From Oppressive to Progressive Praise: How, Why, and When to Praise in Conditions of Oppression

Abstract

Theories of moral responsibility have often assumed that praise does not require justification in the way that blame might. Recent accounts of oppressive praise have challenged this and demonstrated that oppressive praise will track and enforce oppressive norms. Existing solutions to the problem of oppressive praise have sought either to redistribute praise or to reorient praise to serve emancipatory goals. These solutions fail to acknowledge how emancipatory norms evolve over time, and the relationship between developing norms and developing practices of praise. This paper offers a practice-dependent account of progressive praise as a solution to oppressive praise, that (i) respects agent's socially self-governed agency and (ii) does not reinforce oppressive norms, but (iii) can contribute to improvements to the social moral ecology.