Edith Piaf sings ‘Non, je ne regrette rien,’ while Frank Sinatra does admit to a few regrets ‘but then again, too few to mention.’ Perhaps Piaf has a bad memory, and perhaps Sinatra would rather not remind us of his many regrets, but they both express a common view: regret is a waste of time. As Lady Macbeth, who ought to know about regret, insists: ‘Things without all remedy / Should be without regard. What’s done is done.’ You messed up? Get over it and move on.
This advice is not just unrealistic. It’s wrong. Approached honestly, regret is one of our clearest tools for seeing who we take ourselves to be.
Here’s an example from my own life. Music has always been one of my great pleasures and I have some musical talent. Not extraordinary talent, but some. While I don’t regret failing to become a professional pianist (that path far exceeded my capacities), I do regret the more modest failure of not having persisted long enough to master a Chopin nocturne. That regret stings precisely because it was a possibility commensurate with my abilities. Recognising my regrettable lack of discipline, I doubt I’ll pursue it even now.
There is, of course, the familiar concession: regret is acceptable if we learn from our mistakes. But this already sells regret short. It treats regret as a tool for course correction rather than as a source of self-knowledge. Presumably, once we’ve learned our lesson, regret is supposed to disappear. When it doesn’t (as is usually the case), we assume something has gone wrong. But these regrets persist not because we are neurotic, but because they serve a function we rarely recognise.
Regret, like other emotions, is both a feeling and a judgment. Unlike bodily states such as hunger or fatigue, emotions are directed at something. Fear is fear of a threat; anger is anger at someone. Regret, similarly, is directed toward a particular choice – an action taken or not taken – for which we see ourselves as responsible.
This element of responsibility matters. We often say ‘I’m sorry’ for events we didn’t cause – a natural disaster or a friend’s illness. But these aren’t regrets in the sense that concerns us here. Regret traces to human decisions. You cannot regret saying something cruel unless you believe you said it, just as you cannot be angry at someone for an insult you don’t believe they uttered.
The word regret covers a wide range of cases, from moral wrongdoing to everyday second-guessing. Philosophers sometimes specify a certain form of regret as ‘agent-regret’ – regret over outcomes we brought about, even when we are not morally at fault. Bernard Williams illustrated this with the example of a truck driver who, through no fault of his own, kills a child who runs into the street. The driver is not blameworthy, yet his regret is entirely intelligible. We expect apologies even for accidental harms.
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