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Structuring Lives and Stories

McLean, Brian C
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1503150956925467

Abstract Details

2017, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Philosophy.
I address philosophical questions about the relationship between how we structure our own lives over time and how we reflect on how we are structuring our own lives over time. In the first three chapters, I develop an account of the conditions under which an agent counts as structuring her own life. This is the Rational Immersion View: an agent counts as structuring her own life if she has a commitment that manifests across a wide range of circumstances and whose manifestation consists in immersive activity that involves the extensive deployment of her rational capacities for deliberation and planning. The main advantage of this view is that it can account for forms of independence between how we structure our lives and the exercise of our reflective capacities: for instance, it can account for agents who structure their lives around the pursuit of commitments that they do not endorse acting upon. In the final chapter, I argue that the exercise of our reflective capacities, when directed toward our life-structuring commitments, involves the exercise of our story-telling capacities: to acquire full awareness of a life-structuring commitment, as a potential ground for action, one needs to tell a story of one’s life structured by the pursuit of that commitment. This proposal allows us to illuminate the respect in which reflection on a commitment involves stepping back from the commitment: one acquires critical distance from a commitment when there is ironic distance between one’s perspective while reflecting and one’s perspective while immersed in the pursuit of that commitment.
Sigrún Svavarsdóttir (Advisor)
Justin D'Arms (Committee Member)
Don Hubin (Committee Member)
Tristram McPherson (Committee Member)
147 p.
Philosophy
Frankfurt; narrative; reflection; theory of agency; moral psychology; life-structuring commitments

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • McLean, B. C. (2017). Structuring Lives and Stories [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1503150956925467

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • McLean, Brian. Structuring Lives and Stories. 2017. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1503150956925467.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • McLean, Brian. "Structuring Lives and Stories." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1503150956925467

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1503150956925467
299
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.