> Dear all, > The next USyd philosophy postgraduate colloquium will be held on Monday > June 2 @ 2pm > in room S422 > (Quadrangle building, University of Sydney). All very welcome!! > > Talk details: > > Speaker: Millie Churcher > > Title: Transformative Imaginings: When Adam Met Sally > > > Early modern sentimentalist philosopher Adam Smith argues for a conception > of morality grounded in sentiment rather than in pure reason. Our ability > to sympathise with others is what binds us together as moral agents and > motivates us to act ethically. On Smith’s account sympathy refers to the > psychological mechanism or capacity through which we understand, and > identify with, what another person is feeling. This process relies heavily > on our capacity for imaginative perspective-taking. In this paper I > defend the value of sympathy – and by extension, Smith’s moral > sentimentalism - against those who argue that our capacity to feel for > devalued social *groups *is too limited for sympathy to have any real > ethical and political import. I argue that the scope of our > fellow-feeling can be dramatically enlarged in instances where sympathy > with another disrupts and transforms one’s imaginary body. Drawing on > Sally Haslanger’s reflections upon her lived experience of transracial > parenting (2005) I conclude that sympathetic identification with an > individual whose body is marked as ‘different’ within a society can be > deeply transformative for the sympathiser, which sees feelings of good-will > generated in intimate contexts of parenting, romantic partnerships or > friendships extend out towards wider socio-political groups. > > > >
_______________________________________________ SydPhil mailing list: http://bit.ly/sydphil
New archive: http://bit.ly/SydPhilArchive To UNSUBSCRIBE, change your MEMBERSHIP OPTIONS, find ANSWERS TO COMMON PROBLEMS, or visit our ONLINE ARCHIVES, please go to the LIST INFORMATION PAGE: http://bit.ly/sydphil ... and if you can't get to that page, try the EMERGENCY PAGE: http://bit.ly/SydPhilEmergency
