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R. Jay Wallace - The View from Here. On Affirmation, Attachment, and the Limits of Regret.  - 9780190660758 - V9780190660758
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The View from Here. On Affirmation, Attachment, and the Limits of Regret.

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Description for The View from Here. On Affirmation, Attachment, and the Limits of Regret. Paperback. The View from Here is a study of our most fundamental attitudes toward the past. The book explores the dynamics of affirmation and regret, tracing the connections of each to our ongoing attachments. The focus is on situations in which our attachments commit us to affirming events or decisions that we know to have been unfortunate or regrettable. Num Pages: 288 pages. BIC Classification: HPQ. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 210 x 140 x 18. Weight in Grams: 318.
Must we always later regret actions that were wrong for us to perform at the time? Can there ever be good reason to affirm things in the past that we know were unfortunate? In this original work of moral philosophy, R. Jay Wallace shows that the standpoint from which we look back on our lives is shaped by our present attachments-to persons, to the projects that imbue our lives with meaning, and to life itself. Through a distinctive "affirmation dynamic", these attachments commit us to affirming the necessary conditions of their objects. The result is that we are sometimes unable to regret events and circumstances that were originally unjustified or otherwise somehow objectionable. Wallace traces these themes through a range of examples. A teenage girl makes an ill-advised decision to conceive a child - but her love for the child once it has been born makes it impossible for her to regret that earlier decision. The painter Paul Gauguin abandons his family to pursue his true artistic calling (and eventual life project) in Tahiti--which means he cannot truly regret his abdication of familial responsibility. The View from Here offers new interpretations of these classic cases, challenging their treatment by Bernard Williams and others. Another example is the "bourgeois predicament": we are committed to affirming the regrettable social inequalities that make possible the expensive activities that give our lives meaning. Generalizing from such situations, Wallace defends the view that our attachments inevitably commit us to affirming historical conditions that we cannot regard as worthy of being affirmed--a modest form of nihilism.

Product Details

Format
Paperback
Publisher
Oxford University Press Inc United States
Number of pages
288
Condition
New
Number of Pages
288
Place of Publication
New York, United States
ISBN
9780190660758
SKU
V9780190660758
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 15 to 20 working days
Ref
99-2

About R. Jay Wallace
R. Jay Wallace is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. His publications include Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (1994), Normativity and the Will (OUP, 2006), and numerous papers on moral psychology, the theory of practical reason, the philosophy of responsibility, and other topics in philosophical ethics.

Reviews for The View from Here. On Affirmation, Attachment, and the Limits of Regret.
Interesting, careful and occasionally outrageous.
Thomas Nagel, London Review of Books
An intelligent and sophisticated treatment of a comparatively neglected topic within moral psychology that deserves to be widely read by anyone with an interest in ethics or political philosophy.
Alan Thomas, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Bristles with insightful and well-parsed observations about practical thought.... Wallace's arguments are measured and unexpectedly convincing.
Luke Brunning, Analysis
The View from Here is a book that contains exceptionally deep insights. It offers an illuminating and sharp analysis, it is groundbreaking in its results, and it will be inspiring for those who still believe that philosophy can help us to understand both the reach and the limits of human existence. It is, therefore, a truly exceptional book and bound to shape our future thinking about the intricate embeddedness of the reasons that arise from our attachments.
Ethics

Goodreads reviews for The View from Here. On Affirmation, Attachment, and the Limits of Regret.


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