Abstract
T. Scanlon showed his “interpretation” of blame in his book Moral Dimensions
in 2008. It gave a tremendous boost to debates on blame and many philosophers
are getting to theorize their own account by criticizing and comparing to his
theory. A preferable reason for that is that it has good explanatory force. It can
explain many aspects which phenomena of blame have and give excellent normative
foundation to regulate blaming. On the other side, there is an unpreferable
reason. It is that his conception of blame seems strange to other philosophers.
He denies the emotional aspect, ex. resentment or indignation, as the main element
of blame. He instead makes blame depend on relation（ex. friends, families
or fellows in business）and argues that to blame is to revise the relationship between
blamer and the blamed.
In this paper, I aim to introduce his theory, to analyze various critiques of it,
and to defend it. There are three kinds of problems in his theory. The first is
about his conception of the blame. According to critics, his interpretation includes
wrong phenomena as blame and excludes genuine phenomena from
blame. The second problem is about his conception of relation. Some opponents
argue that relation defined by him seems to be so vulnerable that just one blame
could break the relation. They insist that relation should be stronger because blaming is very common and usual to us. The last one is about his conception of
morality. He presupposes “moral relation” correspond to moral blame. However,
there seems no relation such a thing, to critics. They criticize that it is difficult
for him to explain morality between strangers who do not have relational mutuality.
I resolve some problems by correcting misunderstandings about his main conceptions.
To other problems, I respond by reconsidering our assumption of priority
of morality to non-moral value. I finally seek the successful interpretation
of Scanlon’s theory in terms of non-moral, personal or individual relation.
