Ethics for the Depressed: A Value Ethics of Engagement
| dc.contributor.advisor | Johnson, Mark | |
| dc.contributor.author | Fitzpatrick, Devin | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2022-10-04T19:32:40Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2022-10-04T19:32:40Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2022-10-04 | |
| dc.description.abstract | I argue that depressed persons suffer from “existential guilt,” which amounts to a two-part compulsion: 1) the compulsive assertion or sense of a vague and all-encompassing or absolute threat that disrupts action and intention formation, and 2) the compulsive taking of such disruption to be a reason for inaction. I develop in response an “ethics for the depressed,” an ethical theory directed to those suffering from existential guilt. The first part of this dissertation, comprising Chapters 2 through 4, largely concerns the first aspect of existential guilt: it is a metaethics for the depressed, or “ethics as a reliable guide” as a response to “demoralization” and “hypermoralized deliberation.” There I challenge what I call the Stocker-Smith account of depressive loss of motivation as being a loss of desires and argue instead that it involves the defeating presence of what the phenomenologist Matthew Ratcliffe calls “pre-intentional” mental states, a category that I redefine and expand to include second-order “quasi-beliefs” and habits of feeling, that interfere with intention formation and action despite the persistence of desire. The second part of this dissertation, comprising Chapters 5 and 6, largely concerns the second aspect of existential guilt: it is a normative ethics for the depressed, or a “value ethics of engagement” premised on “contingent value ranking.” After demonstrating in the first part that depressed persons may retain their desires and values in depression, I premise a value ethics upon what I call the consistent desire for a “sense of stability” in response to experiences of precarity and isolation. From the phenomenology of value, I develop a concept of the heart as the set of “felt values” or intuitive value paradigms that are themselves pre-intentional states or dispositions. I thus attempt to structure a complete ethical theory, integrating plural philosophical traditions and founded on the phenomenological category of pre-intentional mental states, in response to the presence of existential guilt and its component compulsions as experienced by an otherwise reasonable interlocutor. I put an orthodox style of philosophy in service of an unorthodox agent: one who is “aspiringly autonomous.” | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1794/27570 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.publisher | University of Oregon | |
| dc.rights | All Rights Reserved. | |
| dc.subject | depression | en_US |
| dc.subject | engagement | en_US |
| dc.subject | ethics | en_US |
| dc.subject | phenomenology | en_US |
| dc.subject | pragmatism | en_US |
| dc.subject | value theory | en_US |
| dc.title | Ethics for the Depressed: A Value Ethics of Engagement | |
| dc.type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Department of Philosophy | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | University of Oregon | |
| thesis.degree.level | doctoral | |
| thesis.degree.name | Ph.D. |
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