Standing Above a Wrong

There are many familiar reasons why you might not blame someone who wronged you: you may think they aren’t culpable, or believe you lack the standing to blame them, or you might forgive them. But there’s another phenomenon, which has received little attention so far: you might simply stand above the fact that they wronged you. In this paper, I examine what this attitude is, and when (if ever) we should adopt it. I suggest you stand above a wrong if you don’t care about it as a ground for blame—partly because you don’t care about the wrongdoer as answerable for their attitudes to you, and partly because you care about something that’s worthy of more of your care. I argue that that’s appropriate if and only if the wrongdoer’s attitudes aren’t important in your relationship to them. Our phenomenon thus implicates large questions about the import of interpersonal relations. More generally, it suggests that to live well is to tread rightly on the path between immersion and violability on the one hand, and self-sufficiency, independence and composure on the other.