Research
Perpetual Protest: Forgiving Without Forgetting [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 Group Responsibility
In this chapter, I am interested in examining how a theory of taking responsibility applies in cases of group actions. Jaspers’ work is of particular interest in relation to this question because of his theory of the four kinds of guilt laid out in Die Schuldfrage. These four kinds of guilt—criminal, political, moral, and metaphysical—have different appropriate responses. If responsibility is a way for someone to take “guilt upon himself,” then the question of what kind of guilt one ought to take upon oneself naturally arises. I am in particular concerned in this chapter about ways in which we take political and moral guilt upon ourselves.
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.