Why Blame?

Ever since her first book, State Punishment, a recurring theme of Nicola Lacey’s scholarship has been a hesitancy about blame—what it is for, how to assign it, and whether to let it take hold. In her later work, Lacey has disaggregated the problem of blame from the problem of responsibility, and explored ways in which responsibility could be assigned without blaming. Her suggestions have centred on the possibility of forgiveness. I admire Lacey’s humane instinct in urging us to do less blaming. However I do not think that this instinct is all that is at work in her recurring doubts about blame. For it is possible to embrace forgiveness while holding those one forgives to be blameworthy? Arguably, indeed, forgiveness presupposes blameworthiness. The deeper puzzle is about blameworthiness itself. What is it for? Why does it matter? What is its place in the architecture of the human condition? It is no answer to say that blameworthiness matters because responsibility matters. There is responsibility without blameworthiness, and responsibility matters for reasons that have nothing to do with blameworthiness. Nor is it an answer to say that blameworthiness matters because blaming matters. Only when one works out why it matters that someone is blameworthy does one begin to show why people should ever do any blaming. Or so I will argue. I will suggest that the importance of blameworthiness is genuinely mysterious. That position is associated with Bernard Williams. I think that some of Williams’ worries are shared by Lacey. However, I will suggest that, in light of my remarks, they are not exactly the right worries.