Thomas Sinclair (Wadham College, Oxford): 'Hypocrisy as Evasion'
Abstract: Hypocrites attract moral condemnation and are widely thought to lack standing to condemn others for failings they themselves exhibit. This paper argues against attempts to explain this that appeal to moral conditions on blaming and notions of moral authority, proposing instead an account based on a conception of moral engagement as fundamentally dialogical in character. According to this account, blame is just one of many modes of moral engagement whose proper purpose is the building of a shared moral world of mutually acknowledged responsibilities. The hypocrite misuses these modes, and this both generates a basic moral objection to hypocrisy that is prior to the more specific objections highlighted by other accounts and explains the hypocrite’s loss of standing.
