Is Moral Blame Appropriate?

We live in an age of anger and shameless disregard for what is true and good. What can we learn from other cultures about better ways to do anger and shame? How can we develop better norms for being angry at the right things, in the right way, at the right times? How can we inculcate norms for proper shame at callous disregard for what is true and good? Flanagan argues that attention to how other cultures do anger and shame provides tools to enlarge our moral imagination.

Owen Flanagan is the James B Duke University Professor Philosophy and Professor of Neurobiology at Duke University. Owen is the author of numerous books on a range of subjects in the philosophy of mind, piths and moral psychology, such as The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalised (2011), The Geography Of Morals (2016), and most recently How To Do Things with Emotions: Anger and Shame Across Cultures (2021).