Apology as Self-Repair
Bernard Williams (1981) briefly discusses agent regret in his broader account of moral luck. The present paper first outlines one way to develop Williams's notion with reference to the unintended harm; it then suggests that agent regret can be counteracted by externalizing the action that cause...
| Published in: | Ethical theory and moral practice |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Springer Science + Business Media B. V
[2018]
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| In: |
Ethical theory and moral practice
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| RelBib Classification: | NCB Personal ethics VA Philosophy ZD Psychology |
| Further subjects: | B
Agent regret
B Externalization B Moral injury (clinical psychology literature) B Apology |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | Bernard Williams (1981) briefly discusses agent regret in his broader account of moral luck. The present paper first outlines one way to develop Williams's notion with reference to the unintended harm; it then suggests that agent regret can be counteracted by externalizing the action that caused unintended harm, in Harry Frankfurt's (1988a, b) sense of externalization; and then the present paper argues that apology is a mechanism by which a person can externalize an offending action/effectin that way counteracting agent regret (and possibly, though this is a further empirical point not defended here, mitigating the psychological effects). This function for apologyself-repairis different from others described in the literature, which address the role of apology in repairing relationships. The present paper describes a nonfictional example, that of a veteran of the U.S. war in Iraq who contacts a family gravely injured by him and his combat unit; the veteran is motivated to contact the family to apologize. The example serves as a prototypical case of agent regret. The example is taken from a recent literature on the clinical psychology of (what that literature calls) self-inflicted moral injury; categorizing this example of moral injury as agent regret also helps broaden our understanding of moral injury as a philosophical category and as a psychological phenomenon. |
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| ISSN: | 1572-8447 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s10677-018-9906-6 |