Subjectivity and Ethics Paul Ricoeur and the Question of Naturalizing Personhood Rosfort, René Publication date: 2008 Document version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Document license: CC BY-NC-ND Citation for published version (APA): Rosfort, R. (2008). Subjectivity and Ethics: Paul Ricoeur and the Question of Naturalizing Personhood. Det Teologiske Fakultet. Publikationer fra Det Teologiske Fakultet No. 2 Download date: 01. okt.. 2021 RENÉ ROSFORT ISBN 978-87-91838-09-05 RENÉ ROSFORT Subjectivity and Ethics Ricoeur and the Qustion of Naturalizing Personhood Ricoeur and the Question of Naturalizing Personhood Subjectivity and Ethics RENÉ ROSFORT Subjectivity and Ethics Ricoeur and the Question of Naturalizing Personhood Publikationer fra Det Teologiske Fakultet 2 RENÉ ROSFORT ISBN 978-87-91838-09-05 RENÉ ROSFORT Subjectivity and Ethics Ricoeur and the Qustion of Naturalizing Personhood Ricoeur and the Question of Naturalizing Personhood Subjectivity and Ethics RENÉ ROSFORT Subjectivity and Ethics Ricoeur and the Question of Naturalizing Personhood Publikationer fra Det Teologiske Fakultet 2 Subjectivity and Ethics Ricoeur and the Question of Naturalizing Personhood Ph.D.-Thesis by René Rosfort Funded by Copenhagen University's Research Priority Area Body and Mind Submitted for defence at the Faculty of Theology University of Copenhagen 1 February 2008 Subjectivity and Ethics Ricoeur and the Question of Naturalizing Personhood Publikationer fra Det Teologiske Fakultet 2 Licensed under CreativeCommons René Rosfort ISBN: 978-87-91838-09-05 (trykt) ISBN: 978-87-91838-98-9 (pdf) Københavns Universitet 2008 Udgivet af Det Teologiske Fakultet Københavns Universitet Købmagergade 44-46 1150 København K Contents Introduction 1 Subjectivity, Ethics, and Naturalization 3 Structure of the Analyses 6 Part One Ricoeur's Theory of Subjectivity Chapter One: The Stripped Notion of Subjectivity 9 Basic Methodological Concepts 9 Transcendental Synthesis 10 Intentionality 12 The Originating Affirmation 14 Experience: Between Reason and Sensibility 18 Transcendental Imagination 20 Action: The Practical Space of Reason 26 Decision 28 Motivation and Value 29 The Practical Space of Reason 32 The Subject as a Person in Front of Other Persons 35 The Person in between Character and Happiness 39 Affectivity: The Conflict of Feelings 43 Disproportion and Fallibility 43 The Nature of Feeling 45 Outline for an Ontology 50 Chapter Two: The Redressed Notion of Subjectivity Basic Methodological Concepts 55 Hermeneutical Phenomenology 56 Narrative Identity 65 The Affected Subject: Body and Alterity 70 Non-immediacy and Ambivalence of the Body 71 Passivity and an Ontology of the Flesh 73 Action: Selfhood and Identity 78 Motives and Causes 81 The Narrating Subject: Personhood and Identity 82 Ethical Experience: The Practical Space of Reason 91 The Configuration of Experience 93 The Self and Other Selves: 'The Good Life' 98 Subjectivity in an Ontology of Care 101 Part Two Feeling Ethical Chapter One: Human Affectivity Conceptual Background 111 The Feeling Theory 111 The Cognitive Theory 114 The Narrative Theory 115 Neurophysiological Dimension of Emotions 117 Antonio Damasio: Objective Emotions and Subjective Feelings 118 Jaak Panksepp: Subjective Affectivity 123 Some Considerations on Evolution, Neurophysiology, and Intentionality 129 Conatus: Spinoza, Ricoeur, and Neuroscience 132 Emotions and Personhood: Moods and Affects 138 Personhood 138 Feelings of Being-in-the-World 141 Feelings and Emotions 142 Moods and Affects 145 The Person in between Moods and Affects 147 Human Affectivity: Feelings and Embodied Normativity 160 Chapter Two: Ethical Experience and Ontology A Preamble: Kant, Hume on Emotions, Subjectivity, and Ethics 166 The Practical Space of Reason: Values, Concern, and the Other 170 Blackburn's Quasi-Realism and the Experience of Values 172 Experience as Structured by the Value of the Other's Concerns 178 An Ontology of Care: Personhood and the Conflictual Nature of Subjectivity 184 The Moral Space and Strong Evaluations 185 Ontology and Personhood 191 Conclusion: Subjectivity and Ethics 194 Part Three The Brain and Human Values Chapter One: Neuroethics and Subjectivity The Case of Casebeer and Some of his Allies: Impersonal Ethical Facts 202 The Disobeying Subject: Subjective Values and Personhood 207 Chapter Two: Personhood in Nature and Culture Which Sort of Naturalism? 218 Not a Plea for Relativism 224 Conclusion: Naturally the Subject is a Person 231 References 236 Abstracts (English/Danish) 247 Introduction Subjectivity and ethics are both difficult topics to reconcile with a empirical scientific outlook on the world and the creatures living in it. They are somewhat impalpable subject-matters in a discourse that enhances and applauds local, observable, and experimental-proved research and which is, to put it mildly, skeptical of attempts to explain human behavior in the light of first-person perspective or general principles of morality. Theories of ethics and subjectivity have traditionally included such non-observable perspectives and have, indeed, regarded them as fundamental for ethical debate or more general investigations into human nature. We cannot observe a rational principle or a moral sentiment in the same manner as we observe the movement of the cochlea of the inner ear in response to sound waves; nonetheless, principles and sentiments seem to have some kind of influence on how we, as human beings, respond to our environment. Empirical sciences and theoretical investigations into subjectivity and ethics have therefore always faced (and continue to face) the problem of integrating their different methods, analyses, and results. This problem has existed throughout the history of western thought, stressed with the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century and reemerged as a dominant issue over the last forty years. Confronted with the prodigious growth of technological developments and scientific revelations in the twentieth century, philosophers and empirical scientists have developed various attitudes toward the problem of integration, from mutual dialogue to reduction or even complete elimination of the position of the other. Although mutual dialogue might seem the most sensible answer, the debate has often opted for the radical pole of complete elimination. To get a feeling of this, we can look at what two very influential thinkers had to say about the problems of integration in the last century. In 1929 the philosopher Martin Heidegger launches a polemic attack on the scientific enthusiasm blooming in his time: ‘No time has known so much and such a variety about mankind as is the case today […] But also, no time has known less about what man is than today. In no other time has man become as questionable as in ours’ (Heidegger 1998: 143/209). The empirical sciences can perhaps inform us with all sorts of interesting things about mankind, but it can never solve the general problems of being human. Almost forty years later, the paleontologist George G. Simpson wrote, in a no less polemical tone, against the metaphysically (i.e. not based on scientific methods and the theory of evolution) dreaming philosopher: ‘The question “What is Man” is probably the most profound that can be asked by man. […] The point I want to make now is that all attempts to answer that question before 1 1859 [the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species ] are worthless and that we will be better off if we ignore them completely’ (Simpson 1966, 472). Although Simpson later in the article tends to give some kind of credit to ‘[t]he other, older approaches through metaphysics, theology, art, and other nonbiological, nonscientific fields’, he persists in considering them ‘merely fictional fantasies or falsities’ (op.cit., 473) if they do not accept that human nature is biological organism. This conviction of an abiding necessity to ground all investigations of human nature in biology has become even more prevailing today. The explosive development in neuroscience has infused new hope into the old idea of an entirely naturalized conception of man. New techniques, intriguing results, and consequently large fundings have paved the way for the so-called neuroscientific revolution that in the last thirty years or so has prophesized the arrival of a new, more sincere, conception of human nature (Edelman 2003: 5520; Metzinger 2005: 54; Pinker 1999: 563; Pinker 2003: xi; Gazzaniga 2006: xviii). Together with the growth of cognitive science, socio-biology, and lately evolutionary psychology, neuroscience is expanding its field of interest (and presumed expertise) from neurophysiological investigations into specific neuronal networks and brain areas to more general theories about human nature. So, this said, what are the problems with the attempt to naturalize human nature? The problems are spread all over the philosophical spectrum, but the main debate has always taken place in philosophy of mind. With our growing empirical knowledge of the structure and dynamics of the brain, we cannot just dispose of that knowledge when we think about the mind. The mind-body problem has, once again, become the battlefield of empirical sciences and philosophy – this time in the shape of a mind-brain problem. The debate has been, and still is, a very tense and emotionally- loaded affaire, since it is our very conception of human nature that is at stake. Often, philosophy is ridiculed as mere daydreaming and science accused of short-sighted superficiality.