ABSTRACT
This chapter is intended as a start on the descriptive project of finding a more precise statement of [T], as well as its sources. It describes that the tension is this: improving one's understanding of someone's wrongdoing is likely to result in an abating of our negative moral sentiments towards the wrongdoer. Drawing from work by Raimond Gaita and Martha Nussbaum, the chapter outlines two ways in which understanding of moral wrongdoing can be improved. While the author will not defend either account of moral wrongdoing, we can expect both ways of improving an explanation of a wrongdoing to lessen the explainer's condemnatory attitudes towards a wrongdoer. Some writers present verstehen explanations as 'rationalizing'; offering a verstehen explanation of someone's behaviour involves showing that the actor behaved as he did because he had a reason to do so. In an erklären explanation, a piece of behaviour is explained as being an instantiation of a generalization.
