This book is a philosophical exploration of disorientation and its significance for action. Disorientations are human experiences of losing one's bearings, such that life is disrupted and it is not clear how to go on. In the face of life experiences like trauma, grief, illness, migration, education, queer identification, and consciousness raising, individuals can be deeply disoriented. These and other disorientations are not rare. Although disorientations can be common and powerful parts of individuals' lives, they remain uncharacterized by Western philosophers, (...) and overlooked by ethicists.Disorientations can paralyze, overwhelm, embitter, and misdirect moral agents, and moral philosophy and motivational psychology have important insights to offer into why this is. More perplexing are the ways disorientations may prompt improved moral action.Ami Harbin draws on first person accounts, philosophical texts, and qualitative and quantitative research to show that in some cases of disorientation, individuals gain new forms of awareness of political complexity and social norms, and new habits of relating to others and an unpredictable moral landscape. She then argues for the moral and political promise of these gains. A major contention of the book is that disorientations have 'non-resolutionary effects': they can help us act without first helping us resolve what to do. In exploring these possibilities, Disorientation and Moral Life contributes to philosophy of emotions, moral philosophy, and political thought from a distinctly feminist perspective. It makes the case for seeing disorientations as having the power to motivate profound and long-term shifts in moral and political action. A feminist re-envisioning of moral psychology provides the framework for understanding how they do so. (shrink)

This essay differentiates two approaches to understanding the concept of coercion, and argues for the relative merits of the one currently out of fashion. The approach currently dominant in the philosophical literature treats threats as essential to coercion, and understands coercion in terms of the way threats alter the costs and benefits of an agent’s actions; I call this the “pressure” approach. It has largely superseded the “enforcement approach,” which focuses on the powers and actions of the coercer rather than (...) the perspective of the coercee. The enforcement approach identifies coercion with certain uses of the kinds of powers that agents need to accumulate and wield in order to be able to make significant, credible threats. Though there is considerable overlap extensionally in the instances of coercion recognized by the two approaches, the enforcement approach encompasses some uses of power to coerce that do not involve threats . It also circumscribes which threats should be counted as coercive, though notably it provides a picture of coercion that is non-moralized in its essentials. While there may be specific purposes for which a pressure account is to be preferred, I argue that the enforcement approach better describes how coercion works, and elucidates factors that are often tacitly assumed by pressure accounts. It also is more useful for explaining the social and political significance of coercion, and why coercion is thought to have the implications commonly associated with it. In particular, I argue that it helps us understand why uses of coercion are in general a matter of ethical significance, why state authority depends on commanding a monopoly on the right to use coercion, and why being coerced may reasonably provide one a defense against being held responsible for actions one is coerced into taking. (shrink)

In Disorientation and Moral Life, I consider disorientations as experiences of not knowing how to go on following serious life events and experiences like those involved in traumas, grief, illness, education, consciousness raising, and migration. I challenge a history of moral philosophy that I claim has been preoccupied by a focus on the best moral agents as those who are most decisive, wholehearted, and clear about how they ought to act. In this piece, I respond to three commentaries on Disorientation (...) and Moral Life. In particular, I offer reflections on how disorientations might be useful in contexts of disability studies, prison abolitionism, professional philosophy, anti-racist action, and political organizing. (shrink)

As a text in use by mental health practitioners, policy makers, and ordinary individuals, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) categorizes a variety of mental, psychological, and emotional experiences on a wide spectrum of disorders. Many common experiences are described there as symptoms, chiefly for the purposes of identifying, diagnosing, and treating disorders. “Disorientations” are not (yet) categorized as a stand-alone disorder in the DSM, but involve a cluster of experiences that border on and overlap with experiences (...) already categorized as symptoms of other disorders. Where experiences of disorientation appear in the DSM, they are, for the most part, still understood as.. (shrink)

This paper critically investigates a possible tension between beliefs about the usefulness of police and prisons and awareness of the harms some communities face at the hands of criminal justice systems. If a person feels well-served by police and prison systems but becomes aware of the ways they are endangering some communities, they may feel they have a responsibility to work to transform or dismantle criminal justice systems, potentially sacrificing the safety they have gained from them. This paper considers more (...) closely the understanding of safety underlying such a perceived ‘responsibility to sacrifice’. It clarifies an understanding of safety motivating both current systems of policing and incarceration and the idea of a responsibility to sacrifice: namely, the idea that safety is an exchangeable good, that is, that one person’s safety could be guaranteed by compromising another’s. It considers an available alternative understanding of safety as a shared good. The paper concludes by arguing that individuals do not have a ‘responsibility to sacrifice’ but instead have responsibilities to (a) understand that feelings of/beliefs about safety are deeply racialized, (b) cultivate habits and practices that build capacity for responding to harm, danger, and our perceptions of harm and danger; and (c) transform the realities of structural racism that protect white people and endanger others. (shrink)

Neglect of the moral promise of disorientation is a persistent gap in even the most sophisticated philosophies of embodiment. In this article, I begin to correct this neglect by expanding our sense of the range and nature of disoriented experience and proposing new visions of disorientation as benefiting moral agency. Disorientations are experienced through complex interactions of corporeal, affective, and cognitive processes, and are characterized by feelings of shock, surprise, unease, and discomfort; felt disorientations almost always make us unsure of (...) how to go on. I argue that experiences of disorientation can strengthen the moral agency of individuals. I begin by clarifying experiences of felt ease and orientation. I then characterize disoriented embodiment by investigating select experiences that often involve or accompany disorientation, focusing throughout on how disorientation prompts changes in motivation and action. I conclude by charting how disoriented embodiments can help individuals become better moral agents overall, in part by challenging norms that restrict embodiment and undermining dualistic conceptions of the self. (shrink)