Private praise

Abstract A basic assumption in the literature about praise and blame is that one cannot privately praise. Strangely this has not been argued for. It’s obvious that I can praise you without anyone other than the two of us knowing. But can I praise you without you knowing? The skeptic would say no. Why not? For one, we characterize praise as being overtly expressed. For another, it awkwardly fits our language. We rarely speak of private praise under that description. Further, the skeptic may deny that apparent examples are praise at all, subsuming them under a nearby notions such as admiration. In this paper, I offer a variety of examples to motivate the idea that private praise is a familiar and important phenomenon. I argue that none of the skeptic’s actual considerations hold up under scrutiny. On behalf of the skeptic, I develop a more promising argument against the possibility of private praise: that praise is a success term. I suggest that this argument is still implausible, though I leave it open for a skeptic to develop. Recognizing private praise as something that can and does happen has implications for debates about praise and blame. More importantly, it illuminates an aspect of one’s inner world.