Shared Guilt among Intimates

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to vindicate a common but philosophically puzzling phenomenon: Sometimes, a person experiences extreme guilt in relation to a wrong that their loved one has committed, even though they are not at fault for that wrong. Guilt in these cases violates a foundational principle in our moral lives – viz., the fault principle. On that principle, one is blameworthy for a wrong only if one is at fault with respect to that wrong. Insofar as the family members explored here are not at fault, their professed experience of guilt looks to be irrational. Against the charge of irrationality, I argue that it is sometimes morally appropriate, and perhaps even morally required, to judge oneself to be blameworthy for the wrong of a loved one in which one played no culpable part. Further, insofar as the first-personal experience ought to dictate the responsibility assessments of victims and third parties, I conclude that these other individuals will have reason to take the intimate to be blameworthy too. I end by extending the phenomenon of faultless guilt beyond the intimate context, to the experience of white guilt.

KEYWORDS:

• Moral responsibility
• blameworthiness
• fault
• shared guilt
• shared responsibility
• intimate ethics

Acknowledgments

For helpful feedback, I am grateful to participants in the 2021 Moral Psychology and Rationality Workshop, and the 2018 Society for Applied Philosophy annual meeting, as well as Sam Berstler, Elizabeth Brake, Stephen Darwall, Robin Jeshion, Katie McShane, Eliot Michaelson, David Plunkett, Mark van Roojen, Wendy Salkin, Lisa Miracchi Titus, and especially Nico Cornell. I claim exclusive fault for any errors or omissions. Rachel Harris provided excellent research assistance.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ I discuss the Fault Principle in the context of criminal law in Sepinwall (2017).

² The Fault Principle (FP) might encompass more fault than I have just stated. On some understandings, the FP would extend to omissions too such that wrongs would include not only knowing or intentional contributions to a wrong that are without justification but also knowing or intentional failures to prevent a wrong without justification. An even more expansive version would add negligence liability to the contributions or omissions for which one might be at fault; on this version, then, one would be at fault if one should have known that one was contributing to another’s wrong, or should have known that one was failing to prevent another’s wrong, and one has no justification for one’s contribution or failure to prevent.

Importantly, nothing in the arguments that follow turns on whether or not we adopt one of the more expansive conceptions of fault, since none of the conceptions explains the guilt of any of the parties in the vignettes anyway.

³ Cf. Carlsson ‘Whereas guilt typically concerns some specific behaviour, shame emotions involve a negative evaluation of one’s global self. This is the most empirically robust and commonly accepted way of distinguishing shame and guilt.’

⁴ See, for example, Nussbaum (2004, 184) and Williams (1993b, 89–90).

⁵ Britannica (2022). (‘this little hand [] was laid upon me before I came into the world.’)

⁶ Rodger (2014). For example, Peter Rodger, whose son, Elliot Rodger, shot and killed 6 people in Santa Barbara, developed ‘a small website with resources on mental illness and a place to share stories’ in an effort to help families identify and address mental illness in one of their loved ones.

⁷ See also NBC News, 19 April 2007. Statement of family of Virginia Tech shooter: ‘Our family is so very sorry for my brother’s unspeakable actions. It is a terrible tragedy for all of us,’ the family said in a statement issued by Cho’s sister, Sun-Kyung Cho.

⁸ It is notable in this regard that, in French, ‘complicité’ means both ‘complicity’ and ‘shared intimacy.’

⁹ The trustee charged with restituting victims of the scheme was wildly successful in recovering money from those who had culpably profited from the scheme. All of the recovered money was disbursed to the innocent participants in the scheme, such that each of them received a sum equal to the amount they had invested.

¹⁰ H.D. Lewis, writing to deny that the American public can be responsible for war time atrocities like those committed at My Lai.

¹¹ Strawson (2008). (‘I am strongly inclined to think that [adopting the objective attitude toward all others] is, for us as we are, practically inconceivable. The human commitment to participation in ordinary inter-personal relationships is, I think, too thoroughgoing and deeply rooted for us to take seriously the thought that a general theoretical conviction might so change our world that, in it, there were no longer any such things as inter-personal relationships as we normally understand them; and being involved in inter-personal relationships as we normally understand them precisely is being exposed to the range of reactive attitudes and feelings that is in question.’)

Additional information

Funding

This article was written with the generous support of the Dean’s Research Fund of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.