Högre seminarium i praktisk filosofi: Tricia Magalotti (Stockholm University)
- When
-
- Location
- D734
- Language
- Swedish
- Organizer
- Stockholms universitet, Filosofiska institutionen
Affective Coherence and Reasons for Commitmen
Affective Coherence and Reasons for Commitmen Engaging in time-extended personal projects can contribute to the meaningfulness of one’s life. Given that meaningfulness is (all else equal) good for the subject who experiences it, the potential for meaningfulness seems to be reason-providing with respect to commitment to certain personal projects over others. It is a platitude that we ought to “follow our hearts/passions” in making such decisions, where this advice is presumed to highlight a crucial role for our emotions in providing reasons for such commitments. But, it is far from clear precisely what role emotions are supposed to play in this decision-making process. In this talk, I want to unpack the advice to “follow one’s heart” and, more specifically, the idea that emotions can or should serve as reasons in this context. I will argue that paradigm cases of meaningful engagement with personal projects involve what I call “affective coherence,” which is a sort of ongoing emotional engagement with the value manifested by one’s living out the commitment to that project. Working backward from affective coherence as an end, I will argue that there are three different kind of meaningfulness-directed reasons that one can have for committing to a personal project.