ABSTRACT
On a relational understanding of morality, the entire set of our interpersonal moral obligations is best understood as a set of directed obligations. According to this view, A owes it to B to do X, because B has a valid claim against A that A do X. The challenge for the relational understanding of morality is to explain how it can also be the business of a third-party C to hold A accountable. Morality, after all, is generally everyone’s business. To answer this challenge, I develop a relational account of third-party indignation, according to which C is best understood as acting on behalf of B when holding A accountable as an instance of normative support for B. It is a distinct advantage of the view that it can explain aspects of the moral phenomenology which non-relational accounts cannot explain, in particular the undertheorized phenomenon of third-party wrongings.
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Jonas Vandieken, Third-party indignation as acting on behalf of another, The Philosophical Quarterly. Published: 2 December 2025
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