Abstract
We are all ambivalent at every turn. “Should I skip class on this gorgeous spring day?” “Do I really want to marry Eric?” Despite being uncomfortable and unsettling, there are some forms of ambivalence that are appropriate and responsible. Even when they seem trivial and superficial, they reveal some of our deepest values, the self-images we would like to project. In this paper, I analyze collaborative ambivalence, the kind of ambivalence that arises from our identity-forming close relationships. The sources and resolutions of collaborative ambivalence reveal how much of our thinking—and so also of our motivational structure—emerges from the details of our collaborative and dialogical engagements. The imaginative skills and strategies exercised in remaining justifiably of two minds—of preserving appropriate ambivalence—are central to practical reasoning. Because these skills provide models for addressing conflicts in the public sphere, because they prompt shared deliberation, they are among the civic virtues.
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Notes
Although emotions, desires and attitudes can be ambivalent, the clearest examples of ambivalence are those that express a conflict in choosing between what are seen as two desirable but incompatible courses of action. Ambivalence is typically and most clearly consciously experienced, but it can be attributed to someone who is unaware of her condition and who might even self-deceptively deny it.
This story is adapted from an incident described in Wilkerson (2011: 208–211).
Those who are uncomfortable with postulating a unified compound agent can treat both Sarah and Abe as having become ambivalent by having sympathetically internalized some of one another’s attitudes, while also continuing to hold their distinctive initial responses. Bratman (2014), Gilbert (2014), List and Pettit (2011) have written extensively on the structure of joint and collaborative intention and action. My use of the notion is neutral between their respective analyses: it applies to accounts that treat such collaborative attitudes as arising from iterative interaction as well as to those that treat them as mutually constitutive.
See Daniels (1979) for an account of the difference between narrow reflective equilibrium as functioning within a person’s belief-set and wide reflective equilibrium as also including attempts to address divergent moral views.
See Scanlon (1998).
See Gendler (2006). (See also David Hume’s and Adam Smith’s accounts of sympathetic consonance.).
This paper grew out of discussions with Bridget Clarke and her colleagues at the University if Montana. An early version was delivered at an NYU colloquium in honor of William Ruddick. I am grateful to Frances Kamm, Evelyn Keller and other members of that conference for comments as well as to MindaRae Amiran, Matthew Carmody, Robert Frederick, Genevieve Lloyd, and Benjamin Sherman. Charles Starkey, Candice Delmas and participants of a colloquium at Clemson University helped me to refine later drafts.
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Rorty, A. The Ethics of Collaborative Ambivalence. J Ethics 18, 391–403 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-014-9184-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-014-9184-z