Dalton Coates

Ambivalence is a form of inner volitional conflict that we experience as being irresolvable without significant cost. Because of this, very few of us relish feelings of ambivalence. Yet for many in the Western philosophical tradition, ambivalence is not simply an unappealing experience that’s hard to manage. According to the unificationists, ambivalence is a failure of well-functioning agency. The reasons for this, we’re told, are threefold. First, ambivalence precludes agents from resolving their wills in a way that is necessary for autonomy. Second, ambivalence precludes agents from fully affirming their lives, and in particular from fully affirming the choices they make. As a result, it robs them of an important source of meaning. Finally, ambivalence causes agents to act in self-defeating ways. In so doing, they act without integrity. Ambivalence is thus seen as a threat to a trio of important agential goods, and as a result, it imperils the best forms of human agency. In Praise of Ambivalence argues that ambivalence does not preclude volitional resolution or normatively significant forms of affirmation. Nor does it guarantee self-defeat. Consequently, ambivalence as such is no threat to autonomy, meaning, or integrity. In the course of assessing these arguments, ambivalence is also revealed to have an important role in securing the very goods that unificationists contend it undermines. The best forms of human agency are therefore shown not only to be compatible with ambivalence but to frequently require it. Ambivalence is thus not a volitional defect, but a crucial constituent of well-functioning agency.