Hurka’s Concept of Rational Regret from the Perspective of Dancy’s Moral Particularism

Abstract

The notion of rational regret has been mostly discussed in the Theory of Value. The article presents B. Hurka's position on when regret is rational in non-Benthamite monistic as well as moderate pluralistic theories of the good. It is shown that J. Dancy, on the other hand, rejects the idea that monism provides us with an adequate explanation of regret, but is convinced that pluralism and consecutive particularism can provide it. In the end, an argument is made against this claim of Dancy's, both in terms of value and in terms of reasons. Namely, if the concept of regret is accepted in the theory of reasons, and if holism is plausible, we will reject the possibility of rational regret.