Social anger and moral resentment as imperative attitudes

The AAA account

Bibliographic Data

ID21370860
AuthorsNeil Roughley (0000-0001-8422-763X, University of Duisburg-Essen, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume183
Issue6
Pages1697-1718
Publication date2026-06-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhilosophical Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-8116 • E-ISSN: 1573-0883
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s11098-026-02510-4
OpenAlexW7138837233
LanguageEN
References cited36

Anger is frequently social, in the sense of being directed at other agents. It is, moreover, characteristically expressed by demands addressed to those agents. One prominent species of social anger, moral resentment, has been influentially claimed to itself have imperative structure. The article examines the thesis that all social anger has imperatival intentionality. Two objections seem to speak against the thesis: first, the claim that only speech acts, not attitudes, can be addressed, and second, the claim that demands constitutive of social anger and moral resentment would, for three distinct reasons, be incoherent. The objections are disarmed by the development of a new analysis of generic social anger as addressed aggressive aversion – the AAA account. According to the account, generic social anger is a negative desire (aversion) qualified both by a further desire concerning interaction with the aversion’s target (address) and by triggered bodily dispositions to aggression. The analysis lays the ground for an explanation of the specificity of moral resentment as a species of anger. Its core, backward-looking aversion to an action on moral grounds, naturally generates an additional, forward-looking desire, whose object is an enduring feature of the primary aversion’s object: the reason-responsive and executive mechanisms expressed in the impermissible action. The account of anger as addressed aggressive aversion grounds a rebuttal of all four reasons taken to speak against the thesis that social anger is imperatival. In the process, the AAA account emerges as a strong contender to be our best way of understanding human anger

Action (physics) · Anger · Harm · Moral disengagement · Object (grammar) · Philosophy of mind · Rebuttal · Resentment · Emotions and Moral Behavior · Free Will and Agency · Philosophical Ethics and Theory

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