The situation caused by the 2019 coronavirus disease has been representing a great source of concern and a challenge to the psychological well-being of many individuals around the world. For couples in particular, this extraordinary rise in concern, combined with the stress posed by the virus containment measures, such as prolonged cohabitation and lack of support networks, may have increased the likelihood of couple problems. At the same time, however, COVID-19 concerns may have been a stimulus to activate couples’ stress (...) management processes. A couple’s resource, which may have an important role in dealing with COVID-19 concerns and stress, is dyadic coping, i.e., the process through which partners face stress together. Drawing on a sample of 1,823 Italian individuals involved in a couple relationship, the current study tested a serial mediation model in which concerns about COVID-19 predicted psychological well-being, through both explicit stress communication and perceived partner dyadic coping responses. In addition, the study explored whether this dyadic coping process functioned the same way in satisfied and dissatisfied couples. Results showed that concerns about the situation related to COVID-19 significantly threatened individuals’ psychological well-being. However, these concerns positively predicted explicit stress communication, which in turn positively predicted perceived partner’s dyadic coping responses, which finally positively predicted psychological well-being. In addition, in the group of dissatisfied individuals, the association between explicit stress communication and perceived partners’ dyadic coping responses was not significant. The present study adds to the research on couples’ coping by testing for the first time the whole theoretical model of dyadic coping and does so during a global emergency situation. The study also suggests key components of preventive interventions for individuals in couples. (shrink)

The new Coronavirus has been declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization. The sudden outbreak of this new virus and the measure of lockdown adopted to contain the epidemic have profoundly changed the lifestyles of the Italian population, with an impact on people’s quality of life and on their social relationships. In particular, due to forced and prolonged cohabitation, couples may be subject to specific stressors during the epidemic. In addition, living with a chronic health condition may add (...) specific challenges to the ones posed by the epidemic itself. The present cross-sectional study aimed to provide a picture of the challenges as well as the resources for both individual and relational well-being of Italian individuals in a couple relationship, with a specific attention to the comparison between individuals living with and without a chronic disease. Results showed that people with a chronic disease had lower psychological well-being and more fears and worries about the COVID-19. People with a chronic disease perceived fewer resources than healthy people. Moreover, the challenges are shown to be associated with less psychological well-being and high pessimism about the future. Instead individual, relational, and social resources play a protective role during the pandemic for both healthy and chronically ill people. (shrink)

Managing cardiac illness is not easy because it dramatically disrupts people’s daily life and both the patient and his/her spouse are at risk for experiencing distress, which, in turn, may affect the support provided by the partner as caregiver. The partner, in fact, is the main source of support, but his/her support may sometimes be inadequate. In addition, dyadic coping could likely be a moderating factor. The main aim of the present study was to examine the role that dyadic coping (...) plays in moderating the link between patient and partner cardiac illness-related distress and partner support. The study included 100 married couples faced with cardiac illness who completed a self-report questionnaire. We analyzed our data in PROCESS using multiple regressions in order to assess the moderating effects of DC responses in the relationship between the couple’s cardiac illness-related distress and partner support. With regard to patient distress, results showed that higher levels of patient anxiety and depression were linked with ineffective partner support. With regard to partner distress, higher levels of partner depression were linked with hostility; higher levels of partner depression and anxiety were associated with less partner support for patient engagement. Moreover, the association between distress and partner support was moderated by the quality of DC. In particular, low positive DC represented a risk factor for both the patient and the partner during a cardiac illness, as low positive DC exacerbated the link between patient and partner distress and less effective partner support styles. Also, higher levels of negative DC were risky for couples: The association between distress and less adequate partner supportive behaviors was stronger in the case of higher negative DC. These results imply a need for psychosocial interventions for couples in cardiac illness, especially for couples lacking relational competences, such as positive dyadic coping. (shrink)

This commentary concentrates on two flaws in Mele's account. The first is Mele's attempt to account for self-deception by appealing to a desire to believe, together with an instrumental belief concerning the means of satisfying this desire. Contrary to Mele, it is argued that such an account requires a recognition on the part of agents that their actions instantiate these means. Second, Mele misidentifies the most essential – and flawed – ingredient of the standard approach to self-deception, the agent's desire (...) to form the belief (the belief that is undermined by the evidence). This ingredient is retained in Mele's own account of self-deception. (shrink)

How does a subject who is competent to detect the irrationality of a belief that p, form her belief against weighty or even conclusive evidence to the contrary? The phenomenon of self-deception threatens a widely shared view of beliefs according to which they do not regularly correspond to emotions and evaluative attitudes. Accordingly, the most popular answer to this question is that the belief formed in self-deception is caused by an intention to form that belief. On this view, the state (...) of self-deception is taken to be a calculated outcome involving a person's intentional manipulation of her own thoughts. I argue that this answer is false and forms an impediment towards making sense of self-deception. I show that, contrary to philosophical prejudice, emotions and desires exert vast and systematic effects on the formation of beliefs. In this, and other, sections of the article, the results of experimental work are brought forward. Self-deception is portrayed here as resembling numerous instances of belief formation which are regularly affected by motivational factors. I argue that self-deceptive beliefs are direct expressions of the subject's wishes, fears and hopes. Qua beliefs which mostly correspond to such factors (rather than to evidence), self-deceptive states are a kind of fantasy. (shrink)

We argue that two long-term goals of AI research stand in tension with one another. The first involves creating AI that is safe, where this is understood as solving the problem of value alignment. The second involves creating artificial general intelligence, meaning AI that operates at or beyond human capacity across all or many intellectual domains. Our argument focuses on the human capacity to make what we call “existential choices”, choices that transform who we are as persons, including transforming what (...) we most deeply value or desire. It is a capacity for a kind of value misalignment, in that the values held prior to making such choices can be significantly different from (misaligned with) the values held after making them. Because of the connection to existentialist philosophers who highlight these choices, we call the resulting form of risk “existentialist risk.” It is, roughly, the risk that results from AI taking an active role in authoring its own values rather than passively going along with the values given to it. On our view, human-like intelligence requires a human-like capacity for value misalignment, which is in tension with the possibility of guaranteeing value alignment between AI and humans. (shrink)

We use phenomenology to reflect on the experience of being with others as mediated by screens through videoconferencing platforms, a phenomenon accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic and social isolation measures. We explore two directions to explain the intersubjective experience of a videoconference. One direction introduces a conceptual background based on previous contributions in phenomenology, while the other one is more speculative: we introduce the novel idea of a phantom other. First, we understand this phenomenon either as a correlate of image (...) consciousness or as a paradoxical perception. Then, we introduce the phantom other using ideas offered in phenomenological descriptions in which the phantom limb appears as a quasi-presence. The phantom other is the same flesh and blood body with whom I co-constitute senses of the world. In a videoconference, the other appears as a whole body with which I coordinate, although she appears as a phantom other. (shrink)

Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, judges and lawmakers sought to erase the visibility of unmarried women. In the public law arena, for example, legislators conflated women and wives for the purpose of the franchise, arguing that women did not need the vote because their husbands voted for them. In the private law arena, doctrines intended to guarantee support to unmarried women functioned by constructing single women's legal identities in relation to marriage, thereby suggesting that marriage could provide for (...) all women's material needs. This essay argues that understanding the history of single women's legal rights is critical to understanding the legal construction of marriage as the dominant institution for regulating all women's private relationships to men and public relationships to the state. Denying single women's existence allowed the law to ignore the potential threat they posed to a marriage-centric socio-legal order. Legal and political changes in the early decades of the twentieth century, however, made it increasingly difficult for the law to deny the existence of unmarried women. As single women gained social prominence, nonlegal writers in the 1930s and 1940s produced a new genre of prescriptive and descriptive literature for and about women living outside of marriage. Unlike earlier legal texts, these works embraced single women as a permanent and visible part of society. Like their legal predecessors, however, these modern authors sought to minimize the threat posed by single women to the institution of marriage, pointing to single women as proof of marriage's modern, consensual, democratic nature. (shrink)

Q 1: How is it possible for a competent subject to detect the irrationality of a belief that p, to form and maintain his belief that not-p against weighty or conclusive evidence to the contrary?

Can the question "Why do what morality requires?" be answered in such a way that anyone regardless of their desires or interests has reason to be moral? One strategy for answering this question appeals to constitutive arguments. In general, constitutive arguments attempt to establish the normativity of rational requirements by pointing out that we are already committed to them insofar as we are believers or agents. This study is concerned with the general prospects for such arguments. It starts by explaining (...) the general constitutive argument strategy, followed by an examination of constitutive arguments that have been given regarding theoretical reason and the instrumental principle in practical reason, and concluding with a discussion of some challenges to constitutive arguments in moral philosophy and some possible responses to these challenges. (shrink)

This paper develops an account of existential choices and their role in practical reasoning. In contrast to other views that attempt to make sense of existential choices as a type of rational choice, the proposed account takes them to be choices among the normative outlooks that determine the reasons we have, and as such are nonrational. According to the argument in the paper, existential choices bring to light a feature of all choices, that they are made against the backdrop of (...) a normative outlook, which grounds the rationality of the choice but is not itself rationally determined. (shrink)

In recent years, bioethical discourse around the topic of ‘genetic enhancement’ has become increasingly politicized. We fear there is too much focus on the semantic question of whether we should call particular practices and emerging bio-technologies such as CRISPR ‘eugenics’, rather than the more important question of how we should view them from the perspective of ethics and policy. Here, we address the question of whether ‘eugenics’ can be defended and how proponents and critics of enhancement should engage with each (...) other. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate Nishida Kitarō’s way of philosophizing in the light of the concept of “transition” in order to deepen our understanding of both Nishida’s philosophy and our thinking about and in transitions, using the concept of “boundary” or “border” (Grenze) as a catalyst. For that purpose, we focus on Nishida’s essay “Place” (「場所」), passing through different parts of the text as if through successive gates on a path of transition between one place and the (...) next, until we reach the final place of “absolute nothingness.” Dwelling on this place, we turn our attention to its internal structure and try to depict it along the outlines of a boundary, following the movements taking place in Nishida’s essay. The second part proposes an interpretation of the place of nothingness as an interminable practice of boundary-crossing that doesn’t come to a halt in a final, all-encompassing place, but dynamically situates itself on countless intersecting planes. After a more or less abstract analysis of the concept of “boundary,” we will apply and concretize this approach by using the example of the skin. To this end, we expose five main features of the skin as boundary: permeability, enclosure, excessiveness, interstitiality and reciprocal self-formation. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo se analizan los términos utilizados por E. Husserl en el segundo volumen de Ideas relativas a una fenomenología pura y a una filosofía fenomenológica. Investigaciones fenomenológicas sobre la constitución para nombrar la corporeidad humana. Nos interesa, dentro del abanico semántico desplegado por el filósofo, atender al concepto de Leibköper y mostrar su independencia respecto del par Leib y Körper, en tanto y en cuanto permite describir una dimensión de la experiencia que las otras nociones no parecen (...) agotar. Se discuten, además, las interpretaciones de E. Behnke (1996) y N. Depraz (2001) sobre el concepto de Leibkörper. Mientras para la primera, se trataría de una definición estrictamente naturalista de la corporalidad que debe ser excluida en la actitud fenomenológica, para la segunda es, más bien, un concepto esencialmente fenomenológico, el de cuerpo vivido. Teniendo en cuenta el contexto general de fundamentación de una Fenomenología de la corporeidad que anima el trabajo, el esclarecimiento de esta noción resulta de vital importancia. (shrink)

El presente trabajo intenta constituir un aporte a la tarea de ganar precisión conceptual en la consideración de las temáticas del espacio y el movimiento humano desde una perspectiva fenomenológica y toma como horizonte teórico las lúcidas reflexiones de Maurice Merleau-Ponty sobre estas temáticas. Se analizan en el mismo los aportes de la distinción entre una espacialidad de situación y una espacialidad de posición, se revisan de manera crítica las limitaciones de la misma y se propone la noción de postura (...) como un complemento descriptivo que permite hacer extensiva la reflexión merleaupontiana acerca del movimiento a fenómenos motrices de agentes diestros y entrenados. (shrink)

The notions of acting against one's better judgment and self-deception are notoriously problematic. Often, they have been deemed incoherent in a tradition which may be traced back to Socrates. My inquiry into these notions, unlike many others, explicitly draws upon considerations pertaining to the interpretation of speech and action and the role which rationality plays within it, the nature of psychological explanation and the framework in which it is embedded. This work is motivated by the view that, if carried out (...) properly, a study of the mind which focuses on deviant phenomena will also improve understanding of standard cases of action and belief-formation. ;The possibility of acting against one's better judgment seems, prima facie, to be at odds with our notion of action. I begin by critically examining several arguments purporting to show that akrasia is in fact incompatible with the notion of a free intentional action. I show that, overall, an agent appears more rational, and thus more intelligible, if instances of local irrationality of this kind are acknowledged as such rather than re-interpreted as non-akratic actions. The position I reject represents the agent as significantly more inconsistent than necessary, and in some sense, undermines the endeavor of a psychological explanation. ;I proceed to argue that reasons play a unique role in the context of explaining actions. At the same time, the framework of action explanation must be expanded so as to include additional familiar elements such as emotions and fantasies in order to improve understanding of the choices we make. I argue that the causal influence of these elements cannot be fully captured as merely a source of reasons for actions; thus, some of the mental causes responsible for our actions lie outside the realm of reasons. Finally, I show how expanding the explanatory framework of actions makes the phenomenon of akrasia less puzzling in some respects; indeed, this expansion should incline us to expect that persons would act akratically on occasion. ;My discussion of self-deception focuses on two major questions: whether every case of self-deception involves the presence of an intention to form a belief and to what extent this phenomenon warrants a view of the mind as divided. With respect to the first question, I suggest that a view which refrains from interpreting every case of self-deception as involving an intention to form a belief is psychologically more plausible and accounts for some key cases for which the intentionalist view fails to account. As for the second question, I contend that there are at least two ways in which the mind may be properly seen as divided, yet divisions which introduce homuncularism should be rejected. What emerges from my discussion of self-deception, as well as the preceding discussion of akrasia, is a view of the mind that essentially incorporates both rational and non-rational elements. (shrink)

Reasons internalism holds that reasons for action contain an essential connection with motivation. I defend an account of reasons internalism based on the advisor model. The advisor model provides an account of reasons for action in terms of the advice of a more rational version of the agent. Contrary to Pettit and Smith's proposal and responding to Sobel's and Johnson's objections, I argue that the advisor model can provide an account of internal reasons and that it is too caught up (...) in the psychology of the actual agent to be able to account for anything other than internal reasons. (shrink)

Metaphor has been considered as a cognitive process, independent of the verbal versus visual mode, through which an unknown conceptual domain is understood in terms of another known conceptual domain. Metaphor might instead be viewed as a cognitive process, dependent on the mode, which leads to genuinely new knowledge via ignorance. First, I argue that there are two main senses of ignorance at stake when we understand a metaphor: we ignore some existing properties of the known domain in the sense (...) that we disregard or neglect them; we ignore some “non-existing” properties of the known domain in the sense that they are not a piece of information belonging to the known domain, but emerge in metaphor interpretation. Secondly, I consider a metaphor as a reasoning device, guiding the interpreters along a path of inferences to a conclusion, which attributes to the target some properties of the source. In this path, interpreters might discover the ignored existing properties of the known domain and/or recover the “non-existing” properties, inferring or imagining the missing piece of information. Finally, I argue that, especially in visual metaphors, this process is guided by a “sentiment of rationality”, tracking a disruption of existing familiar conceptualisations of objects and/or actions and a recovery of ignored properties. (shrink)

This paper argues for interpreting Nietzsche along the lines of a self-constitution view. According to the self-constitution view, a person is a kind of creation: we constitute our selves throughout our lives. The self-constitution view may take more than one form: on the narrative version, the self is like a story, while on the Kantian version, the self is a set of principles or commitments. Taking Marya Schechtman’s and Christine Korsgaard’s accounts as paradigmatic, I take the self-constitution view to emphasize (...) practical considerations and the first person point of view and to conceive of the self as active in self-creation. The interpretation I offer can make sense of Nietzsche’s remarks about self-creation and of many of Nietzsche’s remarks about the self that would otherwise seem contradictory. In particular, Nietzsche’s anti-metaphysical remarks about the self fit well with the self-constitution view as long as they are understood as theoretical claims that do not undermine the importance of the practical point of view. (shrink)

Constitutive arguments for the principles of practical reason attempt to justify normative requirements by claiming that we already accept them in so far as we are believers or agents. In two constitutive arguments for the requirement that we must will universally, Korsgaard attempts first to arrive at the requirement that we will universally from observations about the causality of the will, and secondly to establish that willing universally is constitutive of having a self. Some rational requirements may be established by (...) some version of this second argument, but the strategy does not seem promising when it comes to establishing the requirement that we will universally. I draw on the discussion of Korsgaard to highlight a challenge facing constitutive arguments in general. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Following Robert C. Solomon's Living with Nietzsche, I defend an interpretation of Nietzsche's views about freedom that are in line with the existentialist notion of self-creation. Given Nietzsche's emphasis on the limitations on human freedom, his critique of the notion of causa sui, and his critique of morality for relying on the assumption that we have free will, it may be surprising that he could be taken seriously as an existentialist—existentialism characteristically takes freedom and self-creation to be central to (...) the human condition. Nietzsche does not endorse a radical notion of freedom; he is rather emphatically critical of any such notion. However, I argue that he does have room for a certain kind of freedom and self-creation that supports Solomon's characterization of him as an existentialist. (shrink)

Human beings are internally inconsistent in various ways. One way to develop this thought involves using the language of value alignment: the values we hold are not always aligned with our behavior, and are not always aligned with each other. Because of this self-misalignment, there is room for potential projects of human enhancement that involve achieving a greater degree of value alignment than we presently have. Relatedly, discussions of AI ethics sometimes focus on what is known as the value alignment (...) problem, the challenge of how to build AI that acts in accordance with our human values. We argue that there is an especially close connection between solving the value alignment problem in AI ethics and using AI to pursue certain forms of human enhancement. But in addition, we also argue that there are important limits to what kinds of human enhancement can be pursued in this way, because some forms of human enhancement—namely moral revolutions—involve a kind of value misalignment rather than alignment. (shrink)

El interés de este trabajo está orientado a un problema escasamente considerado por los estudiosos de la fenomenología, la agencia experta de sujetos encarnados. Una explicación plausible de esta falta de atención sería que los fenomenólogos se han concentrado en la agencia de sujetos normales y de personas enfermas, y se han dedicado menos a las performances expertas de bailarines y deportistas. En este artículo intentaré complementar las investigaciones fenomenológicas precedentes con descripciones de la agencia corporal de sujetos entrenados para (...) ofrecer una visión integrada de la acción humana. Mi hipótesis es que los agentes expertos desarrollan un tipo de cognición corporal, diferente de la que se da en la experiencia ordinaria. La cognición corporal implicada en la experticia se caracteriza por actuar en el campo de lo virtual. Con el objetivo de dar una descripción de la cognición corporal en la experticia realizo una revisión de la definición intencional del movimiento, propongo una distinción entre movimiento reflejo, habitual y mecánico y caracterizo el movimiento experto. Para una mejor comprensión del fenómeno, considero, además, ejemplos y descripciones de performances ofrecidas por los verdaderos protagonistas del comportamiento experto en escenarios competitivos. (shrink)

En este trabajo consideraré la recepción de _Phénoménologie de la Perception _en las Ciencias Cognitivas contemporáneas, con el objetivo de subrayar la original comprensión de la relación entre ciencia y filosofía propuesta por Merleau-Ponty en su obra. Merleau-Ponty, guiado por el lema husserliano de “volver a las cosas mismas”, critica a la ciencia concebida como resultado del pensamiento objetivo. En su opinión, la ciencia privilegia la explicación sobre la descripción y oculta así, debajo de sus constructos teóricos, la validez originaria (...) de la experiencia vivida. Sin embargo, en la comprensión merleau-pontyana de la percepción está también implicada la ciencia como fuente de material para la investigación fenomenológica. A la luz de estas consideraciones sobre el papel desempeñado por la ciencia en la comprensión fenomenológica de la experiencia, me propongo reconsiderar dos lecturas críticas dirigidas contra la comprensión del legado merleau-pontyano en el campo de investigación de las Ciencias Cognitivas. La primera de ellas es desarrollada por G. B. Madison y sus críticas apuntan al logocentrismo implicado en las Ciencias Cognitivas. La segunda es sostenida por C. Pollard para quien las Ciencias Cognitivas malinterpretan el proyecto merleau-pontyano al ignorar el objetivo trascendental que la motiva. (shrink)

O trabalho desenvolvido ao longos dos últimos anos por Agustin Serrano de Haro, nomeadamente no contexto das investigações fenomenológicas sobre o tema da corporeidade e, mais especificamente, sobre a questão da dor física, colocaram o seu nome entre os grandes especialistas mundiais nestas matérias. Ao importante número de ensaios publicados sobre os temas referidos, juntam-‑se alguns títulos de rara originalidade que vieram confirmar a qualidade do investigador do CSIC de Madrid. O objetivo da presente entrevista a Agustín Serrano de Haro (...) é o de dar a conhecer de forma alternativa o trabalho e o pensamento deste importante investigador espanhol contemporâneo. (shrink)

Neste breve texto é apresentado o conjunto de trabalhos de pesquisa que se publicam aqui em uma seção especial dedicada aos resultados da pesquisa do Projeto Internacional de Investigação “Fenomenología del Cuerpo y Análisis del dolor II”.

El concepto problemático que guía este trabajo es el que, a partir de la aparición del volumen Naturalizing Phenomenology (1999), han propuesto los defensores, así como también los detractores, del proyecto que pretende re-introducir el aporte de la fenomenología en la investigación de las ciencias ..

Despite the remarkable advances in behavioral and brain sciences over the last decades, the mind/body (brain) problem is still an open debate and one of the most intriguing questions for both cognitive neuroscience and philosophy of mind. Traditional approaches have conceived this problem in terms of a contrast between physicalist monism and Cartesian dualism. However, since the late sixties, the landscape of philosophical views on the problem has become more varied and complex. The Multiple Realization Thesis (MRT) claims that mental (...) properties can be (or are) realized, and mental processes can be (or are) implemented by neural correlates of different kinds. Thus, MRT challenges the psychoneural type-identity theory and the corresponding reductionism. Many philosophers have acknowledged the a priori plausibility of MRT. However, the existence of empirical evidence in favor of intraspecific, human multiple realizations of mental processes and properties is still controversial. Here we illustrate some cases that provide empirical evidence in support of MRT. Recently, it has been proposed that foveal agnosic vision, like peripheral vision, can be restored by increasing object parts’ spacing (Strappini et al., 2017a; Crutch and Warrington, 2007). Agnosic fovea and normal periphery are both limited by crowding, that impairs object recognition, and provides the signature of visual integration. Here we define a psychological property of restored object identification and we cross-reference the data of visually-impaired patients with different etiologies. In particular, we compare the data of two stroke patients, two patients with posterior cortical atrophy (PCA), six cases of strabismic amblyopia, and one case with restored sight. We also compare these patients with unimpaired subjects tested in the periphery. We show that integration (i.e. restored recognition) seems to describe quite accurately the visual performance in all these cases. While the patients have different etiologies and different neural correlates, the unimpaired subjects have no neural damage. Thus similarity in the psychological property given the differences in the neural substrate can be interpreted in relation to MRT and provide evidence in its support. Finally, we will frame our contribution within the current debate concerning MRT providing new and compelling empirical evidence. (shrink)

Criminal liability for acts committed by AI systems has recently become a hot legal topic. This paper includes three different contributions. The first contribution is an analysis of the extent to which an AI system can satisfy the requirements for criminal liability: accomplishing an actus reus, having the corresponding mens rea, possessing the cognitive capacities needed for responsibility. The second contribution is a discussion of criminal activity accomplished by an AI entity, with reference to a recent case involving an online (...) bot, the Random Darknet Shopper. This discussion will provide the context for the analysis of commonalities and differences between criminal activities by humans and by artificial systems. The third contribution concerns the evaluation of different ways of addressing criminal activities by AI systems in a regulatory perspective. (shrink)

The French studies scholar Patrick Coleman made the important observation that over the course of the eighteenth century, the social meanings of anger became increasingly democratized. The work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau is an outstanding example of this change. In Man or Citizen, Karen Pagani expands, in original and fascinating ways, the study of anger in Rousseau’s autobiographical, literary, and philosophical works. Pagani is especially interested in how and to what degree anger—and various reconciliatory responses to anger, such as (...) forgiveness—functions as a defining aspect of one’s identity, both as a private individual and as a public citizen. Rousseau himself was, as Pagani puts it, “unabashed” in his own anger and indignation—toward society on one hand (corrupter of our naturally good and authentic selves) and, on the other, toward certain individuals who had somehow wronged him (his famous philosophical disputes with Voltaire and Diderot, for example). In Rousseau’s work, Pagani finds that the extent to which an individual processes, expresses, and eventually resolves or satisfies anger is very much of moral and political concern. She argues that for Rousseau, anger is not only inevitable but also indispensable, and that the incapacity to experience it renders one amoral, while the ability to experience it is a key element of good citizenship. (shrink)