We are frequently confronted with moral situations that are unsettling, confusing, disorienting. We try to come to grips with them. When we do so, we engage in a distinctive type of moral inquiry: hermeneutical inquiry. Its aim is to make sense of our situation. What is it to make sense of one's situation? Hermeneutical inquiry is part of our everyday moral experience. Understanding its nature and its place in moral epistemology is important. Yet, I argue, that existing accounts of moral (...) inquiry do not give us the resources to do so. This paper develops a positive account of hermeneutical inquiry. I argue that when we engage in hermeneutical inquiry, we search for an apt perspective on our situation. (shrink)

Loneliness is commonly conceived of as a topic under the purview of psychology. Empirical research on loneliness utilizes a definition of psychology as essentially subjective, i.e. as a first-personal mental property an individual can have. As a first-personal mental property, subjects have, as it were, privileged access to their state of being lonely. Rehearsing some well-known arguments from later Wittgenstein, I argue that loneliness – contrary to an unargued assumption present in several academic engagements – is not subjective in the (...) sense that whether or not a person is lonely does not in all cases hinge on that person’s subjective mental states. This becomes apparent when considering cases of alienation from self-knowledge (Moran 2001). Using Heidegger’s notion of being-in-the-world and being-with I argue that such cases from alienation point towards the notion that loneliness is not merely a subjective feeling, but a categorically different privation of the fundamental mode of being with others. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to say something significant about Stanley Cavell's style. To accomplish this task, we adopt a distant reading approach, quantifying what seems to be an idiosyncratic use of parentheses. After outlining our methodological approach and the choices of texts from Cavell's corpus, we will present the results of our quantitative analysis. Two kinds of results will be presented and interpreted: the result of a comparison between Cavell and other authors (i.e. why Cavell's use of parentheses (...) is exceptional) and the result of a quantitative analysis of Cavell's texts (i.e. how Cavell uses parentheses throughout his books). For both results, we will provide our own interpretation. In the conclusion, we will draw the moral of this parenthetical story, hoping to open future parentheses. (shrink)

This paper explores a distinctive form of social interaction—interpersonal inquiry—in which two or more people attempt to understand one another by engaging in conversation. Like many modes of inquiry into human beings, interpersonal inquiry partly shapes its own objects. How we conduct it thus affects who we become. I present an ethical ideal of conversation to which, I argue, at least some of our interpersonal inquiry ought to aspire. I then consider how this ideal might influence philosophical conceptions of the (...) self. (shrink)

It seems like a problem to say that love can be merited—its value is located in its transcendence of comparative judgments. However, we commonly make judgments about who is and is not worth loving. We deem certain romantic partners, friends, and family members as worth or not worth our loving time, attention, and effort. In this paper, I argue that love can be merited, and it is merited because of a person’s intrinsic valuable qualities. However, it is not the fact (...) that such qualities can be compared that is relevant. What is relevant is the fact that such qualities are gradable, and what it means for someone to merit love is that their qualities meet a threshold or standard of value for love. Moreover, love requires some amount of practical wisdom in discerning these thresholds and when someone meets or fails to meet them. This is important to recognize since we are creatures of finite love. We do not have the capacity to love everyone who is both worthy and unworthy of love. Given our finite capacities, I argue that making wise and discerning judgments about whom to love should be kept in mind when philosophizing about love. (shrink)

Work on Stanley Cavell in contemporary political theory tends to foreground Cavell’s reading of Emersonian moral perfectionism, but this aspect of Cavell’s thought is often left out of feminist rea...

El objetivo de este texto es analizar cómo la obra de Iris Murdoch dialoga con la de Martha Nussbaum en cuanto a la relación entre las artes narrativas y la moralidad. En particular, investiga la importancia de la experiencia artística e imaginativa en la constitución de la moralidad. Para llevar a cabo este análisis, la presentación sigue tres pasos principales: en primer lugar, una breve investigación de las consideraciones de Murdoch sobre la relación entre la moral y las artes narrativas; (...) a continuación, se presenta el mismo tema en la obra de Nussbaum y, por último, se examinan algunos acuerdos y desacuerdos entre las filósofas, buscando problematizar cuestiones más generales sobre las diferencias entre las concepciones de la filosofía moral presentes en sus obras. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Work on Stanley Cavell in contemporary political theory tends to foreground Cavell’s reading of Emersonian moral perfectionism, but this aspect of Cavell’s thought is often left out of feminist readings of his work. In this paper, I give an overview of Cavell’s importance to political theory, and I also trace two Cavellian-inspired feminisms: Sandra Laugier’s ordinary language inflected ethics of care and Toril Moi’s understanding of feminist theory as the close and careful reading (...) of examples. I argue that Cavellian-Emersonian moral perfectionism enhances these feminist readings of Cavell because it helps us explain certain practices in feminist activism, such as resisting conformity, acknowledging the limits of our understanding and being receptive to other members of our feminist community. (shrink)

This paper suggests that history, both personal and political, plays a crucial role in the manifestation (or concealment) of the Good in Plato’s Republic. After an introduction on how to read Plato’s dialogues vis-a-vis the problem of history, this article offers a close reading of Books I and VIII of the Republic.

Stanley Cavell’s Emersonian moral perfectionism is not a compete theory of moral philosophy alongside utilitarianism or deontology; it seeks to get a grip of a dimension in any moral thinking, less of a hierarchy of what to value most in life and more a sketch on how we come to value anything in the first place. Emersonian perfectionism tries to understand what it means to be a moral subject, an authentic self, and to do this it cannot stay solely within (...) the conventional sub-disciplinary boundaries of philosophy. First and foremost, Cavell intends his outlook as a way of discovering the philosophical uniqueness of Emersonian thought; he asks us to take very seriously what Emerson has to say on the self and its coming to itself. But such themes are never confined within the narrow framework of a particular author, essayist or a poet, and Cavell traces related topics in works of art as diverse as Ibsen’s Doll House and the poetry of Whitman, philosophers as seemingly distant as Wittgenstein and Heidegger. While Cavell is oftentimes suggestive rather than elaborate on the relevance of Wittgenstein and Heidegger for his version of moral perfectionism, a critical reader ought to spell out the senses in which the two thinkers are essential to the perfectionist project. In brief, neither one of them had much to say on ethics by way of explicit commentary, yet both of them have given rise to a host of reasonable studies in ethics, following them. Thus philosophers like Cora Diamond and Iris Murdoch have made their name drafting a new kind of ethics, sometimes bluntly dubbed Wittgensteinian moral philosophy, and authors such as Emmanuel Levinas and Jean Luc-Nancy have done the same in the Heideggerian footsteps, drawing attention to his “originary ethics.” The key issue regarding the aforementioned exemplars in moral philosophy, and arguably Emersonian ethics, is that they speak to ethical issues without explicitly addressing ethics; they touch on something crucial to our ethical conduct without laying out ethical norms. They are not so much interested in the normativity of ethics in the first place. They seem to grasp that ethics has to do with something more fundamental, perhaps something like an original encounter with the being of the world, a genuine attentiveness to the particularity of our experience, rendering ethics possible in the first place. Such an outlook on morality may not be unambiguously called ethics, at least not as something separate from epistemology and ontology, yet its affinities with contemporary moral philosophy are wide-ranging, in particular, with the work of Iris Murdoch. (shrink)

The central argument of this paper is that moral perfectionism cannot be understood in its radical philosophical, ethical and political dimensions unless we trace its tradition back to the ancient Greek conception of philosophy as a way of life. Indeed, in ancient Greece, to be a philosopher meant to give importance to everyday life and to pay attention to the details of common language and behaviour, in order to actively transform oneself and one’s relationship to others and to the world. (...) Truth itself was conceived as an event emerging from the agreement among the logoi of different people, or from the harmony established by an individual between his words and his deeds (e.g. Socrates, the Cynics). But this way of conceiving truth and practicing philosophy has been somehow put aside in modern times, and it has been renewed only during the last two centuries, primarily thanks to the transcendental American philosophy of Emerson and Thoreau. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to show how modern perfectionism re-invented ancient perfectionism, through the re-activation of the imperative to pay attention to our ordinary words and everyday life (and to their harmonic relation), linked to a truth always meant as a practice. My conclusion will be that moral perfectionism can be conceived and still practiced, today, as an ethics and politics of responsibility, i.e. of attention to and care for the ordinary. (shrink)

This Reply offers my answers to Cheshire Calhoun’s, Elizabeth Brake’s, and Monika Betzler’s wonderful contributions to the Criminal Law and Philosophy symposium on Being Sure of Each Other (2020). Their contributions focus respectively on the conceptual and normative foundations of my defence of our human rights to have adequate social inclusion, the harms that might flow from recognising such rights as human rights, and the impact such rights can have on our most intimate relations. My replies aim both to clarify (...) and solidify the argumentative basis for my account and to show that whatever harms and wrongs might dog the recognition of social human rights are nothing compared to the injustices that flow–and have long-flowed–from ignoring or attacking these rights. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated many social problems and put the already vulnerable, such as racial minorities, low-income communities, and older individuals, at an even greater risk than before. In this paper we focus on older adults’ well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic and show that the risk-mitigation measures presumed to protect them, alongside the generalization of an ageist public discourse, exacerbated the pre-existing marginalization of older adults, disproportionately affecting their well-being. This paper shows that states have duties to adopt and (...) put into practice redress measures to compensate for the negative consequences of COVID-19 public health policies on older adults’ overall well-being. These duties flow from the minimal ethical requirement of respect for persons. We show that respect is a morally basic attitude that presupposes taking the others’ interests into account, with the aim of advancing their well-being. This duty is not limited to kinship, relatives, and friends but it extends to states and the rest of the civil society. In the conclusion, we draw lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and sketch some redress measures that could compensate for the decrease in older adults’ well-being as a result of the adoption of measures to contain the spread of the virus. (shrink)

Sri Aurobindo is one of the most prominent figures in the Indian Philosophy of twentieth century and yet we barely find any mention of his work in the philosophy circles. He has written extensively on metaphysics, aesthetics, and ethics. Sri Aurobindo’s work is all-encompassing and carries marks of a deep yogic insight into both the individual self (with all its parts and their integrated working) and the universe that ultimately shares a relation of identity with the individual in secret. He (...) talks about a world-process that contains evolution qualified with involution. It is one of the most unique features of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy. He deals with the questions of ignorance also in the most satisfying way. Sri Aurobindo has an integral vision that sees everything in the movement of one and develops the methods and practices of Integral Yoga. In his yogic vision, he not only tries to solve the problems of humanity but also attempts to make a very bold move of transforming the whole earthly existence into a divine existence through one large stride. The epistemological discussion we find in his work is deeply connected with his metaphysics. He articulates the limits and extents of reason and senses and attempts to surpass them. Sri Aurobindo is not an armchair philosopher; he attempts to salvage the human condition by empowering humanity to consciously guide the march of human evolution towards a divine future. The boldness of his vision, the originality of his philosophical work is spectacular. In this paper, I will discuss his World-process, i.e. the evolution qualified with involution. I will also discuss the epistemological foundation of his philosophy, cosmology and integral yoga psychology. For the sake of clarity in understanding, the paper is divided into five major sections starting with an introduction. Integralism is a central idea in Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy and I have tried to do justice with it throughout this paper. In the end, the paper attempts to deals with three main themes—cosmology, integral yoga psychology and integral experience. All these three themes shall bring out—The integral experience of Sri Aurobindo is deeply intertwined with his cosmology and yogic psychology and shall not be seen in isolation. Integral experience of reality is also intertwined and works in tandem with his Integral Yoga. There is a yogic exploration of oneness between the self and world that informs and shapes both his philosophical and yogic endeavors. The rationale behind undertaking this study is to question whether the observations of the physical world from the standpoint of yogic experience could suggest some new theoretical framework for the metaphysical ontology of the world. Taking perspectives from the states of consciousness described by Sri Aurobindo may furnish us with a deeper understanding of the material and metaphysical character of physical categories, such as matter, energy, force, space, and time. This paper however is an introductory overview of Aurobindo’s relevance for cosmology, psychology and integral experience which provides a philosophical framework to reinterpret and arrive at a synthetic metaphysics. (shrink)