Abstract

Blameworthiness is commonly understood in terms of fittingness of blame: An agent X is blameworthy to degree n for an action A if and only if it is fitting for all agents to blame X to degree n for A. The problem with this biconditional is that it conflicts with the intuition that whether and what kind of blame is fitting depends on the personal relationship between the blamer and the wrongdoer or the blamer and the victim. Sometimes it is, prima facie, fitting for certain agents to have different blaming responses toward the same wrongdoer due to personal relationships. This is the partiality problem for blame. I argue that we should not try to solve the problem by appealing to wrong kind of reasons, i.e. non-fittingness reasons. Instead, we should accept that different blaming responses toward the same wrongdoer may in fact be fitting. To solve the partiality problem, I propose distinguishing between agent-relative and agent-neutral blameworthiness and show how the distinction can be understood in a Strawsonian framework.