a close relationship. The non-reactive stance is not the problem here.
Consider another version of the hurtful daughter case.Footnote 6 Suppose that, in addition to recognizing that his daughter has undeveloped social skills and is not responsible for the hurtful things she says, the father also recognizes that, in this case, his daughter means to hurt his feelings. Perhaps she is upset about being scolded or denied some treat and in retaliation says something she knows will make him sad. It is conceivable, even likely, that the father would be hurt in a personal way by his daughter’s words. In neither father–daughter case is the father disposed to take reactive attitudes toward his daughter. However, in the second case, but not the first, he takes her comment personally because he recognizes in her the capacity to intentionally target his particular vulnerabilities, though not the capacities necessary for full responsibility. He recognizes that she cannot help but lash out, but also that she means what she says; he knows that he was not wrong to scold her, but he is still her father and wants her not to feel as she does. That is why her words hurt. If taking personally seems possible in such cases – where the agents involved have diminished capacities – it seems both possible and familiar between agents with undiminished capacities.
At this point, one might worry that my opponent and I are speaking past each other and using the term ‘taking personally’ differently. I don’t think we are. As Shabo points out, it is hard to define what it means to take something personally, but we can reliably recognize when someone has taken an affront personally and when she has not (Reference Shabo2012a, 139). Suppose one victim of discriminatory hiring takes this offense personally, while another does not. I suspect we would identify the former as the one who is resentful, who lodges a complaint, and who urges others to investigate the motives of those doing the hiring. And we would identify the latter as the one who instead expresses some form of fatalism, cynicism, or resignation about the offense. Some of these indicators do implicate a reactive stance: becoming angry or seeking opportunities to retaliate. But others do not: feeling hurt, disappointed, or frustrated; wanting to understand the affront or to evaluate it; recognizing its significance for the particular relationship you have with the person. Even if taking personally requires that one care about an affront in an essentially backward-looking way (Shabo Reference Shabo2012a, 139), this does not imply that a disposition to resentment is partly constitutive of such caring (or of taking personally). Non-blaming disappointment and frustration are no less backward-looking than resentment. When we take an action personally, we care about the attitude that the action betrays and its ‘meaning’ given our relationship in addition to the inconvenience or hurt it may cause (Reference Shabo2012b, 112). I believe that the father described above can take a non-reactive stance toward his daughter, but also take personally the hurtful things she says. He takes her insult personally insofar as he believes it targeted him personally, insofar as he believes he has special reason (as her father) not to be attacked, insofar as he believes her intent was malicious (though not responsibly so), but especially insofar as his vulnerability makes her attitude and action especially significant and painful. The claim that taking personally requires a disposition to resentment, indignation, or guilt thus seems (to me) implausible.
Thus far my cases have focused on individuals who are to some degree impaired. However, it is not just impaired individuals whose misbehavior we can take personally without resentment, indignation, or guilt.
Imagine a student, Allison. She is familiar with the many systemic biases that shape human societies, behaviors, and emotions. (This familiarity could be intellectual or the result of experience, or both.) While she might view others as entirely non-responsible, she does not (or at least need not) view them as impaired. Perhaps few occupy this perspective in a sustained way, but suppose that she does. Suppose she believes that it is only fair to take the same view of her family, friends, and romantic partners as she does of everyone else – not to do so would be to make the same mistake as those who hold, against all the evidence, that they are not susceptible to the biases they recognize in others. Is it possible for such a person, committed as she is to this non-reactive stance, to take others’ actions personally? I think so. Nor must we think that, when she does so, she’s falling back into a reactive stance.
Suppose that one day Allison is chatting with a friend about some of the race issues that have recently been in the news. As the conversation continues, she realizes that her friend holds some very backward views about the relevance of race in American society. Not only is Allison surprised, she’s offended. However, the offense does not push her back into the reactive stance. Indeed, she recognizes that the views being expressed are exactly those that are accepted without reflection in societies structured by implicit racial bias. She does not resent him. She is not indignant on behalf of those who are harmed by the persistence of such attitudes. But she does take his comments personally. She cares that he, her friend, holds these objectionable beliefs. She is embarrassed by him and for him. She is disappointed in him, insofar as she thought he was better than he is. And, finally, she takes his comments personally because of what they say about he sees her. She worries that anyone who holds these beliefs cannot care about and respect her in the way she thought he did, in the way she cares about and respects him.
In general, premise 1 relies on the claim that abandoning the reactive attitudes entails viewing someone as a ‘natural object’ which in turn entails detachment from the person toward whom one is responding. Strawson, for example, conceives of the reactive stance as involving attitudes ‘of involvement or participation’ and contrasts this with the objective stance, which isolates one in various ways ([Reference Strawson and Watson1962] Reference Strawson and Watson1982, 62). One who is not disposed to take reactive attitudes is thought to be detached in the sense that she deploys a diminished or restrained emotional repertoire and, as a result, is incapable of forming deep or rich relationships.Footnote 7 It is true that abandoning the reactive attitudes involves deploying a diminished emotional repertoire – at the very least a repertoire without resentment, indignation, and guilt. However, this diminished emotional repertoire does not entail a level of detachment sufficient to preclude personal relationships. Such extreme detachment is possible, but it is not entailed by taking a non-reactive stance. For example, the essential features of friendship are entirely consistent with such a stance. A.C. Grayling writes of friendship that,
… both received wisdom and the models offered by the philosophical and literary debate … have it that a friend is a person one likes who returns one’s affection and concern; who shares some of one’s interests and attitudes, who gives when asked or even without being asked; who understands, or tries to, without being too judgmental; who is loyal and constant, rejoicing at good fortune and supporting through bad; who tells unpleasant truths and pleasant untruths when either is necessary; whose affection is freely given, not bartered for services or advancement or other interest; and who makes the innocent and proper assumption that all the claims, expectations, rights and duties of this vital and valuable bond are reciprocal. (Reference Grayling2013, 171–172)
Strawson’s conception of what the objective stance entails is far too strong, suggesting as it does that those who adopt it cannot engage with one another even as minimally rational agents. Shabo defends a more modest conception in his attempt to support the general Strawsonian project, but his is still too strong. The non-reactive stance does not preclude taking personally. What unifies our intuitions about what it means to take personally a friend or lover’s failure is the sense that, in doing so, that person has let you down. This sense of unmet expectations fits naturally with a reactive (blaming) disposition (Wallace Reference Wallace1994), but it does not require it. Anxiety about facing a judgmental parent, disappointment with a lover who ruins a romantic moment, frustration with a friend’s thoughtless indignation – these emotional responses indicate that one has taken something personally, but not (or not necessarily) that one is disposed to the reactive attitudes. When we reflect on the non-reactive dimensions of our personal relationships – whether as described by Grayling or by the empirical literature on close relationships (Section 3) – it seems that we find plenty of opportunities for taking personally.
Premise 2 is false if one can fail to take another’s attitudes or actions personally but still be able to have a personal relationship with that person. This premise also seems questionable, but I can only offer suggestive remarks against it. Consider a difficult relationship between a parent and her adult child. The child might care deeply for her mother despite the fact that her mother has been and continues to be, at times, indifferent, emotionally manipulative, and unreasonably demanding. Such a relationship might have all the hallmarks of a personal relationship – as relationships between parents and adult children often do – even if the daughter has, over the course of her lifetime, ceased to take her mother’s behavior personally. Indeed, it may be this very achievement that allows the relationship to continue as a personal relationship, given the mother’s behavior.
This case seem to describe relationships that might well exist. However, according to the PRA, this relationship does not qualify as a personal relationship because taking actions and attitudes personally is partly constitutive of such a relationship. Shabo seems to imagine that one either cares in an essentially personal way about someone or is ‘quite indifferent’ to her (Reference Shabo2012b, 111). But this is not so. The daughter does not take personally her mother’s attitudes and actions toward her, but neither is she indifferent to her. The fact that she is not disposed to resentment does not preclude her from feeling and expressing a wide range of non-reactive emotions in response to her mother’s behavior, including disappointment, embarrassment, anxiety, and compassion. Nor does it preclude grief when her mother dies.
Moreover, even if one thinks that a valuable personal relationship could never form so long as one party does not take the other’s actions and attitudes personally, I would nonetheless contend that if such a relationship already existed, it could be maintained even if one party entirely ceases to take personally the other’s actions and attitudes. Recall the case with which I started this section. I think that it is plausible that I could take the Raphael’s actions personally, but, even if I can’t (or don’t), it still seems possible to maintain my friendship with him.
On the basis of the above argument against premise 1, and my suspicions about premise 2, I conclude that the PRA is unsound. And, insofar as this argument was meant to defend as yet undefended claims made by Strawson and Wolf about the impoverishment of human life that results from abandoning the reactive attitudes, and the inconceivability of doing so, I conclude that an adequate formulation of the PRA has not yet been offered. Given what I have said about detachment and taking personally, it is conceivable that one could take an entirely non-reactive stance and still have personal relationships. Moreover, my response not only undermines a significant challenge to abolitionism, it also weakens the case for the broader Strawsonian project and supports the responsibility skeptic’s optimism about his imagined non-reactive world.
2.2. The Scope Problem
I turn now to the assumption that the PRA applies only to the class of personal relationships and does not generalize beyond this class. This is a particularly interesting assumption because it is much weaker than what Wolf and Strawson claim. Wolf suggests that familial relationships – e.g. between siblings or between parents and children – could only exist in an impoverished form without the reactive attitudes (1981, 391). And, as Shabo notes, Strawson strongly implies that adopting the objective stance would compromise all, or most, human relationships (Strawson [Reference Strawson and Watson1962] Reference Strawson and Watson1982, 66 and 80; Reference Strawson1985, 34–35; Shabo Reference Shabo2012a, 133). By contrast, Shabo suggests that there is something special about personal relationships. He says that, ‘we can distinguish – at least in favourable cases – relationships of mature friendship and reciprocal love from associations based chiefly on mutual convenience or attraction, shared personal or professional interests, general collegiality or amiability, and so on’ (Reference Shabo2012a, 133 n.5). I agree that we can distinguish these different types, but I contend that the PRA also applies to other relationships, if it applies at all. If so, the argument yields a stronger conclusion than it initially seemed and requires more by way of argument for it.
Of course, the anti-abolitionist could solve the Scope Problem by simply defining personal relationships as those that require a disposition to take reactive attitudes or those that require whatever is entailed by such a disposition. This avoids the Scope Problem, but it is not a promising strategy for the anti-abolitionist. He is making a partly empirical, not a purely conceptual claim.Footnote 8 He is claiming that abandoning the reactive attitudes has an effect on how human beings are able to interact with one another and that the limitations it places on these interactions preclude certain relationships. Doing so renders a person unable to interact in the necessary ways.
A more promising way to avoid the Scope Problem is to say that a non-reactive stance withholds some feature necessary to personal relationships and not necessary to any other relationships. Let us assume, as Shabo suggests, that the necessary feature that is missing is the ability to take actions and attitudes personally. Is the class of relationships that do require taking personally limited to mature friendships and reciprocal love relationships? I have argued that there is no such class. However, if there is one, it is not limited in this way. If reciprocal love relationships require the ability to take personally, then non-reciprocal ones plausibly require it, too. An unrequited love might require that the lover take the other’s indifference personally. If Oscar were entirely indifferent rather than despondent in response to Al’s indifference, it would be reasonable to believe that he was not really in love. At the very least, this belief would be as reasonable as it would be in the case of reciprocal love.
Similarly, if mature friendships require the parties to take one another’s actions personally, which I have questioned, then so do many (and perhaps all) friendships. We might think that one indication that two people have become friends is that they do this. Among the most important services a friend can provide is comfort and support and the opportunity to unburden oneself of one’s cares, difficulties, and disappointments (Fehr Reference Fehr2004, 270; Grayling Reference Grayling2013, 92). Demonstrating vulnerability is important in the formation of close relationships and it is as likely to be important at the initial stages of a friendship as at the transition from immature to mature friendship. There may indeed be a point (or period) in a friendship where taking personally (in some way or to some degree) indicates or inaugurates a deeper, richer friendship. However, a similar change in taking personally may also indicate or inaugurate the beginning of a friendship – that is, it may mark the difference between being friends and not being friends. Indeed, perhaps what led Strawson to believe that all human relationships require the reactive attitudes was the recognition that all relationships grow by small degrees as we begin to view one another more and more as participants in a common project. If so, though, it seems to me that the lesson to draw from this insight is that taking personally does not require a reactive stance.Footnote 9
It thus seems difficult to limit the scope of application of the PRA. The best candidate for providing a principled distinction between relationships precluded by abandoning the reactive attitudes and those not precluded is that some relationships require parties to take personally one another’s actions and attitudes. However, while this is a principled distinction, the line it draws is not between ‘mature friendships and romantic relationships, ’ on the one hand, and all other relationships, on the other. If personal relationships are precluded, then other types of relationship (or dimensions of relationships) are precluded, too. And, if this is true, then the anti-abolitionist is making a stronger claim than he initially appeared to be. Of course, the proponent of the PRA may simply agree and claim that the argument establishes this stronger conclusion. However, my arguments in the previous section, especially contra premise 1, seem even more plausible when we expand the category of purportedly inconceivable relationships. It’s one thing to say that Sally and Jesse’s relationship is not a mature friendship (see Section 2.1). It’s quite another to say that it is not a friendship at all.Footnote 10
2.3. The Value Problem
Finally, consider the assumption that personal relationships are valuable and that their loss is a significant sacrifice. Suppose we grant the claim that abandoning the reactive attitudes makes it impossible for us to form or maintain meaningful relationships with one another. Lacking personal relationships certainly seems bad, but recall the reasons why we are considering abandoning the reactive attitudes in the first place. If no one is responsible, then taking these attitudes is unfair!Footnote 11 Resentment, indignation, and guilt are blaming attitudes and, all else equal, blaming a person for a non-blameworthy action is unfair. It is unfair because it is an unwarranted and unbalanced harm. It is also degrading. Blaming someone puts that person in a particular category of condemnable people, namely, responsible wrongdoers. Moreover, blaming the non-blameworthy may be unjust independently of whether it results in the person actually feeling degraded. The disrespect of being inappropriately blamed is also unfair in the way that slander, libel, or false promising are unfair. Even when such actions do not result in concrete personal or financial harms, they are unfair in that they communicate a lack of appropriate basic respect that moral agents are expected to show one another regardless of whether they are responsible. Such actions communicate the judgment that the victim is not worthy of such basic respect.
All else equal, relationships built on unfairness are bad, or at least worse than those that are not. And the more pervasive or oppressive the unfairness, the worse the relationship. Relationships whose existence is premised on unfairness are not often the subject of spirited defense. We criticize the patriarchal commonplace of women performing all (or the large majority) of housework in relationships where both partners work full time. We criticize the distressingly common experience of women who face the difficult and unfair choice of remaining with an abusive partner or abandoning their children to an abusive father (Dressler Reference Dressler2006). Indeed, we criticize any relationship in which one partner does not recognize and treat the other as his moral equal, whether this involves division of labor, physical or psychological abuse, coercion, neglect, or simple disrespect. Most relevant to my current point, whether or not we are willing to criticize every form of unfairness we find in relationships, we do criticize relationships in which either party is subject to unwarranted or excessive blame from the other. And this sort of criticism remains appropriate even if we accept that no one is responsible because it remains appropriate to criticize wrongful behavior.
In order for the PRA to be a compelling challenge to abolitionism, its proponent must defend at least one of three claims about the value of personal relationships: (i) it is bad that abandoning the reactive attitudes precludes such relationships because they are not unfair; (ii) it is bad that abandoning the reactive attitudes precludes unfair relationships because there is no better alternative – i.e. the unfair relationships are flawed, but are still the best source of such value that we have; or (iii), it is bad that we are not responsible because responsibly formed and maintained personal relationships are (or would be) very good. If none of these claims is true, then abolition does not involve a significant sacrifice and the reasons for abandoning the reactive attitude are not undermined or counterbalanced.
Which of these claims does (or should) the anti-abolitionist defend? Most, including Shabo, seem to agree that taking reactive attitudes toward a person who is not responsible is (at least prima facie) unfair (option i).
Does the anti-abolitionist claim that the unfairness of reactive attitude-based relationships is the best we can do (option ii)? If so, this is not a promising strategy. First of all, we are not in a good epistemic position to make confident evaluations. We are comparing two states of affairs, but we have no evidence at all about one of them – a world without personal relationships – because it has never existed. We know that we quite like the world we have, but history has shown that this is not a good enough reason to oppose morally driven reforms. That said, we might reject the anti-abolitionist claim even from our fragile epistemic position. The unfairness of a typical reactive attitude-based relationship is not the best we can do. The idea that morality or a substantially revised understanding of what human beings are like might require that we reform the way that we relate to one another is neither unprecedented nor unimaginable, especially to those concerned with patterns of systemic injustice. We can sometimes improve our personal relationships by abandoning the reactive attitudes. And, if personal relationships of the sort we currently prize really do require a disposition to resentment, indignation, and guilt, perhaps we can do better by abandoning these relationships.
One might defend our current practices by noting that taking reactive attitudes is at least a practice or standard that is applied equally to everyone, while the examples of patriarchal unfairness mentioned above arise from the application of different norms to men and women. This is true, but does not justify taking reactive attitudes toward non-responsible agents. Resenting a person who is not responsible for her actions is morally objectionable and resenting all non-responsible people is worse, not better, regardless of the equality of the practice. Distributing bads equally is not better than not doing bad things.
Moreover, any argument that personal relationships based on reactive attitudes are valuable enough to outweigh their unfairness faces the additional burden of considering the fact that most relationships are not personal relationships and most interpersonal encounters are with people other than our friends and romantic partners. And those relationships are more likely to benefit and less likely to suffer from abandoning the reactive attitudes. If one thinks there is a bright line separating personal and non-personal relationships such that personal relationships are uniquely damaged by the parties taking a non-reactive stance toward each other, then one should see non-personal relationships as benefitted by abandoning the reactive attitudes. And if one does not see a bright line between them, then one should recognize the force of the Scope Problem.
The proponent of the PRA has one remaining option for addressing the Value Problem. He may argue that it is bad that we are not responsible because responsibly formed and maintained personal relationships are very good (option iii). But the abolitionist can happily agree and accept that it would be better to be responsible and to have the sort of relationships this fact would allow. Nonetheless, if we are not responsible, we ought to abandon the reactive attitudes. We must remember that what is (purportedly) being lost is something whose value depends, at least in part, on the assumption that most people are responsible most of the time.
In the last few sections, I have identified three claims, over and above the premises that comprise the argument itself, that any defense of the PRA must establish and I have argued that none of them has been or promises to be established. I have argued that on no plausible account of what is entailed by abandoning the reactive attitudes does doing so preclude the formation or maintenance of personal relationships (the Incompatibility Problem). I have argued that PRAs generalize beyond personal relationships and are less plausible because they make these broader and stronger claims (the Scope Problem). And I have argued that the relationships we would purportedly be sacrificing by abandoning the reactive attitudes are not obviously valuable enough that the cost of sacrificing them gives us reason to deny abolitionism (the Value Problem). I do not take these arguments to be decisive – there is more to be said – but I believe that they put abolitionism on solid ground with respect to the PRA.
3. A note on methodology
The debate about abolitionism and personal relationships rests on an assumption that deserves closer scrutiny. I have left consideration of this assumption till the end, choosing instead to engage the anti-abolitionist argument itself. However, in this final section, I consider a potential methodological problem relevant to the PRA and, by extension, to my defense of abolitionism. In particular, I consider the assumption that the compatibility of a non-reactive stance with personal relationships can be assessed without reference to empirical evidence about friendships and romantic relationships.
The claim that abandoning the reactive attitudes precludes the formation and maintenance of valuable personal relationships is, at least in part, an empirical claim. It is a claim about what human beings are like and what certain kinds of relationships between them require in order to develop and flourish. And the PRA is supported by an argument whose premises have an empirical dimension.Footnote 12 As such, it is a considerable assumption that such a claim can be established without providing substantial empirical evidence. Indeed, one could go so far as to say that it is a claim for which armchair speculation can provide at best a suggestive and anecdotal account. Adequately establishing claims about how friendships form and under what conditions might reasonably be thought to require anthropological, sociological, and psychological evidence, none of which has been adduced in support of the anti-abolitionist position.Footnote 13
At this point, the anti-abolitionist may claim that a concept like ‘reactive attitude’ is a philosophical term of art and does not directly map onto whatever empirical concepts are used to analyze actual human relationships. For example, one might argue that any empirically established conclusions about what kind or degree of emotional connection is necessary for a mature friendship to form will not translate into claims about which reactive attitudes are necessary or to what degree we can abandon them without precluding or damaging such friendships. However, this response is unsatisfactory. The fact remains that anti-abolitionists are committed to empirical claims in addition to their conceptual claims about what counts as friendship. If the philosophical vocabulary in which these claims are couched does not map onto the vocabulary employed by those who study relationships empirically, then it is incumbent upon philosophers to provide such a mapping. And, to the extent that doing so is impossible, we must accept that the philosophical claims are not necessarily about the empirical phenomena we care about.
Of course, ‘personal relationship’ is not entirely an empirical concept. The nature of friendship is, in part, a conceptual question and the reactive stance is a philosophical construct. But neither is impervious to empirical evidence. Whether or not our conceptions of ‘personal relationship’ and ‘reactive stance’ are conceptually linked, it is relevant to the plausibility of abolitionism which actual relationships are instances of personal relationships. In either case, we must ask whether the category of personal relationships includes the types of actual relationships that we value. And in both cases, answering this question will require empirical evidence.
I do not take this methodological worry to be decisive against PRAs. Nor do I take the empirical literature on close relationships to point univocally toward the abolitionist conclusion. However, at the very least, the assumption that we can determine whether abandoning the reactive attitudes precludes personal relationships without reference to the empirical evidence about such relationships deserves more attention than it has received thus far – as does the empirical evidence itself.
4. Conclusion
In this paper, I have defended abolitionism against the claim that taking an entirely non-reactive stance precludes valuable personal relationships. In doing so, I have undermined Strawson’s claim that abandoning the reactive attitudes is practically inconceivable as well as the Strawsonian view that a world without resentment, indignation, and guilt would be bleak and impoverished. Moreover, my defense of abolitionism bolsters the case for an optimistic skepticism about responsibility. In addition to putting the Strawsonian compatibilist on his back foot, it also shows that abandoning the reactive attitudes is less radical a proposal than it is often made to seem.
As spokesperson for this neglected element of Strawson’s position, Shabo argues that those who adopt a non-reactive stance are unable to take one another’s actions personally, which in turn precludes the formation and maintenance of the sorts of personal relationships we rightly value and can’t help but pursue. Against this view, I have argued that the PRA is unsound and that any alternative formulation of it will also encounter both the Scope Problem and the Value Problem. And, finally, I have suggested that any plausible argument that abandoning the reactive attitudes precludes the formation and maintenance of personal relationships must provide at least some empirical support for this claim.
These conclusions should prompt us to reflect on the relationships we most prize – our friendships, romantic partnerships, and close family relationships. These relationships, it seems to me, are characterized, in different measure, by desire, trust, loyalty, kindness, compassion, shared history, healthy communication, enjoyment of the other’s company, and, seemingly most important, the myriad ways in which we support one another. All of these things remain possible, as do the various forms of love that depend upon them, whether we abandon the reactive attitudes or not.
Acknowledgments
This article was completed during a postdoc at the University of Gothenburg funded by the Swedish Research Council. I had the opportunity to improve the article in response to excellent feedback from the faculty at Oakland University and an audience at the Center for Cognition and Neuroethics at the University of Michigan, Flint. I also wish to thank two anonymous reviewers at the Canadian Journal of Philosophy whose comments helped me clarify and strengthen my argument. And I’m especially grateful to Dana Nelkin, Joyce Havstad, Adam Streed, and David Brink for their invaluable comments on numerous drafts.
