The Hoover Chair Research Seminar by Kasper LIPPERT-RASMUSSEN
In recent years, philosophers have increasingly turned their attention to malign forms of praise. This paper focuses on one particular subtype: oppressive praise. It first argues that existing definitions are inadequate and proposes a new one that distinguishes, among other things, between praise that is oppressive because it reflects oppressive norms and praise that is oppressive because it (re)produces such norms. It also distinguishes between oppressive tokens of praise and oppressive types of praise. These distinctions underpin the paper’s second main contribution: an account of what makes oppressive praise objectionable. I argue that recipients of oppressive praise may nevertheless be genuinely praiseworthy for what they do, albeit for reasons different from those invoked by those who praise them. This claim rests on a more general account of praiseworthiness, according to which an agent may be praiseworthy for acting better—or simply less badly—than members of the relevant reference group would have acted in similar circumstances. Accordingly, agents may be praiseworthy even for wrongful actions, provided that those actions are less wrongful than the actions that most members of the relevant reference group would have performed in the same situation.
