This paper is an attempt to give shape to the idea of an ‘expressive emotion.’ An emotion is expressive, I argue, if it is best explained by reference to an expressive action. An expressive action is an action that has expressive or symbolic properties that relate non-arbitrarily to the significance of a situation, and which non-instrumentally marks the situation as in some way significant. I argue for six main conclusions about expressive emotions and their relation to expressive action. First, their psychological role is the same as that of expressive actions, namely, to lift situations out of the mundane and mark them as in some way significant. Second, their phenomenology is best explained by reference to the symbolism of an expressive action. Third, they centrally involve an attitude to an expressive action as called for in the situation. Fourth, the conditions of fittingness specified by the emotion’s formal object are shared with the conditions of appropriateness of an expressive action. Fifth, they are given expression in the relevant expressive action; this is the action towards which the emotion has a motivational tendency. Sixth, they are emotions for which there can be non-instrumental reasons; and the nature of such reasons is best explained by reference to an expressive action. I argue that reference to expressive action helps to explain how emotions are to be individuated; in what their unity consists; and how there can be non-instrumental reasons for emotions. I do not claim that the expressive theory applies to everything that is called ‘emotion.’ Emotions that I am interested in include pride, shame, guilt, joy, disappointment, awe. In this paper I focus on the emotion of guilt, arguing that it is best understood in relation to the expressive action of dissociation (from wrongdoing).

Abstract This chapter introduces the idea of expressive action and illustrates it through examples. It draws a parallel between expressive action and ritual and raises the Explanation Question and the Question of Reflective Endorsement. The two questions are linked. The Explanation Question is: what is going on when we engage in expressive action? The Question of Reflective Endorsement is: once we have our best account of what is going on when we engage in expressive action, can we continue to endorse it as worthwhile (given the costs, including opportunity costs, that attend this phenomenon). A quietist answer to the Question of Reflective Endorsement is considered briefly and rejected.

In this paper I defend the normative power account of forgiveness against the charge that it cannot accommodate the intimate connection between forgiveness and emotion. I look at the grounds for thinking that emotion is central to forgiveness. I then show how philosophers have developed this idea in accounts which make emotional changes definitive of forgiveness. Against such views, I show that serious problems face any attempt to make emotional change definitive of forgiveness. Next, I explain the normative power account and some of its advantages; I show that the normative power account escapes the problems of the emotional change view. I then consider the objection to the normative power account mentioned above: that it cannot adequately explain the role of emotion in forgiveness. I develop this objection by reference to a recent discussion by Luke Russell. I consider two initial responses to this objection that can be made by a proponent of the normative power account: that forgiveness does not always need to be emotional; and that forgiveness can involve undertaking a commitment to emotional change. I then develop the normative power account, explaining two ways in which forgiveness can be ‘expressive.’ The normative power of forgiveness may require emotion for its exercise. And forgiveness may be a powerful expressive action through which the forgiver marks their commitment to an ongoing relationship.

Abstract This chapter investigates the possibility of expressive obligations. The idea explored is that some expressive responses are obligatory (in some situations, for some set of agents). This idea is developed from the account of expressive action and expressive reasons set out in Part II. The argument is that this account can avoid some of the major philosophical objections that have been raised against the notion of obligation. The chapter also suggests that the basis of these obligations might be expressive: that it may be that the only symbolically adequate way to mark certain significances is to treat one’s response to them as obligatory.

This article explains the centrality of apology to an adequate account of reparations. I look in depth at what goes on in apology. As I have previously argued, apology is an expressive action through which we seek to mark adequately the significance of our own wrongdoing. I claim that apology so understood is not merely ornamental. I defend the role of apology against criticisms that it is insufficient, unnecessary, or irrelevant to historical injustice. Apology, I claim, has an essential role in an adequate account of corrective justice. Corrective justice is sometimes rejected as a basis for reparations because of the inapplicability to historical injustice of the narrow financial compensation model found in tort law. However, as numerous theorists have argued, compensation cannot be the whole story of corrective justice. The contribution of this article is to defend an apology model of corrective justice. According to the apology model of corrective justice, the most fundamental normative effect of wrongdoing is the incurring of penitential obligations, the existence and persistence of which do not depend on the persistence of compensable harm to identifiable individuals.

Abstract Phenomena in the vicinity of expressive action have already been intensively studied by psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists, as well as by philosophers. I divide the accounts that have been produced into two families. The Arationality Explanation holds that expressive action and its psychological causes are non-rational. The Indirect Benefit claims that expressive action can be rational, but only because of benefits that come from it indirectly—for instance, benefits to the individual, or to a specific audience, or benefits to a society more broadly. I argue that if these views were correct then they would leave us unable to return a positive answer to the Question of Reflective Endorsement. However, I claim that they also fail to give a good answer to the Explanation Question, and that we need a better explanation of what we are doing when we engage in expressive action. I defend this claim about the Explanation Question in part through a detailed examination of the examples that we introduced in Chapter 1.

Abstract The purpose of this book is to provide a philosophical development of the idea of expressive action. Expressive actions are symbolic actions that mark situations as in some way significant. In expressive action the symbolism is not arbitrary in relation to what is being marked; rather, the symbols speak in some way to the significant features of the situation being marked. A crucial task for a theory of expressive action is to explain what is going on when we do these things. This is the Explanation Question. Many writers have found it difficult, at least on the face of it, to articulate a point to expressive action. The other central question about expressive action is the Question of Reflective Endorsement: once we know what we are doing when we engage in expressive action, is it something we can continue to regard as worthwhile given the costs involved in it? The most adequate answer to the Explanation Question is that, in paradigm cases of expressive action, we are acting on a distinctive evaluative conception: the conception of expressive reasons. Certain key social, moral and psychological phenomena can be illuminated by considering them as forms of engagement with expressive reasons.

This paper is a response to Christopher Lewis's recent paper on lex talionis. I claim that Lewis's interpretation cannot answer some of the questions that it needs to. In particular, we need to understand what our fundamental motivation is for subscribing to a principle of proportionality in the first place. Facing this kind of question head on is the only way to rehabilitate the principle of lex talionis-if indeed, it merits rehabilitation.

This paper is a response to Emily McTernan's book, Taking Offence. I focus on how to evaluate taking offence comparatively against alternative attitudes such as anger or blame. Drawing on some of my work on blame, emotion and expressive action, I sketch a way in which we might reach a more convincing answer than that provided by McTernan.

I argue against the idea of basic desert. I claim that the supposed normative force of desert considerations is better understood in terms of dissociation. The starting point is to note that an important strategy in spelling out the apparent normative force of desert considerations appeals to the idea of complicity. I argue that the idea of basic desert cannot give a good explanation of this connection. I propose that it is rather dissociation that is explanatorily basic. I further argue that dissociation is an expressive action. Dissociation from wrongdoing-expressed as distancing from the wrongdoer-is an expressive attempt to do justice to the significance of wrongdoing in a way analogous to the expressive attempt to thank someone adequately for doing you a favor. I draw on the idea of dissociation as an expressive action to explain why it should be that a failure to dissociate is a source of complicity.

In this paper I give an interpretation of the Wim Wenders film, Paris, Texas, that brings to bear Talbot Brewer’s notion of “dialectical activity.” According to Brewer, dialectical activity is an activity the value of which is only obscurely glimpsed at the outset, and which must be deepened and broadened through progressive engagement in the activity. I argue that these features characterize Travis, the main character in the film, and that his developing engagement in activity explains the viewer’s sense of initial disorientation gradually resolving itself into clarity. Drawing on Alasdair MacIntyre, I argue that another reason for disorientation is provided by the overwhelming social environment of modern America that makes the pursuit of dialectical activity hard to sustain.

In pursuit of a theory of expressive reasons, I focus on the practical rationality of actions such as welcoming, thanking, congratulating, saluting - I label them 'expressive actions.' How should we understand the kinds of practical reasons that count in favour of expressive actions? This question is related to the question of how to understand non-instrumental fittingness-type reasons for emotion. Expressive actions often are and should be expressions of emotion. It seems to be an important feature of such actions that the reasons that count in favour of the action are entangled with reasons of fittingness that count in favour of the relevantly connected emotion. But how should we understand this entanglement? I argue that the relevant category of reasons cannot be captured on approaches standard in normative theory. I develop a theory of sui generis expressive reasons. I argue that we have reason to perform actions that mark certain situations that contain some significant value or disvalue, independently of any reason to alter those situations. This is the role of expressive actions. Sui generis reasons for expressive actions are entangled with reasons for relevantly connected emotions because (some) emotions have the same role of marking extraordinary situations.

In this paper, I argue that our practice of giving and demanding apologies is rationalized by a belief that apologies make a difference to our normative situation. The characteristic normative effects of an apology are, I claim, that it removes an obligation on others to distance themselves from the wrongdoer, and that it makes the apologizer personally accountable to the addressee for their future compliance with the obligation they violated. However, if we ask what rationalizes that belief, two influential views on the literature on apology – that I call the Reassurance View and the Performing Deference View – prove to be inadequate. In particular, these views cannot explain how apology can be both an expression of remorse for one’s wrongdoing but also a performative through which, by carrying out certain canonical actions, one can – all at once – change one’s normative situation. In order to explain these features of apology, I suggest that we see apology as akin to a normative power, but a normative power that is exercised expressively, or by an expressive action. In particular, I suggest that we see the power of apology as exercised by the performance of the expressive action of dissociation.

Philosophical debate on the role of remorse in criminal justice has largely focused on whether remorse should play a role in sentencing decisions. In this chapter, the author argues that this focus is unhelpfully narrow. Even though there are, the author believes, good reasons to think that remorse should not influence sentencing, there are other valuable roles for remorse in a well-designed and well-functioning criminal justice system. In defending this conclusion, the chapter looks at the nature and value of probation. In particular, it looks at the role that the encouragement of remorse might have in a well-structured and open probationary relationship. It is not always inappropriate, the chapter concludes, for state officials to take an interest in whether offenders are remorseful for what they have done.

In this paper I give an interpretation of the Wim Wenders film, Paris, Texas, that brings to bear Talbot Brewer's notion of "dialectical activity." According to Brewer, dialectical activity is an activity the value of which is only obscurely glimpsed at the outset, and which must be deepened and broadened through progressive engagement in the activity. I argue that these features characterize Travis, the main character in the film, and that his developing engagement in activity explains the viewer's sense of initial disorientation gradually resolving itself into clarity. Drawing on Alasdair MacIntyre, I argue that another reason for disorientation is provided by the overwhelming social environment of modern America that makes the pursuit of dialectical activity hard to sustain.