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Earlier versions of this paper were presented at Syracuse University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, University of Toronto, Princeton University, Brown University, Haverford College, University of Pennsylvania, City University of New York, New York University (as the Mala Kamm Memorial Lecture), Oxford University, University of Warwick, Tulane University, Australian National University, Australian Catholic University, and MIT. I am grateful to audiences on all these occasions for comments and encouragement and am especially grateful to Selim Berker, Mitchell Berman, Brad Cokelet, Stephen Darwall, David Estlund, Johann Frick, Brad Inwood, Shelly Kagan, Frances Kamm, Kacper Kowalczyk, Seth Lazar, Adam Lerner, Michael Moore, Stephen Perry, Arthur Ripstein, Daniel Schwartz, Holly Smith, Victor Tadros, Sergio Tenenbaum, Hasko von Kriegstein, and two referees for this journal.
My topic is an aspect of our moral thought that has not to my knowledge received much attention from philosophers. Commonsense morality thinks some acts are right and some are wrong, but it also thinks some wrong acts are more seriously wrong than others. It is wrong to steal a car and wrong to murder, but murder is more seriously wrong than auto theft, which is more seriously wrong than breaking a promise to have lunch. In this paper I examine how one act can be more seriously wrong than another and, when it is, what makes it so. I also ask if there is a parallel concept of more important rightness.
1. Wrongness and Degrees
That one act is more seriously wrong than another is often intuitively compelling in itself; thus it seems self-evident that murder is morally worse than breaking a promise. But judgments about serious wrongness have further implications. If you have acted wrongly you should feel guilt, but you should feel more guilt—more intense or longer-lasting guilt—if your act was more seriously wrong, for example, if it was murder rather than breaking a promise. You are also other things equal more blameworthy for a more serious wrong, and if retributivism is true, you deserve more severe punishment for it. In general, whenever wrong acts call for negative responses, more serious wrongs call for stronger ones. The idea of serious wrongness therefore connects with several other aspects of our moral thought, and this allows further tests of it. To decide whether one...