Complicity and hypocrisy

Nicolas Cornell and Amy Sepinwall
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Nicolas Cornell: University of Michigan, USA
Amy Sepinwall: University of Pennsylvania, USA

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 2020, vol. 19, issue 2, 154-181

Abstract: This article offers a justification for accommodating claims of conscience. The standard justification points to the pain that acting against one’s conscience entails. But that defense cannot make sense of the state’s refusal to accommodate individuals where the law interferes with their deeply meaningful but nonmoral projects. An alternative justification, we argue, arises once one recognizes the connection between conscience and moral address: One’s lived moral convictions determine when and with what force one can hold others to account. Acting against one’s convictions can undermine one’s standing to blame others who act in similar ways. When the state compels someone to act against conscience, it renders her complicit in conduct she takes to be wrong and thereby impairs her ability to condemn similar conduct in the future, in a manner akin to the hypocrite. The reason the state should not compel people to act against conscience, then, is that doing so would undercut their moral standing.

Keywords: complicity; hypocrisy; religious accommodation; religion; conscientious objection; moral address; standing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:pophec:v:19:y:2020:i:2:p:154-181

DOI: 10.1177/1470594X20924666

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