Disorientation and Moral Life

Ami Harbin is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Women & Gender Studies at Oakland University (Michigan). Her research is in the areas of feminist philosophy, ethics, moral psychology, bioethics, and social philosophy.

• Table of contents Preface: Life Beyond What One Has Concepts ForAcknowledgmentsChapter One: Being Disoriented1.1 Contextualizing the concept1.2 Disorientation and family resemblance1.3 Methodologies for interpreting disorientations and their effects1.3 (i) Claims about what disorientations are1.3 (ii) Claims about what disorientations do1.3 (iii) Implications of this account for moral motivation and agency1.3 (iv) Implications of this account for understandings of oppression1.4 ConclusionChapter Two: Moral Motivation beyond Moral Resolve2.1 Identifying moral resolve2.2 Legacies of resolvism 2.2 (i) Resolvism in accounts of moral development 2.2 (ii) Resolvism in accounts of moral judgment 2.2 (iii) Resolvism in accounts of moral failure 2.2 (iv) Resolvism in accounts of moral growth2.3 The disorientations of grief2.4 Contesting resolvismChapter Three: What is Disorientation in Thinking?3.1 Disorientations of life under racism3.1 (i) Double consciousness and awareness of oppressive norms 3.1 (ii) White ambush and awareness of oppressive norms3.2 Disorientations of learning about oppression and privilege 3.2 (i) Consciousness raising and awareness of political complexity 3.2 (ii) Critical classrooms and awareness of political complexity3.3 The power of awareness without moral resolve 3.3 (i) Prompting epistemic humility 3.3 (ii) Prompting resistant re-identification 3.3 (iii) Prompting different relations to felt power3.4 ConclusionChapter Four: Tenderizing Effects and Acting Despite Ourselves4.1 Disorientations of interruption 4.1 (i) Illness, sensing vulnerability, and living unprepared 4.1 (ii) Trauma and living unprepared4.2 Disorientations of ill fit 4.2 (i) Queerness and in-this-togetherness 4.2 (ii) Migration and living against the grain4.3 The power of tenderizing effects4.4 Conclusion Chapter Five: Injustice and Irresoluteness5.1 Resolute and irresolute action against injustice5.2 Both/and actions, heterosexism, and mass incarceration5.3 Doubling back actions, implicit bias, and colonialism5.4 Building without blueprints and post-industrial poverty5.5 ConclusionChapter Six: Disorientation and Habitability6.1 Dismissing disorientations6.2 Responding to disoriented others6.3 Responding to oneself as disorientable6.4 Back to the rough wavesReferences

By setting out to find moral fruit growing in the disorderly cracks of unsettling phenomena, Harbin contributes to the growing and vital field of non-ideal theory in ethics. There's great and urgent value in her argument against treating practical disorientation as an abject defect... For insisting that we pay close attention to those who wrestle viscerally with problems of how to go on, Harbin's book is a vital intervention in moral philosophy.