Logotipo

Descrição gerada automaticamente

Universidade Federal de Santa Maria

Voluntas, Santa Maria, v. 16, n. 2, e94096, 2025

DOI: 10.5902/2179378694096

ISSN 2179-3786

Submissão: 15/10/2025 Aprovação: 15/10/2025 Publicação: 05/11/2025

1 INTRODUCTION: THE ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE HEART. 3

2 FORGIVENESS, ANGER AND SECOND-PERSONAL ATTITUDES. 8

3 SECOND-PERSONAL ATTITUDES AND RECIPROCATION.. 12

REFERENCES. 17

 

Article

Forgiveness, anger, and the limits of reciprocity: a critical note on Stephen Darwall’s the heart and its attitudes

Perdão, raiva e os limites da reciprocidade: uma nota crítica sobre the heart and its attitudes de Stephen Darwall

 

Flavio WilligesIÍcone

Descrição gerada automaticamente Rafael VogelmannIÍcone

Descrição gerada automaticamente

I Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Santa Maria, RS, Brasil

 

 

ABSTRACT

This article provides a critical examination of Stephen Darwall’s The Heart and its Attitudes, where he extends his second-personal account of morality beyond deontic attitudes of the will to include non-deontic “attitudes of the heart,” such as love, trust, and forgiveness. Darwall argues that both domains share a common structure of reciprocity. While recognizing the significance of this contribution, we raise three main concerns. First, Darwall’s treatment of forgiveness risks reducing deontic forgiveness to a purely normative stance, leaving aside its affective dimension. Second, his account of “personal anger” tends to conflate anger with demands for recognition and care, thereby diluting its normative structure, widely recognized since Aristotle. Third, his general characterization of second-personal attitudes in terms of reciprocity obscures the role of personhood and moral authority in grounding presence, leaving unclear whether attitudes such as love for animals can be adequately described as second-personal. We conclude that although Darwall convincingly highlights the neglected moral importance of attitudes of the heart, his framework requires further clarification to remain faithful to the phenomenology of moral emotions and the conceptual foundations of second-personal relations.

Keywords: Stephen Darwall; Second-personal morality; Attitudes of the heart; Forgiveness; Anger; Moral emotions; Reciprocity

 

RESUMO

Este artigo apresenta um exame crítico de The Heart and its Attitudes, de Stephen Darwall, no qual o autor amplia sua concepção de moralidade de segunda pessoa para além das atitudes deônticas da vontade, incluindo também as chamadas “atitudes do coração”, como amor, confiança e perdão. Darwall sustenta que ambos os domínios compartilham uma estrutura comum de reciprocidade. Reconhecendo a relevância dessa proposta, levantamos três críticas principais. Em primeiro lugar, o tratamento dado ao perdão corre o risco de reduzir o perdão deôntico a uma postura normativa abstrata, desprovida de conteúdo afetivo. Em segundo lugar, a caracterização da “raiva pessoal” tende a confundir esse fenômeno com apelos por reconhecimento e cuidado, diluindo assim sua estrutura normativa, destacada por filósofos desde Aristóteles. Em terceiro lugar, a caracterização geral das atitudes de segunda pessoa em termos de reciprocidade obscurece o papel da noção de pessoa e da autoridade moral na constituição da presença, tornando duvidoso se atitudes como o amor por animais podem ser adequadamente descritas como de segunda pessoa. Concluímos que, embora Darwall ressalte de modo convincente a importância moral das atitudes do coração, seu enquadramento conceitual necessita de maior precisão para permanecer fiel à fenomenologia das emoções morais e aos fundamentos das relações de segunda pessoa.

Palavras-chave: Stephen Darwall; Moralidade de segunda pessoa; Atitudes do coração; Perdão; Raiva; Emoções morais; Reciprocidade

1 INTRODUCTION: THE ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE HEART

Stephen Darwall’s The Heart and its Attitudes is a work of both philosophical rigor and human depth. It invites us to reconsider the moral significance not only of the respect we owe each other but also of the ties of love and vulnerability that sustain our lives. In doing so, Darwall moves beyond traditional approaches to the morality of emotions, which typically center on which emotions a virtuous person should cultivate, their motivational role in action, and their putative epistemic functions in moral contexts. By contrast, he offers an original reframing that recognizes the place of what he calls “attitudes of the heart” in moral life. To understand this move, it is important to see that the reframing is articulated in, and extends from, his theory of second-personal morality first set out in The Second-Person Standpoint[1].

In that classic work, Darwall starts from the idea that morality is not exhausted by abstract principles or calculations of consequences; it manifests itself in concrete practices such as blaming, forgiving, respecting, and assuming responsibility. The distinctive feature of these practices is that individuals relate to one another as moral agents who recognize one another as possessing moral authority and the capacity for reciprocal accountability. This authority is not merely the ability to act in accordance with norms but the faculty of issuing demands to others while also being a legitimate recipient of demands. In this sense, the “second-personal” character of morality is connected to the role of reactive attitudes such as resentment, guilt, and indignation. These attitudes are legitimate ways of addressing others from a position of authority. When someone feels resentment, for example, they react not only to a harm suffered but to the violation of a demand they recognize as legitimate, grounded in their own authority to claim respect. Likewise, offering an apology implies recognizing the other’s moral authority.

For Darwall, then, morality is essentially relational and reciprocal: it arises from the recognition that others have authority over us just as we have authority over them. This structure of mutual demands grounds moral normativity in a distinctive way: what ultimately gives moral weight to our actions is the fact that we can be addressed by other agents who have the legitimacy to ask us for reasons, demand reparations, and expect appropriate responses. In this way, Darwall argues that these attitudes constitute the core of an ethics based on relational moral authority, in contrast to approaches that treat morality as a system of impersonal norms. In short, moral attitudes involve a fundamental second-personal structure: they are directed at another who is addressed not as an object but as someone with whom one seeks to stand in mutual relation.

The development of the theory of second-personal moral attitudes, or attitudes of reciprocity, is directly connected to the philosophy of P. F. Strawson, especially his analysis of reactive attitudes in the classic essay Freedom and Resentment[2]. Strawson does not strictly define what reactive attitudes are, but he emphasizes that they are experienced from a participant perspective - or, as Darwall reformulates it, a second-personal standpoint - in which individuals see one another as moral agents with authority to make moral claims and to hold each other accountable. In The Heart and its Attitudes, Darwall seeks to advance this understanding further, arguing that a particular group of reactive attitudes - the ones he calls “attitudes of the heart” - can also be understood as second-personal attitudes. Darwall’s proposal is bold and original: just as there is a second-personal competence for respect and accountability (what he calls “deontic competence”), there is also a non-deontic, affective, or “of the heart” competence, based on our capacity to open our hearts to others, to become vulnerable, and to respond emotionally in meaningful ways.

A central element of the attitudes of the heart is love. Darwall describes love as “the principal attitude of the heart[3]”. Just as respect presupposes that the other is worthy of moral consideration, love presupposes that the other is worthy of being loved. This dignity does not result from a third-person authority to claim or demand love; rather, it arises from the acknowledgment that when someone says “I love you,” they hope or aim to be loved in return. Darwall’s aim, then, is to show that attitudes of the heart and of the will share a common, reciprocal structure. However, unlike attitudes of the will, which concern mutual responsibility, attitudes of the heart concern mutual responsiveness - an affective openness to the other. Mutual responsiveness is a stance of allowing oneself to be affected, of receiving or inviting the other’s presence, what Darwall characterizes as “aims reciprocation[4]”, and of responding in ways that recognize the other not only as a moral agent but also as a person who feels, suffers, and requires care and loving attention.

The thematic scope of The Heart and Its Attitudes is considerable: exegetical engagements with Strawson; conceptual refinements of reactive attitudes of the will and of the heart; and interpretive excursions into diverse historical and philosophical figures, including Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin, Søren Kierkegaard, Iris Murdoch, and K. E. Løgstrup. The book unfolds across ten chapters that develop a unified thesis about the ethical significance of “attitudes of the heart” alongside the familiar “attitudes of the will.” Chapter 1 presents the structure and purpose of the book and lays the conceptual groundwork, explaining why analytic moral philosophy has tended to privilege deontic reactive attitudes tied to accountability (e.g., blame, guilt, resentment) and why it is necessary to distinguish these from heartfelt attitudes (e.g., love, trust, forgiveness) that are likewise second-personal but oriented to mutual responsiveness rather than obligation. Chapter 2 offers a paired reading of Frederick Douglass and James Baldwin: Darwall reads Douglass’s “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” as a rhetorically powerful appeal to attitudes of respect and accountability - the audience is addressed as bearers of respect who can be held to equalcitizenship claims - whereas Baldwin’s public voice, exemplified in the Cambridge Union debate with William F. Buckley Jr., foregrounds attitudes of the heart: vulnerability, love, and the plea for acknowledgment that aims at responsive openness rather than deontic demand. Although Darwall has a genuine interest in Baldwin and Douglass, his chief purpose in discussing them is to illuminate the distinction between attitudes of the heart and attitudes of the will. Chapter 3 formalizes the distinction by articulating two “species” of reactive attitudes - deontic (of the will) and non-deontic (of the heart) - and argues that both are second-personal in structure while operating under different normative logics. In other words, Darwall distinguishes between attitudes that demand accountability for duties and norms (deontic) and those that express recognition, trust, or care toward others (non-deontic), while maintaining that both remain essentially interpersonal because they presuppose a “you–I” structure of address. Chapter 4 refines the picture by contrasting guilt with remorse and moral indignation with personal anger: guilt and indignation register accountable wrongdoing, while remorse and personal anger arise from a heartfelt recognition of injury within a relationship.

Chapter 5 places love at the center of the heartfelt domain, treating it as the analogue to respect on the deontic side: respect “holds to account” across a will-to-will relation, while love “holds and upholds” across a heart-to-heart relation. Both presuppose reciprocity, though of different kinds. Chapter 6 treats trust and hope, distinguishing deontic trust (whose breach invites blame) from personal trust (whose breach elicits disappointment and hurt), and showing why hope—unlike respect—cannot be demanded but suffuses all heartfelt addresses as an invitation to reciprocate. Chapter 7 engages Løgstrup (with discussion of Murdoch and Kierkegaard) to argue that “natural trust” and loving openness are default human orientations that we later defend against vulnerability, often by moralizing our wounds. Chapter 8 analyzes “heartfelt being-with,” contending that genuine presence is constituted not by mere spatial proximity or formal standing but by reciprocal affective openness that makes the other emotionally present. Chapter 9 reinterprets gratitude not as duty or reciprocal esteem (in Smith’s or Kant’s sense) but as a heartfelt acknowledgment of benevolence that deepens shared connection. Chapter 10 applies the will/heart distinction to debates on reparations and repair for slavery and its legacies, arguing that while accountability and institutional redress are indispensable, the healing of personal and collective wounds requires attitudes of the heart—above all, love and the forms of responsiveness it enables.

In the remainder of this article, we will discuss the attempt at providing a general characterization of second-personal attitudes in terms of reciprocation and some points related to Darwall’s account of forgiveness and anger. We do so in the hope of underscoring the book’s importance and highlighting thought-provoking issues that may shape future discussions of Darwall’s main contributions in The Heart and Its Attitudes.

 2 FORGIVENESS, ANGER AND SECOND-PERSONAL ATTITUDES

Darwall’s usually frames the distinction between “attitudes of the will” from “attitudes of the heart” in emotional terms. This project finds particularly clear expression in Chapter 4 of The Heart and its Attitudes. There he contrasts guilt with remorse, and impartial anger with personal anger. Within this framework, he also introduces a distinction between two kinds of forgiveness: deontic forgiveness and heartfelt forgiveness. We contend, however, that many of the attitudes Darwall describes are abstract evaluative or normative attitudes that have no clear emotional content. As such, Darwall’s account of these attitudes runs the risk of failing to engage with the concerns of those trying to understand guilt, remorse, anger and forgiveness as human emotional phenomena. Our focus will be on anger and forgiveness because they are not only paradigmatic in moral life but have also become increasingly central in contemporary philosophy of emotions and ethics. Anger and resentment are often understood as natural responses to offense and injustice, while forgiveness - especially in cases of violent crime, as Jeffrey Murphy[5] has shown - can mark a turning point in moral relations, potentially directing victims either toward vengeance or toward reconciliation.

Darwall distinguishes between two forms of forgiveness: deontic forgiveness, understood as the release of the wrongdoer from responsibility once an apology is accepted, and heartfelt forgiveness, conceived as an attitude of the heart involving emotional reconciliation. In the first sense, forgiveness is a normative act: one withdraws resentment, no longer considers the offender bound to the wrong, and thereby restores their moral standing. But as Darwall himself concedes, this need not involve any affective reconciliation. Heartfelt forgiveness, by contrast, arises when the victim responds to the offender’s remorse not only by lifting resentment but also by opening their heart in return. Such forgiveness, however, “is nothing one can expect[6]”; unlike deontic attitudes of mutual respect, it cannot be demanded, only hoped for.

This two-level model is suggestive, but it also raises a deeper question about the nature of the emotions Darwall places at its center. He is surely right that heartfelt forgiveness cannot be required. Yet it remains unclear what genuine affective content, if any, can be attributed to deontic forgiveness. In his scheme, it is captured by the forswearing of resentment. Since resentment is indeed the paradigmatic attitude of the will through which victims hold perpetrators accountable for moral injury, this formulation has some plausibility. But it risks reducing forgiveness to a purely normative release, leaving us with something that may not be recognizably emotional.

The parable of the prodigal son vividly illustrates this difficulty. It would be odd to describe the father’s act as forgiveness if all he had done was to relinquish resentment while withholding compassion or emotional openness. What makes his forgiveness recognizable as an emotional response is the embrace that reestablishes fellowship, transforming the relationship through joy and reconciliation. Forgiveness, in this sense, is not simply a matter of lifting blame but of undergoing an inner change of heart, moving beyond resentment into some form of goodwill, however fragile.

Seen in this light, deontic forgiveness exemplifies the risk of describing forgiveness in terms that lack genuine emotional content. It is depicted chiefly as the forswearing of resentment, which makes it appear more like a normative stance than an affective state. While this captures one dimension of how victims may release offenders from accountability, it remains doubtful whether such a release on its own amounts to forgiveness in the full, emotional sense. That is because, given the abstract and denatured description of deontic forgiveness, it seems possible for it to take place without any of the phenomenological, motivational or affective marks of emotional forgiveness. The result is that there is a live possibility that what Darwall presents as a distinction between two emotions is actually the pairing of a genuine emotional response with a non-emotional deontic attitude. The worry, then, is that Darwall’s framework may not fully connect with the concerns of those who seek to understand forgiveness as a human psychological phenomenon - a lived affective experience of reconciliation - rather than as an abstract evaluative posture.

A different but related problem arises in the case of anger. Impartial anger, or moral indignation, is a deontic attitude: it is a form of blame that aims to hold its object accountable for a wrong. Its structure is akin to guilt, but taken from the perspective of a third party. Personal anger, by contrast, has its natural site in intimate relationships. It does not function primarily to attribute culpability or to demand justification, but to draw the other’s attention to what matters to the angry person precisely because the relationship itself matters. Getting angry in this sense is a way of saying: “I matter to you, so what hurts me should matter to you as well.”

At first glance, this is plausible and persuasive. On closer inspection, however, what is really at stake in personal anger is not anger proper but an appeal for recognition, appreciation, and care. In the example Darwall discusses in the first chapter[7], the partner who feels hurt does not seek to hold the other accountable in the sense of attributing blame or demanding justification. On the contrary, he/she expects instead being seen, heard, and cared for. This contrasts with the usual features of anger as philosophers describe it - namely, a sense of having been wronged, a protest against the responsible party, and a demand for redress or recognition of wrongdoing. Marilyn Frye’s analysis of women’s anger under patriarchy is illuminating here. She argues that “to be angry you have to have some sense of rightness or propriety of your position and your interest in whatever has been hindered, interfered with or harmed, and anger implies a claim to such rightness or propriety[8]”. By labeling appeals for recognition and care as “personal anger,” Darwall risks diluting the concept and extending it to experiences better understood as woundedness or care-seeking. The problem is that, given the usual characterization of anger as involving an appraisal of its object as an offense and motivation for retaliation, the case he describes may not be anger at all, but a different affective posture - one that belongs to the heart yet does not align with the conceptual contours of anger. Here, the risk is that what Darwall presents as a contrast between two species of anger is actually a pairing of genuine anger with an altogether different kind of affective demand for recognition. Using the emotional term “anger” to refer to different phenomena once again risks confusion.

The paired attitudes - whether deontic forgiveness or personal anger - frequently do not align with the emotional phenomena they are identified with. In the case of forgiveness, the deontic form appears abstract and devoid of affective content, while in the case of anger, what Darwall calls “personal anger” is better described as an emotional appeal for recognition from a partner or significant other, rather than anger in its ordinary sense. This creates a tension in Darwall’s project. On the one hand, he is committed to showing how affective attitudes such as anger, forgiveness, trust, and other moral emotions are indispensable for understanding morality. On the other hand, when he classifies these attitudes under the rubric of the will and the heart, they do not fully replicate the psychological and affective structures through which these emotions are actually experienced. So, even if our interpretation of forgiveness and anger could be disputed, we take it to be an important task to clarify how far a philosophical account of these attitudes should remain responsive to our ordinary emotional experiences and moral practices. Without such attentiveness, the risk is that classificatory schemes may illuminate conceptual distinctions at the cost of misrepresenting the lived character of the emotions themselves.

3 SECOND-PERSONAL ATTITUDES AND RECIPROCATION

Throughout The Heart and its Attitudes, two different objectives are pursued and sometimes cut across each other. One of the explicit goals of the book is to “arrive at a general account of what makes something a reactive attitude in Strawson’s sense[9]”. Darwall attempts to provide a general characterization of second-personal attitudes in terms of reciprocation. Another goal is to show that by ignoring attitudes of the heart, moral theorizing has missed an important dimension of morality that is not concerned with rights, authority and accountability, but rather with mutual responsiveness and emotional openness and connection. These are independent goals. In this section we point to some shortcomings in Darwall’s general characterization of second-personal attitudes. These shortcomings, however, do not concern the second objective. Even if Darwall’s general characterization of second-personal attitudes is flawed, the point remains that attitudes of the heart play a role in moral relations that have, up until now, been largely ignored in moral theorizing.

In The Second-Person Standpoint (SPS), Darwall characterized the second-personal standpoint in terms of a number of relations held between the concepts of authority, responsibility and competence. The central idea is that we take up a second-personal standpoint when we make demands on another’s conduct. Second-personal demands purport to give their addressees a particular kind of reason that is grounded in the agent’s second-personal authority to make that demand. As such they presuppose that the addressee of the demand is capable of recognizing that authority and responding to the second-personal reasons it grounds – that is, it presupposes the addressee to have second-personal competence. Second-personal demands, thus, make a claim on the addressee’s will – they are not only a demand that he behaves in a particular way, but that he determines himself to act in response to the relevant reasons. Furthermore, if the addressee acknowledges the agent’s authority, he must also accept that the agent will have grounds for some form of accountability-seeking response if he doesn’t comply with the demand.

Deontic reactive attitudes take center stage in this picture because they are a way of holding people responsible. They involve “an expectation of, and demand for” certain conduct[10] and as such presuppose the authority to hold someone responsible and make demands of him[11]. Deontic reactive attitudes are always, according to Darwall, implicitly second-personal[12].

This sense of authoritative demand is missing from the non-deontic attitudes of the heart in Strawson’s list (such as remorse, forgiveness, hurt feelings, hope, trust, gratitude, and love). These attitudes do not implicitly make demands of their addressees, they do not hold their addressees accountable and do not presuppose the authority to do so. They are not, then, second-personal by the deontic definition put forward in SPS.

A central aim of The Heart and its Attitudes is to argue for the view that, although attitudes of the heart are not second-personal in this deontic sense, there is a more general sense in which attitudes of the will and attitudes of the heart are both second personal. In particular, Darwall argues that both kinds of attitudes share a common reciprocating structure. “All reactive attitudes — nondeontic as well as deontic— are held from a second-person perspective and implicitly relate to their object as someone capable of reciprocating them within a second-person standpoint[13]”. “Reciprocation, potential or actual, is a mark of reactive attitudes quite generally[14]”. They come with a RSVP.

The main difference is that while the reciprocation attitudes of the will seek is a voluntary formation of the will of their addressee’s, attitudes of the heart seek an “involuntary opening of the heart[15]” and, thus, cannot be demanded.

The kind of reciprocation attitudes of the heart aims at is the kind of “heartfelt connection we seek in personal relationships of love and friendship”. While attitudes of the will mediate relations of mutual accountability, attitudes of the heart mediate mutual responsiveness[16]. Love is a paradigmatic attitude of the heart in this sense. It is addressed to someone and seeks reciprocal emotional connection (even though it can remain unreciprocated). Indeed, Darwall holds that “just as respect is implicit in all deontic reactive attitudes of the will, so also is love implicit in all attitudes of the heart[17]”. That is, every attitude of the heart seeks reciprocal emotional connection in some way. As Darwall puts it, they involve “the opening of the heart to another heart in the hope that it will be open to one’s own in return[18]”.

We do not believe Darwall’s attempt at formulating a generic conception of second-personal attitudes in terms of reciprocation is completely successful. There seems to be examples of attitudes that call for reciprocation, but are not second-personal according to Darwall’s definition. And these cases suggest that what makes attitudes of the heart second-personal is not simply the fact that they call for reciprocation, but rather the fact that they are situated in second-personal relationships in the deontic sense mobilized in SPS. If that is the case, then Darwall has not moved beyond the deontic characterization of the second-personal standpoint offered in SPS. The relationship between humans and animals, together with Darwall’s discussion of the notion of presence, might serve as an interesting test case here.

According to Darwall, second-personal love seeks “being with one another, being in each other’s presence[19]”. And the concept of presence is tied to the concept of person. “To be in someone’s presence is to be brought somehow into awareness of and relation to them as a person”. The concept of a person, however, is a forensic concept that can only be understood “within a network of concepts involving the idea of (second- personally) addressable claims and demands[20]”.

That means that second-personal love of the kind Darwall is concerned with cannot have as its objects animals that lack personhood, for instance. It is clear, however, that animals can be the object of our love and that, often, we expect that love to be reciprocated (as it usually is by our pets). This kind of love, although it seeks reciprocation, is not second-personal according to Darwall’s definition. Why not? It seems the reason is that its object does not stand with us in a deontic second-personal relationship, in the sense defined in SPS.

That seems to suggest that the view that the defining characteristic of second-personal attitudes is reciprocity has to be revised. It suggests that the defining characteristic of that genus of attitudes is the mutual recognition of authority that is involved in seeing another as a person and is embedded in attitudes of the will and that other attitudes (such as attitudes of the heart) acquire that status by being situated in relationships marked by the kind of respect that accompanies the recognition of personhood. Outside of that moral perspective of mutual respect, reciprocity is not sufficient to categorize an attitude as second-personal[21].

Darwall himself suggests something along these lines: “unless some according of second-personal authority is somewhere in the background, the parties cannot really be in one another’s presence and so together with one another[22]”.

If that reading is correct, what situates us in a second-personal standpoint is the recognition of the relations of authority and accountability baked into the attitudes of the will. In that setting, attitudes of the heart acquire a second-personal profile.

Even if we admit that, however, the main point of the book remains. Attitudes of the will and attitudes of the heart mediate different kinds of relationships that have different kinds of moral significance. Through deontic reactive attitudes, “we relate to others and ourselves as one person among others[23]”. The moral demands that impinge on these relationships concern what we own to each other from an impersonal stand and can plausibly receive a contractualist treatment[24]. Attitudes of the heart, even if their second-personality depends on the structure of respect underpinned by attitudes of the will, structure personal relationships of reciprocal emotional connection. The moral meaning of these relationships cannot be accounted for in terms of authoritative demands, but rather in terms of personal care and concern for others in their individuality.

 

REFERENCES

Darwall, S. The Heart & its Attitudes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024.

Darwall, S. The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.

Frye, M. A note on anger. In: Frye, M. The Politics of Reality: essays in feminist theory. New York: Crossing Press, 1983, p. 84-94.

Mason, M. Review of The Heart and its Attitudes. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2025. Available at: https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/the-heart-its-attitudes/

Murphy, J. Getting Even: Forgiveness and its Limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Strawson, P. F. Freedom and resentment. In: Strawson, P. F. Studies in the Philosophy of Thought and Action. London: Oxford University Press, 1968.

 

CONTRIBUTION OF AUTHORSHIP

1 – Flavio Williges

Professor in the departament of postgraduate program in Philosophy at UFSM

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2820-9805 • fwilliges@gmail.com

Contribution: writing and first drafting

2 – Rafael Vogelmann

Professor in the Department of Philosophy at UFSM and Permanent Faculty Member of the Postgraduate Program

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9582-8465 rafael.vog@gmail.com

Contribution: writing and first drafting

 

HOW TO QUOTE THIS ARTICLE

Williges, F.; Vogelmann, R. Forgiveness, anger, and the limits of reciprocity: a critical note on Stephen Darwall’s the heart and its attitudes. Voluntas: Revista Internacional de Filosofia, Santa Maria - Florianópolis, v. 16, n. 2, e94096, 2025. Disponível em: https://doi.org/10.5902/2179378694096. Acesso em: dia, mês abreviado, ano.

 

 



[1] Darwall, S. The Second-Person Standpoint, 2006.

[2] Strawson, P. Freedom and Resentment, 1968.

[3] Darwall, S. The Heart and Its Attitudes, p. 64.

[4] Darwall, S. The Heart and Its Attitudes, p. 65.

[5] Murphy, J. Getting even: forgiveness and its limits, 2004.

[6] Darwall, S. The Heart and Its Attitudes, p. 57.

[7] Darwall, S. The Heart and Its Attitudes, p. 8.

[8] Frye, M. A note on anger, p. 86.

[9] Darwall, S. The Heart and Its Attitudes, p. 4.

[10] Strawson, P. Freedom and Resentment, p. 85.

[11]  Darwall, S. The Second-Person Standpoint, p. 17.

[12]  Darwall, S. The Second-Person Standpoint, p. 67.

[13] Darwall, S. The Heart and Its Attitudes, p. 4.

[14] Darwall, S. The Heart and Its Attitudes, p. 32.

[15] Darwall, S. The Heart and Its Attitudes, p. 10.

[16] Darwall, S. The Heart and Its Attitudes, p. 43.

[17] Darwall, S. The Heart and Its Attitudes, p. 9.

[18] Darwall, S. The Heart and Its Attitudes, p. 40.

[19] Darwall, S. The Heart and Its Attitudes, p. 64.

[20] Darwall, S. The Heart and Its Attitudes, p. 72.

[21] It is useful to compare this point with similar objections Michelle Mason raises in her review of The Heart and its Attitudes. She argues that the account of reactive attitudes as “essentially reciprocating emotions one feels toward people with whom one has interpersonal relationships [...] admits as reactive attitudes candidates that Darwall presumably would exclude”. We agree with that point. We add that characterizing reactive attitudes as reciprocating emotions in the context of interpersonal relationships shows that Darwall has not really abandoned the account of second-personal standpoint put forward in SPS. Mason adds that “it remains unclear to me whether calling an affective attitude ‘second-personal’ adds anything to calling it reciprocating”. If our point is correct, calling a reciprocating attitude second-personal adds that it takes place in a relationship that is marked by the mutual recognition of second-personal authority and accountability.

[22] Darwall, S. The Heart and Its Attitudes, p. 129.

[23] Darwall, S. The Heart and Its Attitudes, p. 150.

[24] Darwall, S. The Second-Person Standpoint, Ch. 12.