University of Connecticut OpenCommons@UConn Doctoral Dissertations University of Connecticut Graduate School 7-17-2018 Maturity in a Human World: A Philosophical Study Thomas Meagher University of Connecticut, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations Recommended Citation Meagher, Thomas, "Maturity in a Human World: A Philosophical Study" (2018). Doctoral Dissertations. 1866. https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations/1866 Maturity in a Human World: A Philosophical Study Thomas James Meagher, PhD University of Connecticut, 2018 This work offers a philosophical examination of human maturity. Its argument is that maturity in a human world has an infinite structure because such maturity demands taking responsibility for the world. A world is a product of constitution: human beings produce the world, which is functionally the extent of meaningfulness; but while each human being constitutes the world, each human being also enters a world already constituted. Maturity thus demands taking responsibility not only for that which is brought about through one’s own agency but also that which precedes one’s agency. The structure of the world so understood is such that it can never fully be complete. Hence, the responsibility such a world occasions is infinite rather than finite. This notion of maturity as infinite responsibility is examined through an inquiry into four questions. The first three concern maturity in the domains of reason, action, and the human sciences. Mature reason is argued to involve the development of critical responsibilities. It denotes a responsibility to expand the range of evidence evaluated and to expand the means of critical evidential assessment, which requires efforts that transcend rationality. Mature action, in turn, must account for the ambiguity of acts and intentions, since the meanings of these within a human world are never fully constituted. This calls for critical efforts to distinguish needs from wants to establish intersubjectively meaningful criteria by which one may be held accountable. The human sciences, then, are called upon to examine human “needs” despite the fundamental contingency of human life. This requires mature human sciences to repudiate a deterministic metaphysics in favor of a relational conception of human reality. The fourth and final question taken up concerns how maturity can be chosen. Maturity is conceived as the product of a multiplicity of human acts of valuing, such that it is not the product of an individual’s efforts toward personal maturity but is rather produced through political agency to value maturity. Maturity in a Human World: A Philosophical Study Thomas James Meagher B.A., University of California Berkeley, 2006 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut 2018 i Copyright by Thomas James Meagher 2018 ii APPROVAL PAGE Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation Maturity in a Human World: A Philosophical Study Presented by Thomas James Meagher, B.A. Major Advisor ____________________________________________________ Lewis R. Gordon Associate Advisor ____________________________________________________ Michael P. Lynch Associate Advisor ____________________________________________________ Jane A. Gordon Associate Advisor ____________________________________________________ Frederick I. Lee iii Acknowledgements A dissertation in the field of philosophy should, presumably, bring its author to ponder a variety of philosophical questions. The process of writing such a work, further, would seem to necessitate that the author would consider a variety of practical questions regarding the purpose and function of a dissertation. The topic that I have chosen has, with great frequency, provoked me to reflect on questions where these two lines of concern merge; in short, I have been drawn at routine intervals to contemplate the relationship between the dissertation as a philosophical work and the maturity of the philosopher who writes it. Each philosophical idea should, it seems, proceed from infancy to maturity. But the dissertation is a collection of philosophical ideas, and it is perhaps typical of dissertations to include both a variety of ideas that have been brought to maturity as well as a range of ideas that are intelligible for now but that have yet to grow into what they may come to be later. The dissertation must, in some fashion or another, serve as evidence of the maturation of the philosopher who has produced it. Is the completion of the dissertation the moment at which the philosopher is recognized as having achieved philosophical maturity, a rite of passage from adolescence to adulthood? Or is the dissertation, rather, merely the initiation into philosophical adolescence: the point after which one will scarcely be supervised but shall remain, nonetheless, grasping for answers out of a position of relative ignorance and irresponsibility whose depths are only evident to those elders who, through many years of post-doctoral struggle, have achieved a slow and arduous passage into philosophical adulthood? The argument put forth in this work would suggest that there need not be a univocal answer to such a question. Maturity in a human world, we may say, is ambiguous. The dissertation to the newly-minted PhD – and, indeed, even to the committee of advisors, referees, iv and students gathered to examine the dissertation – can be taken as simple and clear evidence of one’s maturity. And yet the philosopher reflecting on her or his life’s work may rightfully look back on the dissertation as juvenilia, as among the immature efforts of a thinker grappling with a long and winding road to relative comprehension of difficult and expansive problems. In short, evidence of maturity is partial, ambiguous, and relational, rather than complete, univocal, and absolute, and the dissertation functions as evidence of maturity without constituting the final word on the matter. Given this, we would then have to deal with another implication of the argument put forth in this work: maturity in a human world is not the product of one’s choices alone. That is to say, if an individual may mature, such maturity is a product of that individual’s choices but is not only the product of those choices. No human being achieves maturity without others making choices that ultimately co-produce it. If this dissertation, then, is to be regarded as evidence of my philosophical maturity, then we must deal with the reality that that maturity has been wrought by the painstaking efforts of communities who have, often quite eagerly and perhaps at times begrudgingly, chosen to contribute to my maturation and the maturation of my philosophical contributions to the world. Indeed, I am moved to tears by even the question of where to begin. There are so many people without whom this simply would not have been possible, and I feel deeply the tragedy of not being able to start the accolades with each and every one of them. But one must start somewhere, and with all apologies to those subsequently to be named, I simply must begin by thanking Anya Bernal. I could never fully express how much of a blessing Anya’s entry into and lasting presence in my life has been. Anya confronted me with a simple reality: it was, she argued, my vocation to return to school, earn a PhD, and share my knowledge with the world. v She confronted me with this challenge as an act of love; she put what was best for me above what she wanted for herself, and, as I learned later, she did this despite her sense that it would likely mean our separation and the dissolution of our relationship. I took her words seriously and began in earnest the process of preparing myself for graduate study. I am eternally fortunate that this did not, as she had feared, spell the end of our journey together. Anya, your support throughout has been indispensable: I simply would not be where I am without your love. I have been blessed to have you as a best friend, partner, and, eventually, wife. Thank you for valuing my maturation in spite of the anguish this choice demands. My journey to the University of Connecticut was occasioned by extremely fortuitous circumstances. For these I would be remiss if I did not thank Nelson Maldonado-Torres. Nelson, taking your course as an undergraduate was simply transformative. Though I had had philosophical interests, learning from you was the moment in which, simply, I began to fall in love with philosophy. And, as is fitting, this was in large part because you came to philosophy through concerns that transcended it, and those concerns never subsided. In my many years of wandering after the completion of my bachelor’s degree, I remained on track, as it were, because of a mission that I had discovered – out of relative obscurity, to be sure, but that obscurity had been cut through to a remarkable degree by the things I learned from you. So, too, was your support for me when I decided to return to the academic fold indispensable: I simply would not have gotten where I needed to go without your kind and thoughtful guidance and interventions. Nelson’s efforts brought me, way back in 2005, to the work of Lewis and Jane Gordon, his intellectual mentor and peer, respectively. I have been blessed to have read their work carefully over these many years – an effort that has, due to their all-too-rare talents and maturity, always been a profound joy rather than a task of drudgery. I have been blessed to an vi infinitesimally larger degree to then have had the privilege of studying with them these past five years. Though there is no shortage of material by which to individuate them and their respective impacts, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the profoundly beneficial ways in which their work as an indefatigable team has shaped this work as well as the thinker, philosopher, and person that I have become.