Table Of ContentHonouring 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
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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 B enjamin’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: M arcel
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
looking at admiration and moral exemplars.
Some of this book draws on work that we co-authored with
Amanda Cawston and Machteld Geuskens. We are grateful to
them both for this collaboration.
Acknowledgements ix
Finally, we would like to thank our family and non-academic
friends with whom we had many conversations on this topic
including: Barnaby Archer, Jack Archer, John Archer, Laura Ben-
nison, Rex Birchmore, Simon Frith, Clara Glynn, Michael Holiday,
Catherine Matheson, David Matheson, Jenny McKay, Cressida
McKay-Frith, Nick Tarlton, and Liam Young. A conversation
Alfred had with John Archer, John Blake, Karen Brown, and Clara
Glynn at the Mull of Kintyre proved particularly helpful at an im-
portant point in the writing process, and the book Karen sent him
following this conversation played an important role in shaping our
argument in Section 3 of Chapter 4. Thanks also to Macky the Cat
for all of his emotional support.
Special thanks to Jenny McKay for spending an entire week
proofreading and giving comments on this book before submission.
Finally, we would like to thank our partners Georgina Mills and
Lucía Arcos Barroso for their love and support.
Earlier versions of parts of our arguments here have appeared in
the following papers:
Archer, Alfred and Matheson, Benjamin (2019a) “When Artists
Fall: Honoring and Admiring the Immoral”. Journal of the Ameri-
can Philosophical Association 5 (2):246–265.
Archer, Alfred and Matheson, Benjamin (2019b). “Admiration
and Education: What Should We Do with Immoral Intellectuals?”
Ethical Perspectives 26 (1):5–32.
Archer, Alfred; Cawston, Amanda; Matheson, Benjamin; and
Geuskens, Machteld (2020). “Celebrity, Democracy, and Epistemic
Power”. Perspectives on Politics 18 (1):27–42.
We thank Peeters publishers and Cambridge University Press for
their permission to reuse this material.
