P. S. Greenspan, "Subjective Guilt and Responsibility," Mind, 101 (1992), 287-303
Abstract
The paper defends a "nonjudgmentalist" account of guilt
feelings that makes sense of their extension to cases where an
agent does not believe he is actually guilty. These include the
familiar
case of guilt for the death of a child in an unavoidable car
accident, along with cases of survivor's guilt and collective
guilt.
I argue that three alternatives in the literature are inadequate:
Rawls' rejection of real guilt feelings in such cases; Gabriele
Taylor's acceptance of them for cases involving only a judgment
of
causal responsibility; and Herbert Morris' appeal to a "nonmoral"
sense of guilt.
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