Disorientation and Moral Life
Ami Harbin
Abstract
This book argues for the moral and political promise of disorientations, challenging common philosophical understandings of the necessity of orientedness for responsible moral action. In the face of difficult life experiences like trauma, grief, illness, migration, education, queer identification, and consciousness-raising, individuals can be deeply disoriented, struggling to know how to go on. These and other disorientations are not rare. The book draws on first-person accounts, philosophical texts, and qualitative and quantitative research to show that in some cases of disorientation, indivi ... More
This book argues for the moral and political promise of disorientations, challenging common philosophical understandings of the necessity of orientedness for responsible moral action. In the face of difficult life experiences like trauma, grief, illness, migration, education, queer identification, and consciousness-raising, individuals can be deeply disoriented, struggling to know how to go on. These and other disorientations are not rare. The book 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. It then argues for the moral and political promise of these gains. In philosophy, disorientations have been treated for the most part obliquely, as experiences avoidable and best avoided. It is not immediately clear how an experience that accentuates vulnerability and compromises capacities for decision-making and decisive action could improve moral and political agency. This book defends the view that experiences like disorientations can be morally productive, even when they fail to generate, or directly compromise, capacities for decisive moral judgment. It contributes to a tradition of feminist ethics and moral psychology that highlights the moral significance of everyday practices of embodiment, emotion, and relationality.
Keywords:
disorientation,
feminist ethics,
ethics,
moral psychology,
relationality,
vulnerability,
trauma,
emotion,
decision,
moral judgment
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190277390 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190277390.001.0001 |
