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Despite intense contemporary public debate, offence is an emotion overlooked by philosophers. There is a popular perception that being 'easily offended' is bad thing: at best, trivial and, at worst, a technique for shutting down debate. Against such dismissals, this book argues for the significance and positive social value of taking offence, not as a matter of having hurt feelings over things like dismissive remarks, queue jumping, or catcalling, but as a means of resisting unequal social relations. It defends, in other words, offence-taking at apparently trivial and small-scale social interactions--the very form that its opponents find most objectionable. The book addresses topics including offensive jokes, offence on social media, and what civility requires of us.
List of contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1. Taking offence: An emotion reconsidered
- 1.1. Philosophers on taking offence
- 1.2. An analysis of taking offence
- 1.3. Distinguishing offence
- 1.4. Rethinking offence: Domestic, not catastrophic
- 1.5. The limits of offence
- 1.6. Towards a defence: From victimhood to social standing
- 2. What taking offence does
- 2.1. Social standing and the role of social norms
- 2.2. Taking offence and reinforcing norms
- 2.3. Taking offence and renegotiating norms
- 2.4. In defence of negotiating social norms
- 2.5. On negotiating through offence
- 3. Do sweat the small stuff: The nature and significance of social standing
- 3.1. Between excess and deficiency
- 3.2. Social standing as an equal part I: Why the 'small stuff' matters
- 3.3. Social standing as an equal part II: The power to set the terms
- 3.4. In defence of the significance of affronts
- 3.5. Resisting by taking offence
- 4. The limits of justified offence: On anger, intent, and uptake
- 4.1. Anger, offence, and the act
- 4.2. Contesting offence
- 4.3. 'But I didn't mean it': On intention and blame
- 4.4. 'But that's not offensive': Disagreement and the offensive
- 4.5. When offence lacks uptake
- 5. Only joking!: On the offensiveness of humour
- 5.1. Theories of humour and the offensive
- 5.2. Some linguistics of jokes
- 5.3. How offensive jokes function
- 5.4. The riskiness of humour
- 6. A corrective civic virtue: Weighing the costs and benefits of offence
- 6.1. Offence as a civic virtue: Arguments from equality and civility
- 6.2. The costs of offence to the offending party
- 6.3. Justifying the costs of offence
- 6.4. Burdens on the offended
- 7. A social approach, our lives online, and the social emotions
- 7.1. A regulatory turn
- 7.2. Taking offence online
- 7.3. The social emotions beyond offence
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Emily McTernan is an Associate Professor at University College London. She works on political and social philosophy. She has published work on social norms, equality, civic virtue, infertility, and microaggressions.
