Colloque

How the 'messiness' of emotionally informed thought can save us from depersonalized moral reflection in professional practice

Sheila Mason

Membre a labase

Sheila Mason

Résumé du colloque

The question I address in this paper is whether there is a viable alternative to the view that moral and professional life require emotional detachment in order in order to achieve objectivity. It may be that both the ideals of scientific and technological rationality and the methods of bureaucratic management and control 'undermine the very possibility of practical wisdom' [R. Bernstein 1997]. In this paper I present an alternative moral ideal culled from insights about the role of emotions in moral and professional life in the writings of psychologists H. Gardner and D. Goleman, neurologists J. LeDoux and A. Damasio, and feminist ethicists C. Gilligan and N. Noddings whose work can be seen to complement the views of neo-Aristotelian writers such as N. Sherman, J. McDowell and D. Wiggins known for their defense of a broader, more encompassing, kind of moral understanding than that focused primarily on the articulation of abstract universal principles. Having established the importance of this alternative, somewhat 'messy' cognitive style, I show how Alisdair MacIntyre's distinction between the goods 'internal' to, and the goods 'external' to, practices can be used to gain insights about moral judgment in professional life. I conclude with reflections from the works of C. Taylor and D. Cooper on the importance of grounding our moral motivations in epiphanic experiences of connection with deep, transcendental 'sources' that take us well beyond the prevailing models of ethics.