Complicity and Offence

In 1966 Roderick Chisholm and Ernest Sosa described a category of human actions that they referred to as acts of offence. An act of offence is defined as an act that is morally blameworthy but not morally forbidden. Although some have been receptive to the suggestion that acts of offence are possible in human life, others have been skeptical of their possibility. Here I will defend the possibility of acts of offence by appealing to the concept of complicity. I will argue that if it is morally blameworthy to become an accomplice to someone else’s wrongdoing, then it is plausible to hold that acts of offence are possible.