Kaitlyn Creasy

Imagine a successful woman professional named Marilyn. Marilyn judges—and has long judged—her assertiveness valuable, even attributing her professional success in part to this feature of herself, which she understands as integral to who she is. She finds assertive women admirable, and though she is familiar with the fact that women who comport themselves assertively in the workplace risk seeming less likable and suffering professional consequences, she judges it worthwhile, even important, to assert herself in her workplace. Now imagine that after a meeting in which she offered a frank, critical opinion on a colleague’s proposal, she finds herself feeling ashamed of her assertiveness. Saturated with shame, she wonders why she did not sit in the meeting, stay quiet, and leave the talking to others. Marilyn is surprised and disappointed to notice herself feeling this way, since even when gripped by this feeling, she judges assertiveness one of her most valuable traits. Still, the feeling persists. It is clear that Marilyn’s shame is a recalcitrant emotion. But it is a peculiar kind of recalcitrant emotion. Specifically, her shame is an obstinately self-deprecating social emotion, a distinctive species of emotional recalcitrance with significant ethical import. In this paper, I develop an account of obstinately self-deprecating social emotions and offer examples of this species of emotional recalcitrance. After presenting this account, I then argue that such emotions—which both disrupt the agent’s ability to self-determine and impede a form positive self-regard required for individual flourishing—constitute a unique and undertheorized ethical harm.

Here, I begin by examining cases in which agents steadfastly committed to various projects, people, and values come over time to hold those commitments bloodlessly. While these agents’ commitments arguably give their lives meaning—i.e., they bestow the agents’ lives with a form of meaningfulness (qua purposefulness)—I argue that there is an important form of meaningfulness missing that can’t be secured through mere commitment: meaningfulness as felt mattering, a form of meaningfulness which requires that agents engage with objects that exert psychic-affective traction on them. Unlike meaningfulness as purposefulness, meaningfulness as felt mattering is not under our voluntary or evaluative control: we can neither will nor deliberate our way to the feelings partially constitutive of the tractional relationship it requires. So, while we are active with respect to the former, we are (in some important respect) passive with respect to the latter. Whether our lives incorporate meaningfulness as felt mattering, then, is not up to us—though cultivating certain stances (e.g., existential flexibility) and avoiding others (e.g., devotion) may help agents hoping to incorporate this good into their lives to do so. Ultimately, I suggest that teasing apart these two forms of meaningfulness points us toward a pluralistic view of meaningfulness.

Loneliness, while a common human experience, is something to which people often respond quite differently. Here, I examine how an individual’s social position, as well as his socialization into a particular cultural milieu, can shape his response to the fact of his loneliness (as well as the features of human existence that loneliness makes salient). Specifically, I argue that in cases where the individual experiencing loneliness has been socialized to disvalue the features of existence that loneliness makes salient (e.g., our dependence on and vulnerability to others) and/or to feel entitled to the social goods that they are, or perceive themselves to be, lacking (e.g., recognition or intimate connection), loneliness may catalyze the vicious, extremist attitude of ressentiment. This analysis allows us to see how loneliness may play a role in catalyzing vicious, extremist attitudes—though I contend that loneliness never warrants such attitudes.