ABSTRACTLove is the basis for a moral psychology of forgiveness. I argue for an account of love based on Roy Bhaskar's conception of its five circles, and of the ethical nature of human beings as concrete universals/singulars. Linking this to work of ‘The Forgiveness Project’, I argue that forgiveness can be understood metaphysically in terms of its relation to love of self, of the other, of the relation of self and other, of self, other and the wider community, and of (...) self and other in their ontological depth as unique individuals. Forgiveness involves both a ‘giving to’ and a ‘giving up’, and this can lead to a profound sense of identity between a victim and a perpetrator. Forgiveness is different for each person; it may draw upon a public/legal setting as a proxy for universal judgement; and it confronts social-structural and political elements which may block its development. (shrink)

This paper argues that profound grief stems largely from our empathy for the dead. The Epicureans defended a version of this idea, claiming that the misery of grief is the product of imagining ourselves in the place of the dead and, from that perspective, seeming to gain insight into both the harmfulness of death and the obligations of the living to the dead—including the obligation to keep that misery alive. This inaugurated a tradition of suspicion of this kind of empathy, (...) which was taken to involve a troubling confusion of self and other. Against this tradition—and the influential account of empathy developed by one of its main proponents, Adam Smith—I argue that empathy for the dead does indeed involve a confusion of self and other, but not one that requires correction. This empathy should be seen alongside other ethically transformative confusions of self and other—such as the sort required to love one’s neighbor as oneself. (shrink)

The purpose of the paper is to study the interrelatedness of rationality, virtue, and practical wisdom in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics by offering a critical interpretation of the bipartition of the soul presented in Chap. 13 of the first book. Aristotle relies on the partition of the soul into a rational and a non-rational part when he distinguishes between ethical and intellectual virtues. The paper will question the adequacy of these divisions and show that Aristotle himself casts doubt on them while (...) leaving open the possibility of understanding the soul in an alternative way which will prove to fit better with his own exposition of deliberate choice and the integration of virtuous action and practical wisdom. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this comment, I argue that transformative experiences such as experiences of grief often imply a break in one's coherent, non-fictional and biographical narratives and practical identities. The nature of these breaks is of a certain kind, as they interrupt even the process of narration. To insist that the process of narration as well as the narratives themselves belong to one and the same process of adjustment in transformative experiences such as grief might overlook the importance of such breaks, (...) namely that the contain a moment of refusal and revolting against mourning. The tension involved in such breaks might not allow to be circumscribed into narratives nor do they fit into the process of narration as a destabilizing moment; the breaks insist on the incomprehensibility of each loss and they remain part of what it means to survive and to undergo transformative experiences. (shrink)

The paper articulates a new understanding of individual responsibility focused on exercises of agency in reason-giving rather than intentional actions or attitudes towards others. Looking at how agents make sense of their actions, we identify a distinctive but underexplored space for assessing individual responsibility within collective actions. As a case in point, we concentrate on reason-giving for one's own involvement in systemic corruption. We characterize systemic corruption in terms of its public ‘unavowability’ and focus on the redescriptions to which corrupt (...) agents typically resort to vindicate their actions. Through a multidimensional approach to reason-giving, we show that the individual rationalisations these redescriptions point to are necessarily less-than-successful since they keep thedifferent categories of reasons involved in making sense of one’s own conduct misaligned. We argue that this involves a kind of tainted reasoning at the interface between epistemic vice and epistemic disadvantage. We then consider such test cases as self-deception, wilful ignorance, and actions on ‘autopilot’ to show that tainted reasoning is constitutive of systemic corruption, not merely caused by it. On this ground, we expound a new view of responsibility centred on reason-giving as the epistemic core which all responsibility assessments track. To demonstrate the interest of this view, we compare it with existing alternatives revolving around the ideas of accountability and attributability. We conclude by showing how our understanding of responsibility can shed new light on the analysis and normative assessment of an agent’s responsible ignorance. (shrink)

The focus of this essay is on how we overcome the past by dealing with it. In this setting, the analysis is of the relationship between ‘moral transactions’ concerning blame, guilt, responsibility, apology and forgiveness and the possibility of transition away from states of trauma. The first section draws on previous work to set out a position on human love as the basis for an understanding of guilt and the ‘moral grammar’ of justice. The second section considers Martha Nussbaum’s claim (...) in Anger and Forgiveness that the idea of transition should be prioritized at the cost of a moral transactional analysis that would engage the moral grammar of blame, guilt, responsibility, apology and forgiveness. The latter is seen as potentially obstructing the transition to a better world. I suggest to the contrary there are grounds for thinking that a successful transition requires relevant moral transactions. (shrink)

This dissertation reassesses the complex philosophical relationship between Sartre and psychoanalysis. Most scholarship on this topic focuses on Sartre’s criticisms of the unconscious as anathema both to his conception of the human psyche as devoid of any hidden depths or mental compartments and, correlatively, his account of human freedom. Many philosophers conclude that there is little common ground between Sartrean existentialism and psychoanalytic theory. I argue, on the contrary, that by shifting the emphasis from concerns about the nature of the (...) unconscious to questions about the role of imagination in psychical life, we can see that Sartre and Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalytic theory develop strikingly similar accounts of human subjectivity. After establishing the historical background of Sartre’s career-long engagement with psychoanalysis, I demonstrate the proximity of Sartre and Lacan on the nature of unconscious thought. I proceed to develop the claim that there is a homology between the concept of unconscious fantasy in psychoanalysis and the concept of the imaginary in Sartre’s philosophical corpus. Despite the concept of fantasy being one of the more structuralist-inspired aspects of Lacan’s metapsychology, I show that Sartre’s concept of the imaginary is likewise a structural feature of the psyche, one which establishes the coordinates within which the subject engages with the world. For Sartre, Freud, and Lacan fantasies form the core of subjectivity, giving form to the basic patterns of one’s character. Taken together, these three thinkers furnish a nuanced view of fantasy/the imaginary. On the one hand it is determining insofar as it is responsible for many of the psychopathologies met with in psychoanalysis. On the other hand, it is liberating insofar as the agency of the subject is implicated in the formation of fantasy. I thereby show that Sartre does not fit the caricatured picture of a radical voluntarist that is often attributed to him and that psychoanalysis can accommodate a conception of human freedom. (shrink)

This essay considers the two-way relation between critical realism and psychoanalysis. Critical realism vindicates and deepens our understanding of ontology by drawing on the sciences for which it...

Der Beitrag entwickelt aus verschiedenen Perspektiven Überlegungen dazu, was Dankbarkeit ist, wie sie sich zur Freiheit verhält, vor dem Hintergrund von welchen Kontexten sie zu sehen ist, welche Emotionen in ihr eine Rolle spielen können und wie sie sich in der psychoanalytischen Behandlung und überhaupt im Sozialen auswirkt.

ABSTRACTThis essay considers the nature of mourning and melancholia in light of Patrizio Guzman’s film, Nostalgia for the Light. It examines the position of three women dealing with the aftermath o...