Moral criticism and structural injustice

Zheng, R. (2021) Moral criticism and structural injustice. Mind, 130(518), pp. 503-535. (doi: 10.1093/mind/fzaa098)

Abstract

Moral agency is limited, imperfect, and structurally constrained. This is evident in the many ways we all unwittingly participate in widespread injustice through our everyday actions, which I call ‘structural wrongs’. To do justice to these facts, I argue that we should distinguish between summative and formative moral criticism. While summative criticism functions to conclusively assess an agent's performance relative to some benchmark, formative criticism aims only to improve performance in an ongoing way. I show that the negative sanctions associated with summative responses are only justifiably imposed under certain conditions when persons exercise their agency wrongly — conditions that do not always hold for structural wrongs. Yet even in such cases we can still use formative responses, which are warranted whenever agents fall short of moral ideals. Expanding our repertoire of moral criticism to include both summative and formative responses enables us to better appreciate both the powers and limitations of our agency, and the complexity of moral life.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Zheng, Dr Robin
• Authors: Zheng, R.
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Humanities > Philosophy
• Journal Name: Mind
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• ISSN: 0026-4423
• ISSN (Online): 1460-2113
• Published Online: 05 February 2021
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2021 The Author
• First Published: First published in Mind 130(518):503-535
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License