A good chunk of the recent discussion of hypocrisy concerned the hypocritical “moral address” where, in the simplest case, a person criticises another for \(\phi \)-ing having engaged in \(\phi \)-ing himself, and where the critic’s reasons are overtly moral. The debate has conceptual and normative sides to it. We ask both what hypocrisy is, and why it is wrong. In this paper I focus on the conceptual explication of hypocrisy by examining the pragmatic features of the situation where accusations of hypocrisy are made. After rejecting several extant views, I defend the idea that moral criticisms are best understood as moves in an agonistic or hostile conversation, and that charges of hypocrisy are attempts to prevent the hypocrite from gaining an upper hand in a situation of conflict. I finish by linking this idea to frame-theoretic analysis and evolutionary psychology.

最近关于虚伪的讨论中有很大一部分涉及虚伪的“道德演讲”，在最简单的情况下，一个人批评另一个人因为\(\phi \) -从事了\(\phi \)-ing 自己，而批评者的理由显然是道德的。辩论具有概念性和规范性方面。我们问什么是虚伪，以及为什么它是错误的。在这篇论文中，我通过检查虚伪指控的情况的语用特征来关注虚伪的概念解释。在拒绝了一些现存的观点之后，我捍卫了这样一种观点，即道德批评最好被理解为在激烈或敌对的对话中的举动，而虚伪的指控是为了防止伪君子在冲突情况下占上风。最后，我将这个想法与框架理论分析和进化心理学联系起来。