Moral Self Research Articles

Catholic schools as spaces for transformative encounter

ABSTRACTThe U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops created a curriculum for Catholic secondary schools that describes what adolescents should learn including the importance of developing a religious and moral identity, encounters through service, and a deeper understanding of interreligious dialogue. This study adds the how to the bishops' what by exploring Blasi's theory of the moral self as it relates to Kegan's constructive-developmental theory to enable religious educators to create a transformative curriculum of encounter in Catholic secondary schools that helps adolescents develop habits of dialogue and a mature pluralism towards a sense of shared moral responsibility.

Writing and the Moral Self

Writing and the Moral Self

Beyond Technological Singularity-the Posthuman Condition

In the transmodern context, transhumanism appears as a new paradigm, with a centripetal tendency, which proposes the reinventing of man by overcoming the current biological limitations with the help of new technologies, so called human amelioration. In our work, we want to discuss in a speculative manner the possibility of the existence of the posthuman individual in the biological and moral (self) transcendence of the self. We will discuss a series of technologies capable of irreversibly modifying the human condition by placing humanity first in a transhuman or posthuman condition: technologies of virtualization of the social space that allow the transcendence of the spatial limitation of the human condition as a localized being within the finite limits, by opening up to communication and beingness in a non-topological space, the possibility of downloading the consciousness into electronic storage media, which would allow it to be in a non-biological space, that is, independent of its own corporeality and the supposed technologies of indefinite extension of life, which removes the human being from the the physical horizon of temporality and finitude. In defining the boundaries of the human condition, we have appealed to the work of the philosopher Abhinavagupta (975-1025), who was one of the greatest philosophers, aestheticians and mystics of the Shia school of Kashmir. The revaluation of the Kashmiri philosophy in the postmodern context allows us to rethink the human being’s boundaries, whose overcoming allows for a transcendence of the human condition. The boundaries identified based on the work of the Kashmirian philosopher are: limitation in temporality, limitation in the capacity for knowledge, limitation in fullness (limitation in scope - spatiality), limitation in causality, limitation in creative power. The overcoming of these ontological boundaries leads, in our opinion, to the emergence of an anthropological singularity, a concept built after the technological singularity, and implicitly of physical singularity.

The Morality of Disordered Eating and Recovery in Southern Italy.

Scholars have traced the processes through which moral subjectivities are constituted in culturally meaningful ways through eating disorders and recovery practices, demonstrating how subjective meanings of eating disorders and recovery from them are imbued with moral undertones and become meaningful ways of existing within specific historical and cultural contexts. Drawing on ethnographic insights and interviews with young women with disordered eating histories in southern Italy, we show how suffering from eating disorders and recovery from them enables women to retool their identities and craft moral selves. We draw attention to the value of medical anthropology in the care and comprehension of well-being of girls and women suffering from disordered eating.

Paul Ricœur’s Search for a Just Community. The Phenomenological Presupposition of a Life “with and for others”

The aim of this article is to examine how Ricœur’s critique of Husserl’s and Levinas’s notions of intersubjectivity informs his own alternative conceptualization of the intra- and interpersonal as a complex intertwining of moral selfhood and a just community. My first assumption is that law, as a prescriptive intervention in the social structure of our communal life, presupposes a phenomenology of our “being with others”. My second assumption is that Ricœur’s entire philosophical anthropology, and specifically his ideas on ethics, legality and justice, can be read as a prolonged response to Husserl’s solipsistic deadlock in the famous Fifth Cartesian Meditation. Taken together these two assumptions connect Ricœur’s early analysis of phenomenology with his complex reconceptualization of moral selfhood in Oneself as Another, culminating in the ethical maxim of “a good life with and for others in just institutions.”

An expanded model of the moral self: Beyond care and justice

Most research on moral identities conceptualizes morality exclusively in terms of care and justice, but work from across the social sciences indicates that these represent only a corner of the moral landscape. Emphasizing care and justice alone severely restricts the scope of moral identity models, and risks under-estimating the influence of moral self-processes. To address this, we develop and validate measures of moral identity focused on group loyalty, authority, and purity, three additional facets of morality highlighted in Moral Foundations Theory. Although the loyalty identity is remarkably similar to the care/justice identity, the authority and purity identities are distinct, and demonstrate adequate convergent, divergent, and nomological validity. These identities also predict a wide range of behaviors that traditional care/justice focused moral identities miss. Taken together, our work indicates that the moral self is more complex - and has a much wider scope of influence - than previously supposed.

Poetic Ethics in Proverbs: Wisdom Literature and the Shaping of the Moral Self by Anne W. Stewart

Poetic Ethics in Proverbs: Wisdom Literature and the Shaping of the Moral Self by Anne W. Stewart

For an anthropology of the demoralized: state pay, mock‐labour, and unfreedom in a Serbian firm

AbstractRecently, the leitmotif of much anthropological writing became that of the virtue of precarity: the belief that people continue to exercise their ethical imagination in the most trying circumstances. While refreshingly non‐deterministic, the Foucauldian approach to freedom that guides this vision neglects those situations in which people see their ability to be moral as irreparable, and structurally compromised. Such is the case of a Serbian firm selling spare car parts, where policies of financing unprofitable employment gradually involved workers in everyday, ritualized performances of productivity for the state – what I call mock‐labour. Unable either to meaningfully fulfil or to renounce the ethos of work, workers remain in an affective blend of nonchalance and failure, experiencing mock‐labour as both a source of material security and an abandonment of their creative capacities – a mocking of moral self. I call for a reconciliation of the anthropologies of ethics and precarity through the notion of demoralization, as a state in which the deficits of structural agency and the limits of reflective freedom overlap.

A Secure Base from which to Cooperate: Security, Child and Parent Willing Stance, and Adaptive and Maladaptive Outcomes in two Longitudinal Studies.

Early secure attachment plays a key role in socialization by inaugurating a long-term mutual positive, collaborative interpersonal orientation within the parent-child dyad. We report findings from Family Study (community mothers, fathers, and children, from age 2 to 12, N=102, 51 girls) and Play Study (exclusively low-income mothers and children, from age 3.5 to 7, N=186, 90 girls). We examined links among observed secure attachment at toddler age, child and parent receptive, willing stance to each other, observed in parent-child contexts at early school age, and developmental outcomes. The developmental outcomes included parent-rated child antisocial behavior problems and observed positive mutuality with regard to conflict issues at age 12 in Family Study, and mother-rated child antisocial behavior problems and observed child regard for rules and moral self at age 7 in Play Study. In mother-child relationships, the child's willing stance mediated indirect effects of child security on positive mutuality in Family Study and on all outcomes in Play Study. In father-child relationships, both the child's and the parent's willing stance mediated indirect effects of child security on both outcomes. Early security initiates an adaptive developmental cascade by enlisting the child and the parent as active, willingly receptive and cooperative agents in the socialization process. Implications for children's parenting interventions are noted.

Courtesy stigma and self-concept in partners of individuals with a physical disability

The article analyzes the relationship between (perceived and affiliate) courtesy stigma and self-concept among spouses of individuals with physical disabilities. The sample consisted of 85 spouses of individuals with physical disabilities. The data was collected using the Courtesy Stigma Questionnaire by Stanisława Byra and Monika Parchomiuk and the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale by William H. Fitts. The respondents reported significantly higher results for perceived stigma compared to affiliate stigma. Courtesy stigma manifestations are similar in the cognitive, affective and behavioral aspects. The study found significant relationships between the dimensions of courtesy stigma and self-concept aspects. The highest contribution in accounting for the specific aspects of self-concept (e.g. moral self, personal self, social self) is presented by the affective component of courtesy stigma. Statistically significant, although minor, contribution is also presented by the behavioral component, especially for the physical self, self-criticism and identity scales. The cognitive component of courtesy stigma was found not to account for the self-concept of the spouses in any way.

Becoming good in Africa: A critical appraisal of Stanley Hauerwas’ ecclesial ethic in the sub-Saharan context

The present article examines the appropriateness of Stanley Hauerwas’ ecclesial ethic for the sub-Saharan African churches. Thus, it consists in a Christian ethical assessment of the metaethical foundational categories of his ecclesial ethic. In brief, his proposal is eclectic and pluri-disciplinarily applicable to the churches of various denominations. It reflects the marks of the Aristotelian ethical tradition endorsed by Thomas Aquinas and recovered by several communitarian philosophers. It also includes some discernible ecclesio-centric and postliberal theological accents. The promising insights of this proposal include: (1) the necessity to ordain the church’s worship, polity and its entire way of life to the spiritual and moral formation of church members; (2) the stress on Christian virtuous life, identity formation, witness and non-conformism in social ethics. However, essentially designed against the background of a Western, liberal, autonomous and individualist self, Hauerwas’ ecclesial ethic is not a definitive answer for the holistic, normative and communalist moral self, characteristic of the traditional African ethos and influencing a large majority in Africa. Moreover, it stresses the purity of the church in a way that restricts cooperation between Christians and nonChristians for socio-economic justice and the common good.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: Therefore, Hauerwas’ virtue, narrative, community and social ethics provide some valuable insights for moral formation in African churches as it explores the interplay between ecclesiology, Christian ethics, practical theology and philosophical ethics. For sure, other relevant resources should come from African spirituality, developmental psychology and sociology of religion.

Experiencing Force Majeure

This article looks at the 2014 Swedish comedy-drama Force Majeure as a kind of moral thought experiment, but also insofar as it might not fit such a model. The idea of a cinematic ethics, of cinema as providing an avenue for thinking through ethics and exploring ethical questions, finds at least one expression in the idea of film as experimental in this sense. At the same time, simply subsuming film to the philosophical thought experiment risks forgetting what film itself brings to the proceedings; and how the cinematic medium might allow for an experimentation that goes beyond what can be done within the philosophical text. As experimental in a broad sense, Force Majeure evokes an experience, the extraordinary event beyond one's control, capable of putting a moral agent to the test, challenging one's sense of who one is and what one stands for. The film unfolds as a reflection on the results of this encounter with experience, and on the kind of moral self this experiment brings to light; and in the course of this reflection, it suggests some general conclusions about the human condition.

‘To Fill Yourself with Goodness’: Revolutionary Self‐Making in Bolivarian Venezuela

This article explores how utopian visions are articulated by chavista activists in Venezuela through the practice of “revolutionary self‐making”. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the city of Valencia between 2008 and 2012, it aims to demonstrate how close attention to the formation of new moral and spiritual selves is an integral part of the way that chavistas enact and experience political protagonism. In doing so, the article seeks to provide a ground level view of utopian visions as they are manifested discursively and practically in everyday life.

Summaries of Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores discussions of prophecy in early Christianity focusing on Origen of Alexandria's works. It argues that Origen engages the contested terms of prophetic activity to persuade his audience(s) toward the cultivation of a particular moral self.

Moral agency, autonomy, and heteronomy in early Confucian philosophy

AbstractThis paper discusses Confucian notions of moral autonomy and moral agency that do not follow strict and ideal notions of autonomy that one can find in many Western theories of moral philosophy. In Kantian deontology, for example, one's autonomy, specifically one's rational will to follow universal moral rules, is a necessary condition of moral agency and moral responsibility. In Confucian moral philosophy, however, this type of strict moral autonomy is rarely observed. A Confucian moral agent is often depicted as a partially heteronomous individual who often accepts and follows others' moral authority and considers external contingencies in her moral deliberations. Yet active moral agency is maintained in Confucian philosophy. In this paper, I will explain and analyze a partially heteronomous but active form of moral agency in Confucian moral philosophy. First, I will survey different notions of moral autonomy and explore philosophical theories of partial autonomy and heteronomy. Second, I will discuss, on the basis of interactive, responsive, and situated notions of the self, how Confucian moral agency can be explained without strict standards of autonomy. In Confucianism, morality or virtuosity reflects the relational, responsive, and situated nature of human being that resonates with other human beings and their environmental contingencies. Mencius, for example, acknowledges and discusses interactive or relational nature of moral action and the dependency of the moral self on external conditions of life without giving up active moral effort and full moral responsibility. Third, based on my analysis of moral autonomy and responsibility in early Confucian philosophy, I will argue that Confucian moral philosophy provides a unique way of understanding moral agency, not through self‐enclosed independency but through relational and interactive interdependency of communal agency.

Building the Islamic moral self: Sufi Abed’s Bustan Fatimah ma‘a Bustan ‘A’ishah

Sufi Abed Mian Usmani (1898-1945) of Ladysmith, KwaZulu-Natal, authored some ten religious books in Urdu and Gujerati, which appeared to have a considerable impact on the local community there, as well as more broadly for South African Muslims of Indian descent, and even for some Muslims of India. However, apart from two academic contributions, his work and legacy remain largely unexplored. This essay aims to build upon those contributions by analysing another of his hitherto unexamined Urdu works, namely, Bustan Fatimah ma' Bustan 'A'ishah (The garden of Fatimahwith the garden of 'A'ishah). It argues that these two works, when seen as a totality, seek to build the moral self.

The strategic moral self: Self-presentation shapes moral dilemma judgments

Research has focused on the cognitive and affective processes underpinning dilemma judgments where causing harm maximizes outcomes. Yet, recent work indicates that lay perceivers infer the processes behind others' judgments, raising two new questions: whether decision-makers accurately anticipate the inferences perceivers draw from their judgments (i.e., meta-insight), and, whether decision-makers strategically modify judgments to present themselves favorably. Across seven studies, a) people correctly anticipated how their dilemma judgments would influence perceivers' ratings of their warmth and competence, though self-ratings differed (Studies 1–3), b) people strategically shifted public (but not private) dilemma judgments to present themselves as warm or competent depending on which traits the situation favored (Studies 4–6), and, c) self-presentation strategies augmented perceptions of the weaker trait implied by their judgment (Study 7). These results suggest that moral dilemma judgments arise out of more than just basic cognitive and affective processes; complex social considerations causally contribute to dilemma decision-making.

‘22 Push-Ups for a Cause’: Depicting the Moral Self via Social Media Campaign #Mission22

In 2016, the online cause #Mission22 went viral on social media. Established to raise awareness about high suicide rates among US military veterans, the campaign involves users posting a video of themselves doing 22 push-ups for 22 days, and on some platforms, to donate and recruit others to do the same. Based on a ‘big data’ analysis of Twitter data (over 225,883 unique tweets) during the height of the campaign, this article uses #Mission22 as a site in which to analyse how people depict, self-represent and self-tell as moral subjects using social media campaigns. In addition to spotlighting how such movements are mobilised to portray moral selves in particular ways, the analysis focuses on how a specific online cause like #Mission22 becomes popularly supported from a plethora of possible causes and how this selection and support is shaped by online networks. We speculate that part of the reason why Mission22 went ‘viral’ in the highly competitive attention economies of social media environments was related to visual depictions of affective bodily, fitness and moral practices.

Shu(恕) of Zhu-xi Learning: Focusing on Appearance of Moral Self and Objectivity

Shu(恕) of Zhu-xi Learning: Focusing on Appearance of Moral Self and Objectivity

Embodying values and socio-religious difference: new markets of moral learning in Christian and Muslim schools in urban Tanzania

AbstractSchools are institutionalized spaces of learning where children and young people are trained to become morally and ethically responsible members of society. Cultural ideas and values relating to friendship, social status and the nation, but also regarding one's own body, dress and emotional, verbal or gestural expression, are learned and performed by young people on an everyday basis. In this article, I build on ethnographic research on the ‘new’ generation of Christian and Muslim schools in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (2008–10), and I show that particular ways of learning and performing values can be understood as a form of embodied morality that orients students and teachers in relation to their educational and socio-urban environments. I argue that schools do not represent monolithic ethical or moral frameworks or that the actors in these educational settings learn or embody those frameworks in uniform ways. Rather, the processes of ethical and moral (self-)formation are often highly fragmented due to the diverse (social, religious and economic) backgrounds of students and teachers as well as the logics of class formation in the neoliberal market, which causes a high degree of fluctuation across the (equally fragmented) educational landscape of Dar es Salaam. I therefore define ‘embodied morality’ as a partial and discontinuous practice whose specific forms and experience are inseparably entwined with the specific ideological, social and institutional environments of particular educational settings.