My dissertation examines how representations of physical and mental suffering in literary texts reveal paradoxes in the structure of sympathy that remain under-explored by literary scholars. In the philosophical thought of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith, sympathy was a feature of the "moral sense," an aesthetic intuition that, with proper training, could compel individuals to act ethically in society. However, because sympathy allowed individuals to feel the experiences of others, not just through the imagination, but in connection with the body itself, the motivation for sympathizing with pain presented a significant problem for Enlightenment philosophy. Largely divested of its religious contexts, pain was increasingly classified as a mechanism that registered distress or pathology in the body, and as an experience that human beings instinctively avoid. Terry Eagleton, Adela Pinch, and G. J. Barker-Benfield, among others, have analyzed sympathy and the culture of sentimentality in terms of their moral relativism, derivative emotionality, and regulatory influence on gendered behavior and social norms. My dissertation makes a needed contribution to the field by focusing on the ways pain reveals structural contradictions in sympathy's claim to penetrate the boundaries of subjective experience, an experience that was becoming "buffered"-- to use Charles Taylor's term -- from the influence of others. Each chapter of my dissertation positions a landmark text--Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688), Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1748), Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), and William Wordsworth's The Prelude (1805) -- within the context of Enlightenment moral sense philosophy to highlight the intentional and unintentional ways literary authors modified philosophical formulations of sympathy to create the ethically complex pleasure of sympathizing with the pain of others. Because the concepts of pain and subjectivity were taking on modern shapes in these texts, literary critics must reconsider how ethical claims were made by the aesthetic practice of connecting representations of pain with the pleasure of sympathizing. Globalized media are bringing increasingly distant experiences of pain to our attention in increasingly intimate ways. These technologies can be invaluable for promoting a sense of social responsibility for the pain of even the most distant others, but only if we hold ourselves accountable for how and why we look.

Traditionally, the central threat to the defensibility of the range of practices and attitudes constitutive of moral criticism has been seen to be posed by the Causal Thesis, the view that all actions have antecedent causes to which they are linked by causal laws of the kind that govern other events in the universe. In such a world, agents lack the sort of underived origination and agency required for the appropriateness of moral criticism. However, Peter Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment” marks a move away from a metaphysical conception of agency and conditions of the appropriateness of moral criticism. On Strawson’s account, the problem of moral responsibility is centrally a normative problem, a problem about the moral norms that govern interpersonal relationships, and the conditions of appropriateness of the range of attitudes and sentiments occasioned by the agents’ fulfillment or non-fulfillment of these norms. In this dissertation I argue that the success of normative conceptions of conditions of appropriateness of moral criticism is contingent of the amelioration of the tension between two strategies in “Freedom and Resentment.” Naturalist interpretations hold that sentiments and practices constitutive of moral criticism are natural features of human psychological constitution, and therefore neither allow nor require justification. Rationalist interpretation, by contrast, are based on an analysis of conditions under which moral criticism can be justifiably modified or suspended. Both of these strategies, I argue, are false. The naturalistic interpretation is false not because of its inability to offer a plausible account of the conditions of justifiability of reactive attitudes, but rather because of its inability to offer a principled account of the way moral norms are grounded. The rationalistic interpretation, in turn, not only relies on an implausible psychological account of conditions of responsible agency, but puts an unacceptable emphasis on the agent’s intention. A plausible interpretation of the normative strategy requires emphasizing not only the significance of attitudes and feelings, but also the role reasons play in constituting moral norms and justifying moral criticism / Thesis (Ph.D, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2010-07-05 16:42:43.601

121 f. / Submitted by Suelen Reis (suziy.ellen@gmail.com) on 2013-04-29T12:30:10Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao - Clerisson Torres.pdf: 556464 bytes, checksum: 4f86b16b2b4175addaee7239aad12ab4 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Maria Auxiliadora Lopes(silopes@ufba.br) on 2013-06-10T20:38:35Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao - Clerisson Torres.pdf: 556464 bytes, checksum: 4f86b16b2b4175addaee7239aad12ab4 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-06-10T20:38:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao - Clerisson Torres.pdf: 556464 bytes, checksum: 4f86b16b2b4175addaee7239aad12ab4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005 / As reincidentes queixas de alunos relativas à conduta de professores, remete à necessidade do estudo da moralidade destes, afinal, numa sociedade em que o papel moral da família se fragmentou, o papel do professor-educador se ressalta enquanto sujeito social facilitador e/ou mediador da construção moral de seus discentes. Assim, a presente pesquisa avalia o Juízo moral de docentes e discentes universitários dos municípios de Salvador e Camaçari, na Bahia, dos cursos de Pedagogia e Educação Física. Caracteriza-se por ser um estudo de caráter exploratório, sendo utilizado o método hipotético-dedutivo, concentrando-se na análise do julgamento moral à luz da teoria de Lawrence Kohlberg. Através de instrumento adaptado e revalidado no Brasil, foi aplicado o mesmo em três instituições de ensino com o fim de coletar dados para estabelecer o perfil sociocultural e o nível de juízo moral dos docentes e discentes. Com base nos dados coletados, foi verificado que os professores universitários das instituições pesquisadas não apresentam estágios modais de juízo moral significativamente acima dos estudantes, pois há um número elevado de professores no estágio III que apresentam médias modais de raciocínios morais similares ao dos alunos, que predominam neste mesmo estágio, e também devido à ausência de professores no estágio V tendo em vista a presença de alunos no estágio IV. Isso demonstra que os professores não favorecem significativamente conflitos cognitivo-morais nos estudantes, essencial ao desenvolvimento moral deles. Foi pesquisada a relação entre titulação, faixa etária, gênero e afiliação religiosa ou filosófico-espiritual com o nível de raciocínio moral dos docentes e discentes, sendo verificada a inexistência de significativas diferenças quanto aos gêneros e à afiliação religiosa ou filosófica. Os resultados indicam uma elevação do juízo moral nos estudantes entre 17 e 28 anos e uma queda após tal faixa etária. Discute-se o poder da possível estabilidade pessoal e profissional como possível fator da estagnação do raciocínio moral. Os dados obtidos também pontuaram a ausência de relação significativa entre juízo moral e as diferentes titulações, e de igual modo, apresentou que as médias modais de doutores do estágio III e IV foram similares aos dos alunos das três instituições. Constatou-se que as variáveis estudadas na presente pesquisa foram insuficientes para explicar a razão de tal similaridade. Diante de tal pesquisa exploratória, percebe-se, portanto, a carência de desenvolvimento moral de discentes, e, principalmente, docentes universitários. Entende-se que há uma necessidade de maior diagnóstico de tal problemática, razão pela qual sugerimos novas pesquisas. Talvez a implantação de disciplinas no currículo que discutam a temática da consciência possa favorecer o desenvolvimento não só cognitivo, mas ético-moral na busca da formação integral do ser humano, finalidade última da educação. / Salvador

Diploma thesis "Kant's Categorical Imperative and Its Critique by Nineteenth Century Philosophers" deals with a question of Kant's fundamental principle known as the Categorical Imperative or Moral Law. The aim of this work is at first to discuss two other moral principles because of their great impact on Kant seeking the moral principle. These are Hume's moral code called Moral sense and Rousseau' moral views relating to the freedom of individuals. Secondly, to find out how both moral theories did inspire Immanuel Kant. It is necessary to explain strengths of Kant's Formula of the Categorical Imperative especially to emphasise its objectivity and universality. Then the purpose is to show Kant's influence on moral thinking in the nineteenth century. It is necessary to mention philosophers such as Johan Gottlieb Fichte and Bernard Bolzano who focused on critique of the Categorical Imperative.

L'enjeu principal de cette recherche est de questionner ce que l'analyse psychodynamique du travail peut apporter à l'anthropologie psychanalytique du sens moral. Une explicitation des références doctrinales est un préalable nécessaire pour discuter la façon dont la psychanalyse et la psychodynamique du travail conçoivent les réquisits du sens moral. La démarche clinique et critique adoptée au cours de cette thèse tend conjointement à décrire et comprendre l'expérience vécue des sujets rencontrés, et à discuter les constructions métapsychologiques censées rendre compte de cette même expérience. Selon notre point de vue, la psychodynamique du travail apporte des éléments de discussion essentiels, et pourtant insuffisamment pris en compte par la psychanalyse, pour élucider les conditions de construction et de suspension du sens moral. Nous développerons l'idée qu'en sus d'une théorie du corps affecté dans le rapport au réel, une anthropologie du sens moral ne peut se passer d'une théorie du travail. / The main purpose of this research is to question what the analaysis of psychodynamics of work can bring to the psychoanalytical anthropology of moral sense. An clarification of doctrinal references is a necessary prerequisite to discuss how psychoanalysis and psychodynamics of work conceive the foundations of moral sense. The clinical and critical approach adopted in this thesis tends jointly to describe and to understand the experience lived by the subjects we met, and to discuss the metapsychological constructions supposed to report the same experience. In our view, psychodynamics of work provides some essential elements of discussions, and nevertheless insufficiently taken into account by psychoanalysis, to clarify the conditions of construction and suspension of the moral sense. We will develop the idea that in addition to a theory of the body affected in relation to the real world, an anthropology of the moral sense cannot do without a theory of work.

Cette recherche porte sur le moment où la philosophie de Francis Hutcheson, dans ses aspects moraux, épistémologiques et juridiques, contribue à élaborer des questionnements et des solutions innovantes et pratiques, pour le traitement des problèmes de la politique moderne. Pour répondre à la question « Qu’est-ce que la politique du sens moral ? », il faut considérer qu’il existe un sens de la moralité naturel, immédiat et involontaire chez chaque individu. Ce sens est le critère de jugement de l’action politique la meilleure, selon deux objectifs : le maintien de la paix et de l’harmonie sociale et la poursuite du bonheur, soit du plus grand bien pour le plus grand nombre. Même si les individus ne peuvent pas toujours agir par le meilleur moyen en vue d’une fin politique et éthique, tous sont aptes à juger de ce qu’il convient de faire. La politique du sens moral considère ainsi 1. Comment l’état de nature est un état de liberté où une sociabilité naturelle est décrite, indépendamment de la création des institutions civiles et politiques et aussi, quelles sont les conditions de retour à un tel état, à partir de l’éducation morale et politique ? Comment la société civile et le gouvernement se mettent en place avec un consentement, soit un artifice. 3. Enfin, comment la protection des droits inaliénables peut être assurée avec le concept de responsabilité politique, impliquant le risque pour sa vie en faveur de l’intérêt commun. / This study focuses on the moment when Francis Hutcheson’s philosophy, in its moral, epistemological and legal aspects, contributes to elaborating questionings and innovative practical solutions to deal with the issues of modern politics. To answer the question “What is the politics of moral sense?”, it must be considered that each individual possesses a natural, immediate and involuntary sense of morality. This moral sense is the criterion of judgement of the best political action depending on two aims: preservation of peace and social harmony; and the pursuit of happiness, that is, the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Even if individuals are not always able to act with the best means for a political and ethical purpose, all are able to judge what should be done. The politics of moral sense considers 1. How the state of nature is a state of liberty where a natural sociability is described, independently of the creation of civil and political institutions; and in parallel, what are the conditions of a return to such a state, based on a moral and political education. 2. How civil society and government are created with trust, or in other words, with an artifice. 3. Finally, how the protection of inalienable rights can be guaranteed with the concept of political responsibility, involving risking one’s life in support of the common interest. / Esta pesquisa se situa onde a filosofia de Francis Hutcheson, nos seus aspectos morais, epistemologicos e juridicos, contribui a elaborar questionamentos e soluçoes inovadoras e prâticas, para o tratamento dos problemas da politica moderna. Para responder à questào « o que é a politica do senso moral ? », deve-se considerar que existe um senso da moralidade natural, imediato e involontârio em cada indivfduo. Este senso é o critério de julgamento da melhor açào politica, segundo dois objetivos : a manutençao da paz e da hannonia social e a persecuçào da felicidade, quai seja o maior bem para o maior nùmero. Mesmo se os individuos nem sempre podem agir pelo melhor meio em vista de um firn politico e ético, todos estào aptos a julgar acerca do que comvém fazer. A politica do senso moral considera assim : 1. Como o estado de natureza é um estado de libertdade, no quai uma sociabilidade natural esta configurada, independentemente da criaçào das instituiçoes civis e politicas e igualmente, quais sào as condiçoes para retorno a tal estado, a partir da educaçào moral e politica. 2. Corno a sociedade civil e o governo ocupam seu lugar com um consentimento, ou seja, um artiffcio. 3. Enfim, como a proteçào dos direitos inalienâveis pode ser assegurada corn o conceito de responsabilidade politica, implicando atTiscar sua vida em favor do interesse comum.

Ce travail propose une présentation et une défense du "sentimentalisme", c’est-à-dire de la théorie philosophique selon laquelle les émotions constituent notre principal accès aux valeurs, et la source de nos jugements évaluatifs. Après avoir brièvement retracé les origines historiques de ce courant (Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, et Adam Smith), j’examine la littérature psychologique et philosophique actuelle portant sur les émotions. Je propose une définition de la fonction des émotions, en soutenant que ce sont des "attitudes" corporelles et cognitives dotées d’une intentionnalité évaluative. Elles nous permettent ainsi d’apprécier la valeur des objets en fonction de leur pertinence pour nos états motivationnels, tels que nos désirs ou nos sentiments. Je procède ensuite à une analyse des conséquences épistémologiques et métaphysiques que l’on peut dériver de cette thèse. Je montre que les émotions sont susceptibles de jouer un rôle crucial dans notre connaissance des valeurs, en étudiant le débat relatif aux "conditions de correction" des émotions. Je propose de distinguer ici deux caractérisations des conditions de correction qui ne sont généralement pas explicitées dans les débats actuels, que j’appelle la conception "indépendantiste" et la conception "motivationnelle". J’argumente en faveur de la deuxième approche, et je défends la thèse selon laquelle les émotions constituent un accès fiable aux valeurs, lorsqu’elles sont basées sur des motivations qui sont elles-mêmes correctes ou appropriées. Selon cette approche, les valeurs doivent être comprises comme des propriétés réelles et relationnelles. Je m’intéresse enfin plus particulièrement au rôle que les émotions sont susceptibles de jouer dans les jugements moraux. Après avoir écarté les théories innéistes au sujet de la morale, je soutiens que les émotions sont des conditions nécessaires au développement de la moralité. / This dissertation is both a presentation and a defense of "sentimentalism", the philosophical theory according to which emotions constitute our main access to values, and the source of our evaluative judgments. After considering briefly the historical origins of this philosophical approach (Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Adam Smith), I review the current psychological and philosophical literature about emotions. I define the function of emotions, arguing that they are bodily and cognitive "attitudes" that possess an evaluative intentionality. They allow us to appraise the value of objects according to their relevance for our motivational states, like our desires or sentiments. I proceed then to an analysis of the epistemological and metaphysical consequences that we can draw from this thesis. I show that emotions are likely to play a crucial role in our knowledge of values, focusing on the debate about the "correctness conditions" of emotions. I propose a distinction between two characterizations of correctness conditions, which are generally not explicit in the literature, and which I name the "independence" approach and the "motivational" approach. I argue in favor of the latter and I defend the thesis that emotions constitute a reliable access to values, when they are based on motivations that are themselves correct or appropriate. According to this view, values should be conceived as real and relational properties. Finally, I consider the role which emotions may play in our moral judgments in particular. After having rejected nativist accounts of our moral competence, I claim that emotions are necessary conditions to the development of our moral life.

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