Cheshire Calhoun

In One Life to Lead, Scheffler offers two formulations of the problem of temporal dissonance: one focuses on our epistemic and agential confinement to the present, the other focuses on the uncertain “mine-ness” of the past and future. After arguing that neither formulation identifies a problem of temporal dissonance, I develop Scheffler’s second formulation in a way that may better capture a problem of temporal dissonance. That proposed formulation focuses on the contrast between experiencing the present self as “the real me” (and thus adopting a present-centered perspective on the self) and recognizing that past, present, and future selves equally experienced themselves as “the real me” (suggesting that one should take a temporally neutral perspective on the self). I end by explaining why maintaining a temporally neutral perspective is both difficult to maintain and also unnerving.

Given how central feeling, expressing, and receiving tokens of appreciation are in our everyday lives with others, one might wonder _why_ these are important. Are these just _instrumentally_ valuable because they make us happier, more satisfied with our lives, and more motivated to do good things in the future? Strawson suggested that “reactive attitudes” like resentment and gratitude are valuable because they are central to regarding others as responsible agents. This chapter takes this thought seriously and argues that if gratitude and appreciation are reactive attitudes, we will need to reconceive what it means to regard someone as a responsible agent. To be a responsible agent is not just to be someone who can be _held accountable_ for failures, but also someone who has the capacity to _take responsibility_ in a variety of ways. The chapter concludes with remarks about why expressing appreciation and feeling appreciated matter.

Kant famously claimed that we have no direct duties to animals and that animals are things that (within limits) we may dispose of at will. Kantian moral philosophers have sometimes called this a repugnant moral doctrine. This chapter begins by distinguishing three ethical concerns one might have with respect to animals: taking into account animals’ interests, adopting a non-instrumentalist valuing attitude toward animals, and avoiding ingratitude, mockery, unfairness and the like. Utilitarianism is well designed to address only the first of the three ethical concerns. Drawing on Kant’s comments about the analogies between animals and humans, this chapter argues that there are good Kantian reasons for valuing animals, for not discounting their interests, and for not regarding them purely instrumentally. The chapter also argues that even if one is not obligated to respond to animals gratefully, fairly, respectfully, and the like, there is nevertheless a moral defect in not doing so.

We are evaluators. We pursue what we take to be valuable, strive to live meaningfully, judge whether our present circumstances are good enough, and have standards for what we are willing to take an interest in rather than be bored by. We are also temporally oriented beings. We anticipate particular future events, previsaging them in imagination, and we live in the present under a general sense of what the future will be like. We often imagine how the temporal unfolding of events might have proceeded otherwise. And we understand our own life’s time as something to be spent and open to our choices about how to spend it. This is a book about the connection between these two features of human persons. It is also a book about the difficulties evaluators face in doing valuable time and the different ways we as evaluators connect and disconnect ourselves from our present and future. The author explores the nature of meaningful living, the motivating interest we take in our futures and lose in depression, how hope works to sustain difficult pursuits, the value of committing ourselves to having a particular future, the inevitability of boredom with the present, and the possibilities for being content with the imperfect present.

Feminism, the Family, and the Politics of the Closet is about placing sexual orientation politics within feminist theorizing. It is also about defining the central political issues confronting lesbians and gay men. The book brings the study of lesbians from the margins of feminist theory to the center by critiquing the analytic frameworks employed within feminist theory that renders invisible lesbians' difference from heterosexual women. This book also outlines the basic features of lesbian and gay subordination by exploring the differences between heterosexual dominance and gender and race relations. Throughout, Calhoun aims to re-center lesbian and gay politics away from concerns with sexual regulations and toward concern with the displacement of gays and lesbians from the public sphere of visible citizenship and from the private sphere of romance, marriage, and family.

The aim of this essay is to work out an account of contentment as a response to imperfect conditions and to argue that a disposition to contentment, understood as a disposition to appreciate the goods in one's present condition and to use expectations that enable such appreciation, is a virtue. In the first half, I lay out an analysis of what contentment and discontentment are. In the second half, I argue that contentment is a virtue of appreciation and respond to skeptical concerns about recommending a disposition to contentment.

This essay engages with Sarah Buss's 2019 annual lecture for the Society for Applied Philosophy: "Some Musings About the Limits of an Ethics That Can Be Applied – A Response to a Question About Courage and Convictions That Confronted the Author When She Woke Up on November 9, 2016." She reflects on whether one is obligated to take great risks in the face of grave injustice. I suggest shifting the normative question from “Am I obligated?” to “Is there something of moral importance that someone needs to do, and shall it be me who does it?”

The essay speculates that women's underrepresentation in the philosophy major (though not in lower division philosophy courses) is connected with the clash between the schema for philosophy and the schema for woman. The result is that female students have difficulty envisioning themselves as philosophers and thus have a weaker attachment to the discipline. I also suggest that this schema clash encourages female students to take isolated experiences of sexism or gender imbalance in the classroom as representative of philosophy. At the end I suggest some possible strategies for de-gendering philosophy.