This paper provides a systematic understanding of a certain class of reactive attitudes by offering a novel account of the role of hope in interpersonal relationships. Following Peter Strawson’s position in “Freedom and Resentment” (1962), a particular view of reactive attitudes (e.g. resentment, indignation and guilt) has become commonplace: They are reactions to the disappointment of normative expectations. However, this does not adequately describe all reactive attitudes: We may feel anger at a lover who wants to spend much time alone; we may feel remorse for hurting another even though we have not frustrated a legitimate expectation; we may feel grateful even though the other has not exceeded normative expectations. I provide a systematic account of these reactive attitudes that Stephen Darwall has recently termed “non deontic”: They are reactions to the disappointment or fulfillment of hopes. This also allows for a new understanding of hope: To have hope in relation to another person just is to be susceptible to non-deontic reactive attitudes. An important consequence is that, contra Darwall, non-deontic reactive attitudes can be normatively evaluated – they are more or less justified because they are responses to more or less justified hopes.

It can be profoundly unclear whether we are blameworthy for harms in which we have been causally involved. But how should one then respond? More specifically, should one offer an apology? This paper introduces Pascal’s Apology, drawing inspiration from Pascal’s Wager. Just as Pascal argued that belief in God is the safer bet under uncertainty, Pascal’s Apology suggests that apologising is the safer moral choice—better to apologise and risk unnecessary admission than to withhold apology and risk moral failure. The paper develops this idea by distinguishing between the “in case” and “(as) if” models of apology, constructing the strongest version of Pascal’s Apology and addressing criticisms against so-called conditional apologies. However, I argue that Pascal’s Apology ultimately fails as an erroneous workaround. It retains a strong connection to fault, assuming that under perfect knowledge, one should apologise only if at fault. I challenge this assumption, arguing instead that the obligation to apologise rests on other factors. In particular, the prevention of expressive harm—such as conveying disrespect or neglect—can generate an obligation to apologise, even in the absence of fault. This analysis sheds new light on the nature and moral significance of apologies.

Most theorists agree that once something is in the past, you are either responsible for it or not. Enoch (2012) and Mason (2019) argue, however, that you can make yourself responsible in some cases, that is, become responsible for past action by taking responsibility now. Both contend to capture important data points in our everyday practices. Call any such view Responsibility Expansionism (RE). This paper examines whether RE is tenable, argues that both views are unsatisfactory, and offers a novel way to defend RE.

I first clarify RE and place it within the literature on responsibility. Second, I discuss Enoch’s normative power account and Mason’s emotional engagement account and argue that both are unsuccessful, raising three problems for each. I carve out their common problematic denominator to provide an alternative. Third, I defend RE by amending the pluralist view, an account of taking responsibility for wrongdoing. I show how it does all the explanatory work the other accounts aim to do, and that it allows for RE by locating the expansion at a change in operative norms the agent subsumes under instead of in specific self-conceptions. Thus, we can indeed become responsible by taking responsibility, although not quite so mysteriously.

Moral responsibility is tied to certain interpersonal practices – practices to which so-called reactive attitudes, most paradigmatically blame and praise, are central. We take up this broadly Strawsonian idea and discuss a problem arising from it. The responsibility-relevant practices would seem to have capacitarian prerequisites, i.e. individuals are the appropriate targets of the reactive attitudes only if they possess certain capacities – e.g. rational or interlocutory capacities. At the same time, participation in our responsibility-practices has the distinct advantages of reciprocity and normative directedness, from which individuals who lack the relevant capacities should also benefit. However, those who permanently lack the requisite capacities – such as people with severe cognitive disabilities (SCDs) – seem to be excluded from these advantages of our responsibility-practices, given their clear capacitarian prerequisites. We propose a solution to this problem: although it is inappropriate to adopt reactive attitudes towards people with SCDs, it is appropriate to relate to them as participants in other, non-capacitarian practices that are isomorphic to responsibility-practices and thus retain their advantages. At the centre of these practices lie relations of attentiveness and responsiveness, as discussed most prominently in care ethics.