Hypocritical Blame Is Unfitting

Abstract

Abstract Philosophers disagree about what, if anything, is wrong with blaming hypocritically, but almost all treat the issue as a moral one: Either there is something morally wrong with hypocritical blame or there isn’t. This chapter argues that, although there are moral objections to blaming hypocritically, the first and foremost problem with hypocritical blame is that it’s unfitting. More specifically, it is an enabling condition on blame’s fittingness that the blaming subject be committed to the norm she blames a target person for violating. Because of a connection between fittingness and representational accuracy, recognizing this condition on blame’s fittingness in turn has interesting upshots—both for theorizing about the ethics of hypocrisy and for understanding the significance of blame itself.