This chapter argues that some disorientations prompt individuals to gain new awareness in politically and morally important ways, even when they do not prompt capacities for decisive moral judgment or confidence. It investigates disorientations of experiencing racism, white privilege, consciousness-raising, and critical education, drawing on first-person, philosophical, and empirical accounts of double consciousness, white anti-racism, moral shock, double ontological shock, gaslighting, outlaw emotions, and feminist pedagogy. It demonstrates how, in some cases, these disorientations generate awareness of contingent oppressive norms and (...) of political complexity, and it then argues for the moral and political significance of such awareness. Even as it does not help individuals resolve how to act, such awareness can generate epistemic humility, allow individuals to relate differently to their histories and communities of origin, and clarify the necessity of collaborative rather than individual action. (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)

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)

Fearing is a central part of how we relate to each other and the unpredictable world. Fearing badly is a key part of many of our moral failures, and fearing better a central part of our moral repair. We might think that fearing is undesirable and should be avoided whenever possible. In fact, Fearing Together shows that the avoidance of fear causes some of our greatest threats. By understanding fear as a relational practice, we see that our relationships with other (...) fearers shape what we fear, what fear feels like, how we identify and understand our fears, and how we cope with them. Growing as moral agents involves coming to grips with what kinds of fearers we want to be and become, and with what we owe each other when facing what we cannot control. At the heart of this book are the moral quandaries and complexities of relational fearing: the ethics of fearing together. (shrink)

This paper draws on findings from qualitative interviews with queer and trans patients and with physicians providing care to queer and trans patients in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, to explore how routine practices of health care can perpetuate or challenge the marginalization of queers. One of the most common “measures” of improved cultural competence in health care practice is self-reported increases in confidence and comfort, though it seems unlikely that an increase in physician comfort levels with queer and trans patients (...) will necessarily mean better health care for queers. More attention to current felt discomfort in patient–provider encounters is required. Policies and practices that avoid discomfort at all costs are not always helpful for care, and experiences of shared discomfort in queer health contexts are not always harmful. (shrink)

Against the background of the exclusion of many feminist methodologies from mainstream philosophy, and in light of the methodological challenges of providing accounts of experience responsive to the lives of agents, in this paper I return to early feminist philosophers of emotion to highlight how they anticipate and respond to methodological criticisms. Sue Campbell (1956–2011) was one philosopher who used methodological quandaries to strengthen her account of the formation and expression of feelings (Campbell ). By rereading selected texts together intentionally (...) for their structural and methodological strategies, I emphasize the power of formal characteristics to make insightful claims about experience possible. I consider how feminist philosophers of “experienced agency” can put these strategies to use in facing ongoing methodological criticisms, taking as a case study an account of how it can feel to act responsibly against injustice. (shrink)

The adventure I am now undertaking is an appraisal of my profession, philosophy, of my fellow professionals, the philosophers, and, finally of myself at least ...

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)

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)

This paper considers an area of research in clinical psychology that focuses on the resilience of members of marginalized groups who have experienced traumas directly related to their social identities. The paper describes these as social group-based traumas and outlines three effects of social group-based traumas that can make the experiences of them, as well as experiences of recovery following them, distinct from those involved in other kinds of traumas. In cases where resilience frameworks are useful for understanding such recoveries, (...) the paper proposes three methodological strategies for designing research to address the characteristics of social group-based trauma. (shrink)

Lisa Tessman's When Doing the Right Thing is Impossible offers an engaging and accessible exploration of the complex philosophical issues surrounding moral dilemmas and moral failure. Are there genuine moral conflicts? Is it true that in some situations a moral agent cannot help but fail? Tessman offers her own answer–yes, in some situations, moral failure is unavoidable–while guiding readers through the debates surrounding these questions, clarifying the various positions sympathetically and carefully.Part of what makes the book so immediately gripping is (...) the case study it begins with in Chapter One: Tessman focuses on the case Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. During the storm, the... (shrink)

Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm, -1641--Criticism and interpretation. ; Islamic philosophy.

In this article, I consider how fear in contexts of crisis shapes and is shaped by agents’ relationships. I survey a number of approaches to understanding fearing at the intersection of empirical psychology and philosophy, highlighting the extent to which interpersonal relationships are positioned as involved in processes of fearing, and establish what I take to insufficient attention paid by these approaches to the ways interpersonal relations shape the emotions we come to have. Contexts of acute crisis and uncertainty can (...) involve rapidly adjusting practices of fearing in response to other agents, both those we trust and those we do not. I call for the development of a model of ‘relational calibration’ for understanding the complex interpersonal dynamics of fearing during crises, including in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Breaks through the cultural barriers between Western, Indian, and Chinese philosophy and demonstrates that despite considerable differences between these three great philosophical traditions, there are fundamental resemblances in their abstract principles.

In The Dilemma of Context, Scharfstein contends that the problems encountered with context are insoluble. He explains why this problem lays an intellectual burden on us that, while remaining inescapable,can become so heavy it destroys the understandingit was created to further.

This chapter defines disorientations as temporally extended, major life experiences that make it difficult for individuals to know how to go on, often involving feeling out of place, unfamiliar, or not at home. It canvasses how disorientations have been of interest in sub-disciplines of philosophy as well as present in philosophers’ own first-person accounts, and relevant for researchers in clinical psychology. The chapter then defends disorientations as a family resemblance concept, highlighting how different instances of disorientation are related by overlapping (...) similarities. It concludes by outlining the book’s feminist methodological approach to claims about: what disorientations are; the effects some disorientations have; the moral and political status of those effects; and disorientations’ position in contexts of oppression. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the extent to which disorientations can benefit agency depends in part on the ways disoriented people are responded to in communities. Drawing on feminist philosophy of emotional expression, it defends the view that how individuals experience their own disorientations can depend on what experiences they are enabled to express to others. The possibility that disorientations will benefit individuals depends in part on each individual’s ability to have and express such experiences, which depends on the existence of (...) sympathetic interpreters. The chapter then argues that members of communities and institutions can have responsibilities to create social conditions hospitable to and supportive of those who are disoriented and that individuals can have a responsibility to respond to ourselves as disorientable. (shrink)

Many contexts of injustice demand resolute action—action that is purposeful, decisive, confident, and unwavering—but this chapter argues that in some contexts of injustice, irresolute actions can be called for. The chapter begins by identifying what characterizes irresolute action in such contexts. It then introduces three kinds of irresolute action against injustice and defends their effectiveness in some contexts of injustice and activism, taking as examples contexts of heterosexism, mass incarceration, North American colonialism, and post-industrial poverty. It differentiates such contexts from (...) other cases of structural injustice, oppression and moral dilemmas where one can fulfill one’s responsibilities resolutely. Finally, it argues that we need to understand the importance of irresolute action against injustice in order to further understand the position of disorientation in moral life. (shrink)

This chapter introduces the concept of moral resolve: when a person acts on the basis of a moral judgment about what to do and how to do it, and with feelings of confidence about the action, herself as agent, or both, she acts with moral resolve. The assumption that moral resolve is the best or only evidence of successful moral motivation has been dominant in moral psychology and in philosophical and empirical ethics, including in accounts of moral development, dual-systems theories (...) of moral judgment, and accounts of ambivalence. Taking grief as a case study, the chapter offers an account of how experiences can have morally significant effects without generating moral resolve. This account clears the way for understanding how experiences like disorientations may be morally productive, even when they fail to generate, or directly compromise, moral resolve. (shrink)

This chapter examines the death of prisoners from illness in prison. It brings together first-person accounts and other research on the experiences of aging, being ill, and dying in prison, with and without formal hospice care, and the experiences of those working in hospice, caring for other prisoners at end of life. It considers these accounts, emphasizing Butler's analysis of livability and asking the question: what makes life, death, and grief in prison livable? It argues that adequately considering the complexity (...) of prison hospice programs means attending not just to how, where, and with whom prisoners are dying but also to who is most likely to be imprisoned, how their relationships are likely to be constrained, and how their lives and deaths are most likely to be perceived. Formal and informal hospice programs are important not only for the way prisoners provide basic care to each other within them but for the way they also allow for recognizing and mourning those who die in prison, as significant, remembered, and grievable. (shrink)

This article introduces questions in psychiatric ethics regarding the substantial field of qualitative and quantitative research into ‘posttraumatic growth’, which investigates how, after devastating experiences, individuals can come to feel that they have developed warmer relationships, increased spirituality, or a clearer vision of their priorities. In one area of this research, researchers of posttraumatic growth outline strategies for clinicians interested in assisting their patients in achieving such growth. In this article, I articulate two ethical concerns about this account of posttraumatic (...) growth and the practice of growth-oriented therapy. The first is a concern about the status and effects of the ideal of posttraumatic health implicit in their account, and the second a concern about the ethical implications of the clinical recommendations for the post-trauma patient. I argue for the need for more attention to the hazardous implications of relating to patients as though they are on their way to, and themselves largely in control of, their own posttraumatic growth. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Dans cet article, je m’intéresse à l’éthique de l’agentivité sexuelle courante. Il s’agit, plus particulièrement, des questions morales concernant quand, comment et pourquoi nous nous identifions à un type donné d’agent sexuel. Comme l’auto-identification met en jeux une combinaison complexe de processus individuels et sociaux, un cadre conceptuel qui rend justice à ces processus permettrait une analyse de l’éthique de l’auto-identification sexuelle. Je présente le concept de l’authenticité sexuelle comme étant utile dans les contextes où elle comporte deux aspects (...) principaux : l’adoption d’une identité sexuelle qui nous est propre et l’explication que nous en donnons à et avec d’autres personnes. (shrink)

This chapter argues that some disorientations prompt morally beneficial shifts in habits of relating to other people and to unpredictable moral contexts. It investigates disorientations of illness, trauma, queerness, and migration, drawing on first-person, philosophical, and empirical accounts of cancer, chronic illness, fatal disease, sexual violence, coming out, queer activism, migrant life, and “world-travelling”. It shows how, in some cases, these disorientations generate capacities for living unprepared, sensing vulnerabilities, “in-this-togetherness,” and living against the grain of norms, and argues for the (...) moral and political benefit of these capacities. In coming to live unprepared, sense vulnerability, relate to others as though we are in-this-together and live partly against the grain of oppressive norms, individuals demonstrate shifted expectations which more accurately reflect the conditions of oppressive society and prepare individuals to function within conditions of unpredictability, vulnerability, and interdependence. (shrink)