Prudence and Responsibility to Self in an Identity Crisis

Res Philosophica 93 (4):815-841 (2016)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

A comprehensive theory of rational prudence would explain how a person should adjudicate among the conflicting interests of her past, present, future and counterfactual selves. For example, when a person is having an identity crisis, perhaps because she has suddenly become disabled, she may be left with no sense of purpose to keep her going. In her despondent state, she may think it prudent to give up on life now even if she would soon adopt a different set of values that would give her a renewed sense of meaning. Yet we may think that, in many cases, it would be irrational for such a person to allow herself to die. My aim is to explain this prudential intuition by developing a partial framework of rational prudence that interprets and applies the idea that a prudent person acts in ways that are justifiable to herself over time.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,593

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Can Morality Do Without Prudence?David Kaspar - 2011 - Philosophia 39 (2):311-326.
Moral and Political Prudence in Kant.Eric Sean Nelson - 2004 - International Philosophical Quarterly 44 (3):305-319.
Prudence.Phillip Bricker - 1980 - Journal of Philosophy 77 (7):381-401.
Prudence and Anti-Prudence.Evan Simpson - 1998 - American Philosophical Quarterly 35 (1):73 - 86.
Wise Action: An Examination of Prudence and Morality.David Phillips Kaspar - 2003 - Dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo
The Prince Against Prudence.Randall Bush - 2015 - Philosophy and Rhetoric 48 (3):241-265.
Prudence in Hobbes's political philosophy.A. Vanden Houten - 2002 - History of Political Thought 23 (2):288-302.
Toward the Subjectivity of the Human Person.Peter J. Schulz - 2008 - American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 82 (1):161-176.
A Woman and a Man as Prime Analogical Beings.Prudence Allen - 1992 - American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 66 (4):465-482.
Moral Virtue and the Demise of Prudence in the Thought of Francis Suárez.John L. Treloar - 1991 - American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 65 (3):387-405.

Analytics

Added to PP
2017-02-15

Downloads
51 (#277,647)

6 months
6 (#202,901)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Adam Cureton
University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition.John Rawls - 1999 - Harvard University Press.
Reasons and Persons.Joseph Margolis - 1986 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (2):311-327.
Moral Luck.B. A. O. Williams & T. Nagel - 1976 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 50 (1):115-152.
The Sources of Normativity.Christine Korsgaard - 1999 - Philosophical Quarterly 49 (196):384-394.

View all 46 references / Add more references