Description
Someone fails to shake your outstretched hand, puts you down in front of others, or makes a joke in poor taste. Should we take offence? Wouldn't it be better if we didn't? In the face of popular criticism of people taking offence too easily, and the social problems that creates, Emily McTernan defends taking offence as often morally appropriate and socially valuable. Within societies marred by inequality, taking offence can resist the day-to-day patterning of social hierarchies.This book defends the significance of details of our social interactions. Cumulatively, small acts, and the social norms underlying these, can express and reinforce social hierarchies. But by taking offence, we mark an act as an affront to our social standing. We also often communicate our rejection of that affront to others. At times, taking offence can be a way to renegotiate the shared social norms around what counts as respectful treatment. Rather than a mere expression of hurt feelings then, to take offence can be to stand up for one's standing.When taken by those deemed to have less social standing, to take offence can be a direct act of insubordination against a social hierarchy. Taking offence can resist everyday inequalities. In unequal societies, the inclination to take offence at the right things, and to the right degree, may even be a civic virtue. These right things at which to take offence include many of the very instances that the opponents of a culture of taking offence find most objectionable: apparently trivial and small-scale details of our social interactions.
Table of Contents
AcknowledgementsIntroduction1. Taking offence: An emotion reconsidered 1.1. Philosophers on taking offence1.2. An analysis of taking offence1.3. Distinguishing offence1.4. Rethinking offence: Domestic, not catastrophic1.5. The limits of offence1.6. Towards a defence: From victimhood to social standing2. What taking offence does 2.1. Social standing and the role of social norms2.2. Taking offence and reinforcing norms2.3. Taking offence and renegotiating norms2.4. In defence of negotiating social norms2.5. On negotiating through offence3. Do sweat the small stuff: The nature and significance of social standing 3.1. Between excess and deficiency3.2. Social standing as an equal part I: Why the 'small stuff' matters3.3. Social standing as an equal part II: The power to set the terms3.4. In defence of the significance of affronts3.5. Resisting by taking offence4. The limits of justified offence: On anger, intent, and uptake 4.1. Anger, offence, and the act4.2. Contesting offence4.3. 'But I didn't mean it': On intention and blame4.4. 'But that's not offensive': Disagreement and the offensive4.5. When offence lacks uptake5. Only joking!: On the offensiveness of humour 5.1. Theories of humour and the offensive5.2. Some linguistics of jokes5.3. How offensive jokes function5.4. The riskiness of humour6. A corrective civic virtue: Weighing the costs and benefits of offence6.1. Offence as a civic virtue: Arguments from equality and civility6.2. The costs of offence to the offending party6.3. Justifying the costs of offence6.4. Burdens on the offended7. A social approach, our lives online, and the social emotions7.1. A regulatory turn7.2. Taking offence online7.3. The social emotions beyond offenceBibliography Index
