Challenging many of the currently accepted conceptions of autonomy and of how it is valued, Oshana develops a social-relational account of autonomy that is constituted by a person's relations with others and by the absence of certain social relations. She denies that command over one's motives and the freedom to realize one's will are sufficient to secure the kind of command over one's life that autonomy requires, and argues against psychological, procedural, and content neutral accounts of autonomy.

Autonomy generally is a valued condition for persons in liberal cultures such as the United States. We uphold autonomous agents as the exemplar of persons who, by their judgment and action, authenticate the social and political principles and policies that advance their interests. But questions about the value of autonomy are often problematic. They are problematic because they concern the kind of value autonomy has and not just how much value autonomy has when weighed against competing goods. The two questions (...) are frequently conflated. For example, in asking what happens when the putative right to autonomy is tested against competing goods, such as personal contentment or political security, we might overlook the fact that we are comparing goods that are valued for different reasons. My aim in this paper is to explore in a very general way some of the issues surrounding these questions about the value of autonomy. I plan to do so by focusing on the phenomenon of being “blinded” by an inarticulate ideal of the value of autonomy. (shrink)

_Personal Autonomy and Social Oppression_ addresses the impact of social conditions, especially subordinating conditions, on personal autonomy. The essays in this volume are concerned with the philosophical concept of autonomy or self-governance and with the impact on relational autonomy of the oppressive circumstances persons must navigate. They address on the one hand questions of the theoretical structure of personal autonomy given various kinds of social oppression, and on the other, how contexts of social oppression make autonomy difficult or impossible.

Much of the literature devoted to the topics of agent autonomy and agent responsibility suggests strong conceptual overlaps between the two, although few explore these overlaps explicitly. Beliefs of this sort are commonplace, but they mistakenly conflate the global state of being autonomous with the local condition of acting autonomously or exhibiting autonomy in respect to some act or decision. Because the latter, local phenomenon of autonomy seems closely tied to the condition of being responsible for an act, we tend (...) to think of the former, global phenomenon as a condition of responsibility as well. But one can act autonomously, or manifest autonomy with respect to some occurrent state, without satisfying the conditions for autonomous agency. Autonomous agency and responsible agency are logically distinct in part due to the varient conceptions of rationality each calls for. Both agent responsibility and holding a person responsible imply a fairly ``thick'''' form of rationality, where rationality embodies a normative component and is a matter of satisfying criteria that are objective in the sense that they are independent of what a person happens to want or to value. But autonomous agency calls for a quite different, ``thin'''' conception of instrumental rationality. (shrink)

The essays in this volume open up reflection on the implications of social inequality for theorizing about moral responsibility. Collectively, they focus attention on the relevance of the social context, and of structural and epistemic injustice, stereotyping and implicit bias, for critically analyzing our moral responsibility practices.

Moral taint occurs when one’s personality has been compromised by the introduction of something that produces disfigurement of the moral psyche. While taint may be traced to vicarious liability for our voluntary associations, the thought that we might be responsible for taint and that taint is something we must confront and make amends for becomes problematic when taint is acquired by circumstantial luck. I argue that the idea of circumstantial taint—for example, the idea that people can be morally compromised by (...) their heritage—is coherent. In such cases, although taint is not due to a deficient level of care or to an unsavory quality of will, shame is the appropriate affect and atonement the appropriate response. The concept of moral taint is helpful in assisting our comprehension of more vexing cases of responsibility and blame where shame and a need for atonement exist. (shrink)

The principal aim of this essay is to explore aspects of the phenomenon of moral conversation at work in ascriptions of responsibility. A corollary aim will be to understand the variety of freedom we regard as foundational to ascriptions of responsibility. To ascribe responsibility to a person is to judge that the person is accountable for her behavior. Accountability demands that a person be a moral interlocutor; being a moral interlocutor requires that a person is alert to moral reasons in (...) favor of or against the behavior in question and requires that a person is a discursive partner. So understood, ascriptions of responsibility may be characterized as resting on some version of a contractualist theory of morality, where one mark of fitness for membership in the community of moral agents is an ability to adjust one’s behavior in keeping with norms that others could not reasonably reject. (shrink)

The Importance of How We See Ourselves: Self-Identity and Responsible Agency analyzes the nature of the self and the phenomena of self-awareness and self-identity in an attempt to offer insight into the practical role self-conceptions play in moral development and responsible agency.

This paper explores the role trust plays in the context of health care partnerships where the preservation of autonomy is desired. The case of IN RE: Maria Isabel Duran is used as a focal point for discussion. I argue that within the context of collective decision making of the sort that occurs in health care relationships, trust is consistent with autonomous agency, provided the trust is relational, a property of a triadic relation between the patient and her partners in health (...) care, and between the patient and herself. Moreover, if it is the autonomy of the patient that drives the nature and the direction of her medical options, we must respect a medical ethic of informed consent and durable powers of attorney and the patient’s right of selfgovernance this ethic serves. At the foundation of trust in others and in oneself is respect. (shrink)

The primary end of an account of personal identity is to discover what phenomena explain a person’s status as a unified agent and contribute to the person’s self-understanding. This paper explores the consequences upon a person’s ability to understand her motives for action, as unified agency requires, when the person is removed from the source of her identity and from the practices that support the self-regarding attitudes to which this identity gives rise.

Mainstream accounts of responsible agency either overlook or discount wanton agents as plausible candidates for responsible agency. This is largely due to the compatibilist project of such accounts, and to their deemphasis of historical and modal considerations. I argue that wantons – those who are indifferent to the desires that move them to act – can and ought to be counted as responsible agents. Indeed, they deserve special blame for the acts of wrong doing that issue from their wanton behavior.

Title from title page of source document.

This paper explores the reception of Kant's understanding of consciousness by both Romantics and Idealists from 1785 to 1799, and traces its impact on the theory of religion. I first look at Kant's understanding of consciousness as developed in the first Critique, and then looks at how figures such as Fichte, Jacobi, Hölderlin, Novalis, and Schleiermacher received this theory of consciousness and its implications for their understanding of religion.

This book collects seventeen essays published between 1984 and 2020, in which Marina Sbisà develops her distinctive approach to speech acts and related pragmatic phenomena. Drawing inspiration from the work of J. L. Austin, the essays examine the categories of speech act theory and apply these categories in the context of natural discourse and conversation, with the aim of providing an accurate analysis of how speech can be action. Sbisà devotes particular attention to normative aspects of language and language (...) use: speech acts reshape the normative context in which they occur by assigning or unassigning deontic properties to relevant parties. Emphasis is placed on the normative aspect of linguistically mandated presuppositions as well as the rational grounds of implicature. The conventionalist view of speech acts developed here turns on the role of intersubjective agreement in deontic updating, in a framework that shifts focus from single utterances to discursive sequences and conversational interaction. This view challenges the main tenets of a Gricean intentionalist understanding of speech act performance, paving the way for a theory of speech actions centred on the normatively transformative power of illocution. Throughout the essays, examples and applications are given to illustrate how the view put forward contributes to understanding the social and political dimensions of linguistic activity, such as hidden persuasive strategies, power imbalances both within and outside the context of conversation, and the relevance of language and discourse to gender issues. (shrink)

Phantasmagoria explores ideas of spirit and soul since the Enlightenment; it traces metaphors that have traditionally conveyed the presence of immaterial forces, and reveals how such pagan and Christian imagery about ethereal beings are embedded in a logic of the imagination, clothing spirits in the languages of air, clouds, light and shadow, glass, and ether itself. Moving from Wax to Film, the book also discusses key questions of imagination and cognition, and probes the perceived distinctions between fantasy and deception; it (...) uncovers a host of spirit forms--angels, ghosts, fairies, revenants, and zombies--that are still actively present in contemporary culture. It reveals how their transformations over time illuminate changing ideas about the self. Phantasmagoria also tells the accompanying story about the means used to communicate such ideas, and relates how the new technologies of the Victorian era were applied to figuring the invisible and the impalpable, and how magic lanterns (the phantasmagoria shows themselves), radio, photography and then moving pictures spread ideas about spirit forces. As the story unfolds, the book features the many eminent men and women--scientists and philosophers--who in the Society of Psychical Research applied their considerable energies to the question of other worlds and other states of mind: they staged trance seances in which mediums produced spirit phenomena, including ectoplasm. The book shows how this often embarrassing story connects with some of the important scientific discoveries of a fertile age, in psychology and physics. Over a sequence of twenty-eight chapters, with over thirty illustrations in color and black and white, Phantasmagoria thus tells an unexpected and often uncomfortable story about shifts in thought about consciousness and the individual person, from the first public waxworks portraits at the end of the eighteenth century to stories of hauntings, possession, and loss of self as in the case of the zombie, a popular figure of soulessness, in modern times. (shrink)

'Marina G. Ogden offers a competitive and comprehensive outlook of the prominent Russian thinker Lev Shestov. This valuable book, based on the archive sources, provides a good historical background for Shestov's investigations which is very important for the better understanding not only Russian religious thought, but also Western philosophy of the twentieth century.'- Professor Teresa Obolevitch, The Pontifical University of John Paul II, Krakow 'The pioneering Russian existentialist Lev Shestov influenced Camus, Bataille, Celan and many others. In this absorbing (...) study, Marina G. Ogden shows how his "parable" of the many-eyed Angel of Death anticipates much recent thinking about trauma and its effect in setting a life on a unique and sometimes creative path.'- David M. Black, the author of Why Things Matter: The place of values in science, psychoanalysis and religion At the beginning of the twentieth century the Russian émigré philosopher Lev Shestov (1866-1938) challenged traditional philosophical norms and brought the individual experience of the anxiety of death to the forefront of philosophical investigation. Based on new research and translations of Shestov's unpublished manuscripts, notes and correspondence, this book analyses the thoughts of one of the most influential thinkers of the past century in an interdisciplinary context. While uncovering the roots of the philosopher's existential position, the author traces Shestov's 'wandering through souls' of the world's most significant philosophers and writers within the context of a historical and biographical narrative, offering a close reading of his thinking in its chronological progression. A new interpretation of Shestov's philosophy, this comparative and hermeneutical analysis focuses on the thinker's continual search for meaning on the question of human mortality. Bringing together up-to-date research findings in Russian, English and French, an evolutionary analysis of the key notions in Shestov's philosophy the problems of truth, revelation, faith and death - is carried out in conjunction with the ideas of such pivotal figures in Western culture as Fyodor Dostoevsky, William James, Edmund Husserl, Karl Jaspers, Martin Buber and Sigmund Freud. (shrink)

This paper explores three important criticisms of Kant's ethics by Friedrich Schleiermacher, all having to do with Kant's alleged failure to account for the value of the individual. These are: (1) Kant's formalism precludes him from specifying ends for the will, and without such ends, the moral perfection of the individual, and the genuine appreciation of the other in his or her individuality cannot become my end; (2) Kant cannot provide an adequate metaphysical grounding of the value of the individuals (...) comprising a community; (3) Kant cannot give an account of why members of a community should value the individual qua individual in relation to the community. In this paper I discuss these criticisms and their validity in detail. I show that understood properly, Kant has the resources to answer Schleiermacher's first criticism, and I show how Schleiermacher's own system sought to avoid the second and third problems. (shrink)