Research
Perpetual Protest: A Model of Forgiveness in the Face of Existential Violence [under review]
In this paper, I argue for an amended version of Hieronymi’s moral protest view of forgiveness that provides us with a model of forgiveness without forgetting in the case of existential violence. Existential violence is a wrongful, unjustifiably imposed transformative experience that diminishes a victim’s future possible choices of who to be. Existential violence, I will argue, is threatening to the victim both by impacting their ability to choose themselves according to their power of self-legislation, but also by making a claim about the extent of their realm of moral authority. Because it makes a claim, existential violence is the apt target of resentment-protest, according to Hieronymi’s view. I will suggest that ceasing protest in response to an apology, which Hieronymi argues constitutes forgiveness, leaves an important portion of the claim’s threatening power unaddressed in the case of existential violence. Instead, I suggest that forgiveness without forgetting involves both a cessation of resentment-protest and an integration of perpetual non-resentment protest into a forgiver’s projects. Conceiving of forgiveness in this way will, I argue, show how forgiveness can be a method of self-rebuilding after existential violence.
Kierkegaardian Repentance as a Model of Taking Responsibility [under review]
In this paper, I develop a model of responsibility that takes seriously the idea that uncontrolled features of our lives—such as aspects of our identities—can be things for which we have responsibility. Specifically, I will argue that Søren Kierkegaard’s work on repentance constitutes a theory of taking responsibility that is able to address cases like the one above, which do not meet the standard criteria for responsible action. I have two central projects in this paper: first, I offer a reading of Kierkegaard’s notion of repentance as choosing oneself absolutely, and arguing that this choice is essential in being an agent who is not in despair. Secondly, I will argue that Kierkegaardian repentance is a model of taking responsibility that is better able to explain why we ought to take responsibility for uncaused features than contemporary theories of taking responsibility.
Simone de Beauvoir on Value-Creation as a Mode of Complicity
Beauvoir suggests, I argue, that our choice of who to be in the world—and, going along with that choice, what kinds of values to have—affects those around us is by setting up certain choices as good or valued, and others as bad or disvalued. By thus impacting the values that others see in the world and their judgments of the worth of those values, we have a particular kind of complicity in the actions that these others take. Specifically, I argue that Beauvoir’s concepts of projects and values fulfill the two criteria for complicity that are suggested in the contemporary literature on collectivized complicity—inclusive authorship and participatory intention. The appropriate way to respond to this kind of responsibility-by-complicity is, I argue, to take responsibility by deciding which values are reflective of who we want to be, and actively taking up the task of advancing certain values and repudiating others.
Karl Jaspers on Communicative Self-Becoming
In this paper, I argue that the way that Karl Jaspers envisions the ideal psychiatrist-patient relationship in his early psychiatric writings, especially Allgemeine Psychopathologie, shows us how existential communication functions as a means of self-becoming. That is, the Jasperian approach to psychiatric therapy illuminates the key elements of self-becoming in the particular case of mental illness; these elements, however, are central to the general task of self-becoming. In showing how the psychiatrist acts as a communicative partner, Jaspers shows how self-becoming is not a task that can be undertaken alone. This paper thus lays the groundwork for developing a fundamentally intersubjective theory of self-becoming.
On Existential Violence
In this paper, I suggest that there is a particular mode of violence– existential violence– that occurs when the perpetrator makes it impossible for the victim to continue being the self he once was, and once had chosen. While existential violence largely occurs in conjunction with other, more familiar forms of harm, I think it can be one of the most difficult forms of harm to address due to its personal and identity-based nature. I argue, drawing on work by Susan Brison and L.A. Paul, that existential violence is a kind of transformative experience that forces an individual to become a new self.