Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming

Agnes Callard

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Becoming someone is a learning process; and what we learn is the new values around which, if we succeed, our lives will come to turn. Agents transform themselves in the process of, for example, becoming parents, embarking on careers, or acquiring a passion for music or politics. How can such activity be rational, if the reason for engaging in the relevant pursuit is only available to the person one will become? How is it psychologically possible to feel the attraction of a form of concern that is not yet one's own? How can the work done to arrive at the finish line be ascribed to one who doesn't (really) know what one is doing, or why one is doing it? In Aspiration, Agnes Callard asserts that these questions belong to the theory of aspiration. Aspirants are motivated by proleptic reasons, acknowledged defective versions of the reasons they expect to eventually grasp. The psychology of such a transformation is marked by intrinsic conflict between their old point of view on value and the one they are trying to acquire. They cannot adjudicate this conflict by deliberating or choosing or deciding-rather, they resolve it by working to see the world in a new way. This work has a teleological structure: by modeling oneself on the person he or she is trying to be, the aspirant brings that person into being. Because it is open to us to engage in an activity of self-creation, we are responsible for having become the kinds of people we are.

Book Details

Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publish Date: Oct 1st, 2019
Pages: 304
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 8.26in - 5.60in - 0.70in - 0.79lb
EAN: 9780190085148
Categories: • Ethics & Moral Philosophy• Metaphysics• Epistemology

About the Author

Agnes Callard was born in Budapest, Hungary, raised in New York City and received a BA from the University of Chicago. She left Chicago for the University of California, Berkeley, where she received an MA in Classics and a PhD in Philosophy, and subsequently returned to the University of Chicago to teach in the philosophy department. Her areas of specialization are ancient philosophy and ethics.

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What people are saying

Kate Manne

@kate_manne

2 years

Writer and philosophy professor at Cornell. Author of DOWN GIRL, ENTITLED, and UNSHRINKING (coming January 2024). https://t.co/U5FAzAnNv3. She/her

I wasn't going to say anything. But it feels like a good time to make a broader point I've been thinking about for a while: Agnes Callard's work on aspiration misses the entire social fabric against which aspiration actually occurs. Much of it damning https://t.co/EPUoze6WpO

Head of Climate @stripe. I also lead Frontier, an advance market commitment for carbon removal (https://t.co/hGbC6e9FOM).

I’m a long-time fan of @AgnesCallard's essays, but only just read her 2018 book: "Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming." I jotted down a few of the ideas that will stick with me: https://t.co/F5XTeUvMBt

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Praise for this book

"But undoubtedly, further research will build off of Callard's valuable contribution to understanding how and why people aspire." -- Rabbi Dr. Stu Halpern, Yeshiva University

What people are saying

Kate Manne

@kate_manne

2 years

Writer and philosophy professor at Cornell. Author of DOWN GIRL, ENTITLED, and UNSHRINKING (coming January 2024). https://t.co/U5FAzAnNv3. She/her

Head of Climate @stripe. I also lead Frontier, an advance market commitment for carbon removal (https://t.co/hGbC6e9FOM).

twitter.com