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This chapter considers the way in which human moral wrongdoing fragments the psyche of the wrongdoer. It examines the theological doctrine of original sin and argues against attempts to show that a human tendency to moral wrongdoing, of the sort postulated by the doctrine of original sin, is incompatible with the existence of a perfectly good, omniscient, omnipotent God. It then presents the remedies for the human proclivity to moral wrongdoing as Aquinas sees them. These consist in the processes of justification and sanctification. The chapter argues that each of these processes requires a certain kind of passivity and surrender on the part of the person engaged in the process. Contrary to Harry Frankfurt's position that passivity is inimical to the true self and to human flourishing, it is argued that some significant goods for human beings, including the love of friendship, are impossible without some reciprocal passivity.

This chapter argues that closeness, union, and love come in two modes: ordinary and strenuous. To make this case, it examines the analogy of two notions of freedom of the will, the ordinary and the strenuous (of the sort associated with the work of Harry Frankfurt). In order to make sense of this distinction among kinds of freedom, it is helpful first to make a distinction between two notions of the true self, a metaphysical and a psychological sense. The psychological sense depends on the metaphysical sense; in its turn, it undergirds and explains the strenuous notion of freedom. It also helps to explain the strenuous senses of closeness, union, and love; it also elucidates the way in which moral wrongdoing fragments the self. On this basis, the chapter then considers the nature of shame and the distinction between guilt and shame. It shows that both guilt and shame can produce a kind of willed loneliness.

One of the more common experiences of the film viewer is that of finding something on the screen funny or humorous. Some of this amusement will be at what I will call transgressive actions, that is, at the kind of events that would, in many other, easily imaginable instances, appropriately bring about very different kinds of responses. This phenomenon is prima facie perplexing, since our default response to wrongdoing does not (nor should it) include amusement. The present paper explores one kind of transgressive comedy – that which invites viewers to laugh with a perpetrator of wrongdoing. My positive claim, developed in Sections 4-6, will be that our favoritism towards certain persons or characters plays a role in some examples of humor at wrongdoings; in particular, I will suggest that it plays a central role in our amusement at the events in the 1940 Howard Hawks film His Girl Friday.

Many writers defend or attack the position nowadays known as legal moralism. According to the most common formulation, legal moralists endorse the following thesis: the fact that φ‎ing is morally wrong is a reason to criminalize φ‎ing. This chapter considers a different kind of legal moralism, here called instrumental legal moralism (ILM). According to ILM: the fact that criminalizing φ‎ing will probably prevent moral wrongs is a reason to criminalize φ‎ing. Section I draws some relevant distinctions. In doing so, it clarifies the difference between ILM and the act-centred legal moralism (ALM) commonly discussed in the literature. Sections II–IV consider two prominent arguments for ALM: the retributivist argument, offered by Michael Moore, and the answerability argument, offered by Antony Duff. The chapter shows that, contrary to the intentions of these authors, both arguments in fact support ILM.

This chapter discusses Pascal’s account of how the Fall has affected our capacity for moral reasoning and moral judgment. Not surprisingly, he argues that the chief threat to the moral life is self-deception. His central claim is that, in a moral dilemma, an agent usually perceives a sinful choice as more attractive than a moral choice precisely because the sinful choice is rooted in self-serving imaginative fantasy. He then convinces himself that the sinful choice is, in fact, morally licit.

Chapter 6 presents a Pascalian model of sin as self-deception, understood as morally culpable self-persuasion. The sinner lies to himself about his own moral responsibility. His self-deception begins in the imagination, as he is spontaneously presented with an array of different interpretations of his moral situation. He then accepts a false interpretation of his own wrongdoing, and persuades himself that it is true with rhetorical and behavioral techniques. He engages in a persuasive program of internal rhetoric, and he acts as if his favored interpretation is true. This project of self-persuasion causes him to believe a favored, false interpretation of his own wrongdoing. The sinner pursues a coherence of identity that is more important to him than the goal of preserving logically consistent beliefs. The immoral self-deceiver intentionally constructs a false self so that he can avoid confronting his own immoral engagements.