Honouring and Admiring the Immoral “A much-needed investigation into one of the hottest topics in philosophy, psychology, and public discourse” – Maria Silvia Vaccarezza, University of Genoa, Italy Is it appropriate to honour and admire people who have created great works of art, made important intellectual contributions, performed great sporting feats, or shaped the history of a nation if those people have also acted immorally? This book provides a philosophical inves- tigation of this important and timely question. The authors draw on the latest research from ethics, value theory, phi- losophy of emotion, social philosophy, and social psychology to develop and substantiate arguments that have been made in the public debates about this issue. They offer a detailed analysis of the nature and ethics of honour and admiration, and present reasons both in favour and against honouring and admiring the immoral. They also take on the important matter of whether we can separate the achievements of public figures from their immoral behaviour. Ultimately, the authors reject a “one- size-fits-all” approach and argue that we must weigh up the reasons for and against honouring and admiring in each particular case. Honouring and Admiring the Immoral is written in an accessible style that shows how philosophy can engage with public debates about im- portant ethical issues. It will be of interest to scholars and students work- ing in moral philosophy, philosophy of emotion, and social philosophy. Alfred Archer is an assistant professor of philosophy at Tilburg Uni- versity and a member of the Tilburg Center for Logic, Ethics, and Philosophy of Science. His primary research interests are in moral phi- losophy and moral psychology, particularly supererogation, the nature and ethics of admiration, and the ethics of fame. Benjamin Matheson is a Humboldt research fellow at Ludwig Maxi- milian University of Munich. He has research interests in ethics, moral psychology, philosophy of emotions, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion. His work has appeared in Philosophical Studies, American Philosophical Quarterly, and Canadian Journal of Philosophy. Routledge Focus on Philosophy Routledge Focus on Philosophy is an exciting and innovative new se- ries, capturing and disseminating some of the best and most excit- ing new research in philosophy in short-book form. Peer reviewed and at a maximum of 50,000 words shorter than the typical research monograph, Routledge Focus on Philosophy titles are available in both ebook and print-on-demand formats. Tackling big topics in a digestible format, the series opens up important philosophical re- search for a wider audience and as such is invaluable reading for the scholar, researcher, and student seeking to keep their finger on the pulse of the discipline. The series also reflects the growing inter- disciplinarity within philosophy and will be of interest to those in related disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. A Defence of Nihilism James Tartaglia and Tracy Llanera The Right to Know Epistemic Rights and Why We Need Them Lani Watson Honouring and Admiring the Immoral An Ethical Guide Alfred Archer and Benjamin Matheson Newton’s Third Rule and the Experimental Argument for Universal Gravity Mary Domski For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge. com/Routledge-Focus-on-Philosophy/book-series/RFP Honouring and Admiring the Immoral An Ethical Guide Alfred Archer and Benjamin Matheson NEW YORK AND LONDON First published 2022 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Taylor & Francis The right of Alfred Archer and Benjamin Matheson to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Archer, Alfred, author. | Matheson, Benjamin, author. Title: Honouring and admiring the immoral : an ethical guide / Alfred Archer and Benjamin Matheson. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. | Series: Routledge focus on philosophy | Includes bibliographical references and index. Subjects: LCSH: Honor. | Celebrities—Conduct of life. | Character—Public opinion. Classification: LCC BJ1533.H8 A68 2022 (print) | LCC BJ1533.H8 (ebook) | DDC 179/.9—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021018304 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc. gov/2021018305 ISBN: 978-0-367-40714-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-06683-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-81015-3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9780367810153 Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 1 Honour and Admiration 7 2 Admirability and Immorality 19 3 Reasons against Honouring and Admiring 33 4 Against Abandoning Admiration 58 5 Refocusing Admiration 81 Conclusion 101 Bibliography 111 Index 123 Acknowledgements The idea for the book started in the spring of 2017 during Benjamin’s TiLPS visiting fellowship. We noticed that philosophical discussions of immoral artists tended to focus on their works rather than our responses to immoral artists. The revelations of the autumn of 2017 and the subsequent #metoo movement made us realize our work might be even more important than we initially realized. We applied for further funding so that Benjamin could be a guest researcher on Alfred’s NWO (The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) project on “The Value of Admiration” (Grant Numbers 016.Veni.174.104 and 040.11.614). We are grateful to the Department of Philosophy at Tilburg University for having such a wonderful research environment in which we could explore and develop the ideas that are central to the book. Thanks also to the members of Tilburg’s Emotions and Moral Psychology Reading Group for their contributions and critical inputs. We are grateful to the NWO and TiLPS for funding that made our collaboration possible. Alfred is grateful for the NWO’s initial funding of his Veni project which funded his work on this project. Benjamin is also grateful to Stockholm University and the Alexan- der von Humboldt Foundation for employment and funding that made his work on this project possible. We have presented the central ideas of the book in Tartu, Madrid, Genoa, Delft, Utrecht, Tilburg, Stockholm, Maribor, Prague, Munich, and Leiden. We are grateful to audiences for their comments and feedback. In particular, we are grateful to the conversations we have had with the following philosophers, at these events or elsewhere, on topics related to this work: Marcel van Ackeren, Kenneth Aggerholm, Marina Barabas, Gunnar Björnsson, Daphne Brandenburg, Seamus Bradley, Christine Bratu, Huub Brouwer, Luke Brunning, Joanna Burch-Brown, Amanda Cawston, Sam Clarke, Matteo Colombo, Christopher Cordner, viii Acknowledgements Christopher Cowley, Willem van der Deijl, Yvette Drissen, Wim Dubbink, Lee Elkin, Bart Engelen, Helen Frowe, André Grahle, Robert Hartman, Caroline Harnacke, David Janssens, Sofia Jepps- son, Andrew Khoury, Ian Kidd, Tim Klaassen, David Levy, Pilar Lopez-Cantero, Elinor Mason, Christian Miller, Georgina Mills, Erich Hatala Matthes, Neil McDonnell, Heidy Meriste, Per Milam, Kian Mintz-Woo, Dorota Mokrosinska, Kamila Pacovská, Glen Pettigrove, Carolyn Price, Chiara Raucea, Mike Ridge, Natascha Rietdijk, Catherine Robb, David Shoemaker, Maureen Sie, Leo- nie Smith, Lotte Spreeuwenberg, Jan Sprenger, Alan Thomas, Lani Watson, Naftali Weinberger, Tom Wells, Nathan Wildman, Vanessa Wills, and Alan T. Wilson. Mark Alfano deserves special thanks here for attending at least five of our talks on this topic. We have also discussed this work in classes at Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, Tilburg University, Tulane Uni- versity, and the OZSW Moral Psychology Winter School. Thanks to the students in these classes for their helpful feedback including: Alrun Bernhard, Brenda Breukers, Alexander Edlich, Cassandra Grützner, Jenny Janssens, Bram Medelli, Karim Nkrumah, Chris- tianne Smit, Lotte Spreeuwenberg, Dominic Tschermy, Charlotte van Veen, and Scott Wolcott (apologies to the many students not mentioned here). Thanks also to Mark Alfano, David Shoemaker, Maureen Sie, and Tom Wells for facilitating some of these discus- sions. Alfred also had the pleasure of supervising student theses on related work by Mette de Brouwer and Jenny Janssens and would like to thank them both for their insights. We have also both benefitted from discussing these and related ideas with academics from outside of philosophy including: Alice Bosma, Mark Brandt, Simon Frith, Carlo Garofalo, Marlies de Groot, David Matheson, Eva Mulder, Thia Sagherian-Dickey, and Ines Schindler. In particular, a very helpful conversation with Anna Paley and Rob Smith alerted us to some highly relevant literature at a crucial stage in the writing process. Alfred would also like to thank Joanne Chung, Bart Engelen, Theo Klimstra, Anne Reitz, Jelle Sijtsema, Alan Thomas, Niels van de Ven, and Renée Zonneveld for the many helpful discussions about admiration while collaborating on two different projects