ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes metaphysical debates about free will, and focuses instead on explicating certain tensions internal to social practices of condemnation. It begins by describing the practice of moral condemnation, and its important socio-ethical role. Condemnation is one of many kinds of moral judgement that play related though distinct roles in social life. Condemnation thus involves a complex of judgements, made by particular people of particular objects, framed by particular contexts, relationships, and social and ethical norms and expectations. The chapter unpacks some of the empirico-normative assessments that form part of the practice of condemnation, illustrating that the identification of causal connections between individuals and harms is only one part of the practice. Before concluding authors would like briefly to review some of the pressures that militate against appropriate judgement, including condemnation. The severity of condemnation relative to other forms of moral accounting, with its slippage between condemning a crime and a person, reinforces their effects.
