Affective self-transformation premised on empathy has been understood within feminist and anti-racist literatures as central to achieving social justice. Through juxtaposing debates about empathy within feminist and anti-racist theory with rhetorics of empathy in international development, and particularly writing about ‘immersions’, this article explores how the workings of empathy might be reconceptualised when relations of postcoloniality and neoliberalism are placed in the foreground. I argue that in the neoliberal economy in which the international aid apparatus operates, empathetic (...) class='Hi'>self-transformation can become commodified in ways that fix unequal affective subjects. Empathy may function here less to produce more intersubjective relations and ways of knowing than it does to augment the moral and affective capacities of development professionals. Yet, I suggest, it is in the ambivalences, tensions and contradictions of both emotion and neoliberalism that spaces for thinking and feeling transnational encounters differently might be cultivated. (shrink)

The subject of normalization and its relationship to sex/gender is a major one in feminist theory; Heyes' book is unique in her masterful use of Foucault; its clarity, and its sophisticated mix of the theoretical and the anecdotal. It will appeal to feminist philosophers and theorists.

Despite continuous efforts to reduce poverty on the global, national and communal levels the problem of closing the income gap remains serious. In this work, we analyze why the traditional infrastructure-based approach to development is becoming less effective. We have identified some features of the promising new approach, described in the collection of works "Self-Transformation of the Forgotten Four-Fifths" edited by Robert G. Dyck and Matjaz Mulej. The new approach could be applied in the information age when knowledge (...) becomes a key variable of development. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s presentation of the eternal recurrence in Gay Science 341 is often viewed as a practical thought experiment meant to radically transform us. But exactly why and how we are supposed to be transformed is not clear. I contend that addressing these issues requires taking a close look at the psychological setting of the passage. The eternal recurrence is presented in our “loneliest loneliness.” I argue that facing the eternal recurrence from a state of profound loneliness both motivates self- (...) class='Hi'>transformation and contributes toward helping us succeed at that project. (shrink)

Although contemporary Confucianists tend to view Western liberalism as pitting the individual against society, recent liberal scholarship has vigorously claimed that liberal polity is indeed grounded in the self-transformation that produces “liberal virtues.” To meet this challenge, this essay presents a sophisticated Confucian critique of liberalism by arguing that there is an appreciable contrast between liberal and Confucian self-transformation and between liberal and Confucian virtues. By contrasting Locke and Confucius, key representatives of each tradition, this essay (...) shows that both liberalism and Confucianism aim to reconstruct a society freed from antisocial passions entailing a vicious politics of resentment, and yet come to differing ethical and political resolutions. My key claim is that what makes Confucian self-cultivation so distinctive is the incorporation of ritual propriety ( li ) within it, whereas liberal self-transformation that relies heavily on a method of self-control comes back to the problem that it originally set out to overcome. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that cases of radical selftransformation (cases in which an agent willfully changes a foundational element of their motivational structure) constitute an important philosophical puzzle. Though our inclination to hold people responsible for such changes suggests that we regard radical transformation as (in some sense) self-determined, it is difficult to conceive how a transformation that extends to the heart of an agent’s practical life can be attributed to the agent at all. While I (...) contend that the best way to solve this puzzle is to deny that radical transformations are in fact self-determined, many maintain the opposite. The defense of my thesis involves showing how the conditions that must be met in order to coherently attribute transformation to an agent are not satisfied in cases of radical transformation. Radical transformation is, thus, something that happens to an agent, not something that is done by her. (shrink)

While the idea that philosophy requires self-transformation is historically pervasive, it exerts considerable influence on the post-Kantians who first aim to systematize Kant’s idealism by grounding it on a first principle. In the 1790s, Fichte and Schelling offer competing accounts of the self-transformation that they regard as essential to positing a first principle. Their accounts raise two central questions. First, what makes this kind of self-transformation possible? Second, are there different possible expressions of philosophical (...) self-transformation? In what follows, I will articulate the Fichtean and Schellingian answers to these central questions. For Fichte, the one who summons me to posit a first principle makes possible my philosophical self-transformation, although the latter has an exclusively idealist expression in that I can only genuinely posit the I as first principle, which is to say that philosophical self-transformation depends on mutual recognition and vindicates precisely one philosophical system (Section 1). For Schelling, a brute act of will makes possible my philosophical self-transformation, although the latter has either an idealist or a realist expression in that I can genuinely posit either the I or the not-I as first principle, which is to say that philosophical self-transformation does not depend on mutual recognition and vindicates one of two possible philosophical systems (Section 2). Thus, whereas Fichtean self-transformation is recognitive and non-pluralistic, Schellingian self-transformation is pluralistic and non-recognitive. I conclude with a discussion of how Jacobi poses a challenge to Fichte’s and Schelling’s answers to the two central questions (Section 3). (shrink)

This paper focuses on the process of self-transformation through which a person comes to embody the ideal of her religion’s vision of the divine, as far as that ideal is expressible in a human life. The paper is concerned with the self as the subject of religious commitments, traits, religious aspirations and religiously inspired ideals. The self-transformative journey that people are invited to undertake poses a number of philosophical and practical difficulties; the paper explores some of (...) these difficulties, concentrating on those that arise in connection with the notion of potential future selves. This paper suggests that imaginative reflection upon exemplary individuals provides one way through these difficulties, for these individuals can show us what it looks like when someone achieves, or draws close to, the ideal. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Translation, (Self-)Transformation, and the Power of the MiddleAngelica NuzzoThe etymologies of the word translation—the real and the imaginary ones—are many and varied across languages and traditions. I want to frame my present remarks by appealing to the well-known derivation of the Latin traducere from trans-ducere, the verb that designates the movement of carrying across, of bringing over across and between heterogeneous and apparently incompatible terms—different languages, different (...) places and times, and more generally different identities and cultures. I propose to indicate with translation the dynamic space of the action that takes place in-between, in the middle between two extremes—whatever these extremes may be. And I propose to dwell in this in-between space—not in order to get anywhere, but to stay there and learn how to appreciate the powerful condition of the middle. My suggestion will be that translation is the intermediate and intermediary space of transformation that precedes that which it transforms as well as that into which it transforms; that translation is the middle that comes before the extremes between which it lies and which it connects, and makes them possible for the first time. The logic of translation, I submit, is the logic of immanent self-transformation that is based on the power of the middle. This is a logic that may help us advance beyond the binary static logic in which everything is instead dictated by the predetermined, fixed identity of the extremes, and by the exclusive choice of either one or the other—the logic that Virginia Woolf aptly describes in this way: “Either we are men, or we are women. Either we are cold, or we are sentimental. Either we are young, or growing old” (Woolf 1990, ch. 5). While this may sound logically indisputable it is also—to [End Page 19] Woolf at least—existentially unacceptable and cognitively faulty when at issue is the understanding of the movement of our lives. Thus, in what follows, I am interested in exploring the meaning—the existential, historical, linguistic meaning—of the predicament of being-in-the-middle, of being-in-transition or in-translation—of being neither one extreme nor the other but both of them at the same time and also neither of them. I want to dwell, in particular, on the cipher of movement proper to this condition, on the idea of transformation that translation constitutively entails—the self-transformation that is proper to translation as such an in-between dynamic activity. But to push this point further, I also want to suggest that the movement of translation is essential for an understanding of how processes move on and advance precisely as processes; of how change and something truly new are achieved beyond the present standpoint and beyond the standpoint of the present; of how, more concretely, the individual and collective self is reconstituted and immanently transformed after a crisis and through it. For translation, in this sense, is the powerful, destabilizing moment of crisis and open possibility that invests individuals and societies alike (but also texts and languages); it is also, at the same time, a strategy of survival and a fundamental tool of advancement and progress.Let me begin with a famous philosophical scene. Plato’s Symposium opens with the intriguing account of Socrates’s unusual habits in a speech delivered by Aristodemus, and culminates with Alcibiades’s story regarding Socrates’s strange behavior during the campaign of Potidaea. Upon meeting Socrates all dressed up1 on his way to Agathon’s banquet, Aristodemus is asked to come along to Agathon’s house. He accepts, a bit embarrassed at the thought of showing up uninvited. On the way to Agathon’s, however, Socrates becomes absorbed in his thoughts and falls behind his companion. Aristodemus repeatedly waits for him, but Socrates encourages him to go on ahead alone. This puts Aristodemus in a “ridiculous position” when he arrives, all by himself, at Agathon’s house. He shows up, indeed uninvited, as there is still no sign of Socrates. Now everybody at Agathon’s is waiting and looking for him. This perplexing situation goes on until a servant discovers Socrates calmly standing... (shrink)

According to reductionists about agency, an agent’s bringing something about is reducible to states and events involving the agent bringing something about. Many have worried that reductionism cannot accommodate robust forms of agency, such as self-determination. One common reductionist answer to this worry contends that self-determining agents are identified with certain states and events, and so these states and events causing a decision counts as the agent’s self-determining the decision. In this paper I discuss J. David Velleman’s (...) identification reductionist theory, according to which an agent is identified with his desire to make most sense of himself. I develop two constraints that an adequate identification reductionist theory must satisfy and show that Velleman’s theory cannot satisfy both. In particular, I argue that Velleman’s account founders on cases of self-determined self-transformation. (shrink)

This is a study of how self-transformation may occur through the practice of reframing one's personal experience in terms of a canonical language: that is, a system of symbols that purports to explain something about human beings and the universe they live in. The Christian conversion narrative is used as the primary example here, but the approach used in this book also illuminates other practices such as psychotherapy in which people deal with emotional conflict through language.

Does which side of the fence we are on determine our perceptions of justice? Philosopher Eric M. Cave argues that rules of justice would benefit the members of a community little if individuals lacked an effective desire to comply with these rules. However, sometimes a sense of justice appears to do no more than to limit what individuals can do in pursuit of their own ends. Cave presents a provocative vehicle for self-examination.

Scepticism is central to Nietzsche’s philosophical project, both as a tool of criticism and, through its role in self-transformation, as a tool for responding to criticism. While its importance in his thought and its complexity have been acknowledged, exactly what kind of scepticism Nietzsche calls for still stands in need of analysis. Jessica Berry’s [Nietzsche and the Ancient Skeptical Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011] comparison between Nietzsche and Pyrrhonian scepticism recognized the importance of the practical dimension (...) of Nietzschean scepticism but distorted Nietzsche’s philosophy in attempting to paint it as Pyrrhonian in character. Earlier discussions recognize Nietzsche’s opposition to Pyrrhonian suspension of judgement and tranquillity. They have not, however, explored in sufficient detail Nietzsche’s sceptical practice and how it affects the individual. In this article, I combine Berry’s emphasis on scepticism as a practice with attention to the important differences between Nietzsche and Pyrrhonism. I outline Nietzsche’s scepticism as a transformative practice, arguing that its differences from Pyrrhonian scepticism are as illuminating as any similarities. The scepticism that Nietzsche advocates involves not just destruction of our beliefs but destruction of who we are, and at the same time as cultivating the capacity to do without certainty, requires an experimental engagement with our drives – allowing the creation of new values. (shrink)

ABSTRACT There are two traditions of immanent social critique. One of them, prominent in contemporary Frankfurt school critical theory, regards the immanence of critique as a quality of the standard employed. Such a conception of immanent critique needs to show, prior to the concrete practice of critique, how the standard is immanent in the object of critique. Showing this is the task of a “model of immanent critique.” The other tradition, going back to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and practiced in (...) particular by Dewey in his later works, regards the immanence of critique as the form of critical practice itself. Because such a conception of immanent critique does not, at the outset, ask how the standard is immanent to its object, it also does not need a model licensing critical practice. Indeed, it must be inherently hostile to any attempt at modeling immanent critique because the immanence lies in the power of critical practice to transform any models it applies. (shrink)

This chapter begins by briefly considering Foucault's genealogies of the modern moral subject as the backdrop against which he conducted his inquiries on the ethical forms of subjectivation found in antiquity. It then turns at greater length to these inquiries, bringing them into focus in terms of possibilities for the self‐transformation of the subject today. To make sense of these possibilities, and defend them against familiar criticisms, the chapter introduces and defends a meta‐ethical distinction between “orientations” and “commitments” (...) in ethics. A long section of this chapter is devoted to showing how self‐transformation makes sense of a range of topics featured in Foucault's late ethical writings. The author focuses primarily on the care of the self (including aesthetics of existence and pleasure) and the philosophical way of life (including ancient parrhesia and modern critique). The chapter concludes by opening a window onto further possibilities raised by the foregoing discussion. (shrink)

According to reductionists about agency, an agent’s bringing something about is reducible to states and events involving the agent bringing something about. Many have worried that reductionism cannot accommodate robust forms of agency, such as self-determination. One common reductionist answer to this worry contends that self-determining agents are identified with certain states and events, and so these states and events causing a decision counts as the agent’s self-determining the decision. In this paper I discuss J. David Velleman’s (...) identification reductionist theory, according to which an agent is identified with his desire to make most sense of himself. I develop two constraints that an adequate identification reductionist theory must satisfy and show that Velleman’s theory cannot satisfy both. In particular, I argue that Velleman’s account founders on cases of self-determined self-transformation. (shrink)

In his self-published periodical The Moment, Søren Kierkegaard warns his reader against the possibility of “useless suffering”. Not only that, he urges the reader to make use of her suffering. Taking this caution as a point of departure, I investigate the pseudonymous Johannes Climacus’ deliberations on ethico-religious suffering in the Postscript. I demonstrate that Climacus construes suffering as useful, and with that outlines an economy of suffering that Kierkegaard delineates across his pseudonymous and non-pseudonymous work. The paradigmatic expression of (...) this is the use the subject makes of her suffering in “the moment”, in which suffering is defined according to its relation with the eternal. Suffering is thus a key element of the individual subject’s self-development: The subject is transformed, and transforms herself, in suffering. Finally, I argue that this economy of suffering produces a notion of the subject as actively involved in securing the contribution her suffering can make to her self-transformation. I criticize this notion, showing it renders problematic any ethical or ethico-religious account of the response of the subject to the suffering of the other: The subject is not first and foremost attuned to the other’s suffering, rather she is attuned to the possibility of her own transformation. Suffering becomes in this way both a key exegetical tool for understanding Kierkegaard’s view of the subject and, more significantly, a way to problematize Kierkegaard’s ethical account of the subject’s response to others’ suffering. (shrink)

Research suggests that interventions involving extensive training or counterconditioning can reduce implicit prejudice and stereotyping, and even susceptibility to stereotype threat. This research is widely cited as providing an “existence proof” that certain entrenched social attitudes are capable of change, but is summarily dismissed—by philosophers, psychologists, and activists alike—as lacking direct, practical import for the broader struggle against prejudice, discrimination, and inequality. Criticisms of these “debiasing” procedures fall into three categories: concerns about empirical efficacy, about practical feasibility, and about the (...) failure to appreciate the underlying structural-institutional nature of discrimination. I reply to these criticisms of debiasing, and argue that a comprehensive strategy for combating prejudice and discrimination should include a central role for training our biases away. (shrink)

Every day, thousands of polls, surveys, and rating scales are employed to elicit the attitudes of humankind. Given the ubiquitous use of these instruments, it seems we ought to have firm answers to what is measured by them, but unfortunately we do not. To help remedy this situation, we present a novel approach to investigate the nature of attitudes. We created a self-transforming paper survey of moral opinions, covering both foundational principles, and current dilemmas hotly debated in the media. (...) This survey used a magic trick to expose participants to a reversal of their previously stated attitudes, allowing us to record whether they were prepared to endorse and argue for the opposite view of what they had stated only moments ago. The result showed that the majority of the reversals remained undetected, and a full 69% of the participants failed to detect at least one of two changes. In addition, participants often constructed coherent and unequivocal arguments supporting the opposite of their original position. These results suggest a dramatic potential for flexibility in our moral attitudes, and indicates a clear role for self-attribution and post-hoc rationalization in attitude formation and change. (shrink)

The four most prominent myths of Plato’s Republic oddly share a common motif, namely, the depiction of a subterranean locale to and from which individuals are depicted as traveling. This analysis offers an account of this motif that complements the themes of the “ascent” and “descent” of the philosopher, but draws more deeply upon katabasis mythology to reveal a subtext about individual transformation that enriches our understanding of justice.

Part of Nietzsche’s blistering attack against Western morality is the argument that it stems from a lack of self-control that the weak have. Since the moralist cannot control and direct his own sexuality, he creates a “universal” set of moral values to be imposed externally on everyone. Despite the enchanting diversity of life, moralists prefer drab worlds of absolutes to help bolster their weak-willed selves: “Let us finally consider how naïve it is altogether to say: ‘Man ought to be (...) such and such!’ Reality shows us an enchanting wealth of types, the abundance of a lavish play and change of forms—and some wretched loafer of a moralist comments: ‘No! Man ought to be different.’ He even knows what man should be .. (shrink)

This paper examines the phenomenon of transformational growth in maternal caregivers of children who have undergone a kidney transplant. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven mothers of transplant children who shared narrative accounts of their lived experience. Through a phenomenological analysis of the interview data, the fundamental structure of positive growth in caregivers of transplant children was illuminated, revealing both themes of unresolved suffering and trauma and themes of posttraumatic growth and transformation.

In this paper I want to discuss an issue which has generated a great deal of feminist discussion and some profound disagreement. The issue arises as follows. One of the most important targets of feminist action and critique has been male sexual violence and control of women, as expressed in rape and other forms of violent or aggressive sexual acts, and as represented in much pornography. Pornography itself has been the subject of major and sometimes bitter disagreements among feminists, especially (...) around the issue of censorship. But it is not that with which I am concerned here. The issue which I want to discuss involves the question of sexual desire and fantasy, and their apparent potential incompatibility with political and ethical principles. This is by no means, of course, an issue of exclusively feminist concern; but I shall focus on some recent feminist argument, since it is that with which I am most familiar. (shrink)

I will speak here of three notions which are crucial for a thoroughgoing understanding of the three East Asian philosophical/religious teachings of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. The first I name integrated practice ; the other two are already known to modern scholarship as essence-function and interpenetration. Despite the readily observable reliance on these fundamental and unifying elements by the major masters of the three traditions, through the past century of modern scholarly investigation in the West they have been paid almost (...) no sustained attention. While they have occasionally been identified in a fragmentary and cursory way, they have not been examined from the perspective of their role as fundamental constituents of a holistic cultural worldview, or as a set of pan-East Asian metaphysical categories which are radically distinct from basic Western paradigms, and which have retained remarkable consistency throughout the long histories and wide range of schools of thought contained in the three traditions. (shrink)

This paper develops the thesis that personal identity is neither to be taken in terms of an unchanging self-sufficient ‘substance’ nor in terms of selfhood ‘without substance,’ i.e. as fluctuating processes of pure relationality and subject-less activity. Instead, identity is taken as self-transformation that is bound to particular embodied individuals and surpasses them as individuated entities. The paper is structured in three parts. Part I describes the experiential givenness of conflicts that support our sense of self- (...) class='Hi'>transformation. While the first part develops an inter-subjective topography of emotional movements, the second part pays attention to their temporal dimension. We work with conflicts and get transformed by them also in the way we remember them. Part II focuses on the process of self-understanding that accompanies conflicts and their metamorphosis in memory. Part III compares and discusses different models of a ‘relational ontology’ of the person, which question the idea that we are defined only by how we define ourselves—just as they question the idea that one’s identity is independent of how one relates to one’s having changed. (shrink)

이 글은 커먼즈의 철학으로서의 공통주의가 제기하는 윤리적 과제를 확인한다. 이를 위해 먼저 이 글에서는 커먼즈에 대한 다양한 이해를 검토하고 이러한 이해와 이탈리아 정치철학자 안토니오 네그리와 그의 제자이자 동료인 마이클 하트의 커먼즈 이해의 차이를 제시하며, 이들에게 커먼즈 개념이 중요한 이유가 무엇인지를 확인한다. 오늘날의 자본주의적 생산에서는 비물질적 커먼즈를 수단으로 하여 비물질적 커먼즈를 생산하는 경향과 함께 이러한 생산이 생산적 주체들의 자율적 협력을 통해 이뤄지는 경향이 존재한다. 물론 사적 소유, 소유 개인주의로 점철된 세계에서 생산적 주체들은 더 큰 인적자본으로의 자기 가치화를 추구하는 경제인, 호모 에코노미쿠스로 (...) 자라난다. 그러나 이는 호모 에코노미쿠스로부터, 커먼즈를 우리 모두의 것으로서 생산하고 관리하며 공유하는 커머너로의 ‘자기 변화’를 통해 생산의 변화가 가능할 수 있음을 함축한다. 이러한 자기 변화가 공통주의가 제기하는 윤리적 과제이며, 이러한 자기 변화에 입각한 작은 실천들에 참여하면서 생산의 더 큰 변화를 위한 토대를 놓는 것이 가능하다. 공통주의의 특징 중 하나는 이와 같이 생산의 변화를 중심으로 정치적인 것을 이해한다는 점에 있다. (shrink)

이 글은 커먼즈의 철학으로서의 공통주의가 제기하는 윤리적 과제를 확인한다. 이를 위해 먼저 이 글에서는 커먼즈에 대한 다양한 이해를 검토하고 이러한 이해와 이탈리아 정치철학자 안토니오 네그리와 그의 제자이자 동료인 마이클 하트의 커먼즈 이해의 차이를 제시하며, 이들에게 커먼즈 개념이 중요한 이유가 무엇인지를 확인한다. 오늘날의 자본주의적 생산에서는 비물질적 커먼즈를 수단으로 하여 비물질적 커먼즈를 생산하는 경향과 함께 이러한 생산이 생산적 주체들의 자율적 협력을 통해 이뤄지는 경향이 존재한다. 물론 사적 소유, 소유 개인주의로 점철된 세계에서 생산적 주체들은 더 큰 인적자본으로의 자기 가치화를 추구하는 경제인, 호모 에코노미쿠스로 (...) 자라난다. 그러나 이는 호모 에코노미쿠스로부터, 커먼즈를 우리 모두의 것으로서 생산하고 관리하며 공유하는 커머너로의 ‘자기 변화’를 통해 생산의 변화가 가능할 수 있음을 함축한다. 이러한 자기 변화가 공통주의가 제기하는 윤리적 과제이며, 이러한 자기 변화에 입각한 작은 실천들에 참여하면서 생산의 더 큰 변화를 위한 토대를 놓는 것이 가능하다. 공통주의의 특징 중 하나는 이와 같이 생산의 변화를 중심으로 정치적인 것을 이해한다는 점에 있다. (shrink)