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In the following discussion, I am concerned with analyzing and evaluating the role of blame in ordinary human behavior. By “ordinary” behavior, I simply mean behavior outside such specialized settings as psychotherapy, behavior which takes place, for example, inside the family, social, or business setting. The assumptions and techniques used in the analysis are those of naturalistic ethics and psychoanalytic psychology.
Probably every human being has engaged in the moralistic activity we call blaming. It is of the stuff of everyday moral life. Yet serious studies or commentaries upon it are few and far between. The literature exhibits for the most part views on blame which are largely implicit in discussions directed to topics other than blame. As for the rest, explicit commentary consists mostly of rare comments, often piecemeal in character, and not always consistent with one another.
In the Western tradition, Jesus represents the paradoxical fusion of the extreme Hebraic eye for an eye doctrine, the Stoic and Eastern morality of spiritual disinterestedness, and a new, intense cultivation of love and forgiveness. Jesus told his followers to love their fellow men and judge them not; yet in his own life as portrayed in the Gospels—a life which is offered as a model for the Western world—he speaks in righteous wrath, uses moralistic vituperation, and threatens eternal punishment. Indeed, he explicitly enjoins his disciples, “If your brother does wrong, rebuke him.” (29).
In the ancient Western non-Christian tradition, Aristotle says in a context where moral indignation is indicated that “The man who is angry at the right things and with the right people, and further, as he ought, when he ought, and as long as he ought, is praised.” (1, p. 996). Yet Epictetus, the pagan slave, writing several centuries later but developing views already enunciated by contemporaries of Aristotle, tells us that “The signs of one who is making progress are: he blames none, praises none, com