Two Sorts of Constitutivism

Fix, Jérémy

doi:10.1111/phib.12166

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Davidson puts this point rather starkly: For a person, “the irrational is not merely the non‐rational, which lies outside the ambit of the rational.” Rather, “irrationality is a failure within the house of reason. … [a] rational process or state … gone wrong.” To be irrational is a failure in respect of one's own nature and a failure that closes off the possibility of succeeding in the activity of rational flourishing.…”

Section: The Aristotelian Model and Mental Disordermentioning

confidence: 99%

Mental disorder as a puzzle for constitutivism

Heney

2018

Evaluation Clinical Practice

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In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that the performance called for by being human is rational flourishing and a life that falls short of flourishing will fail to constitute a life lived in accordance with the norms governing human kind in virtue of its function. Against this constitutivist story, a puzzle arises: On Aristotle's criteria, it looks impossible for a person with a mental disorder to flourish. I consider whether this puzzle can be satisfactorily addressed without abandoning Aristotelian constitutivism. I regard this as a puzzle worthy of serious engagement because there is a tension between the adoption of Aristotelian virtue ethics as a normative backbone for applied ethics and the possibility that the theory would consign many, many people to being incapable of virtue or flourishing. I first set out the basic commitments of a constitutivist Aristotelian account and show how it generates the hypothesis that a person with mental disorder could never flourish. I then present two contemporary concepts of mental disorder-one from the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and one from philosopher George Graham's The Disordered Mind. I show that Graham's treatment of mental disorder supplies the basis for a compelling response to the puzzle for constitutivism. That response is rooted in his conceptualization of disorder as involving truncated rather than absent rationality. I suggest that Aristotle's discussion of death can be construed as supporting a second response. Finally, I discuss possible clinical implications under the auspices of caring constitutivism, which treats Aristotle's account of the human function as a basis from which ideals of rationality and recovery can be empathetically developed.

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Section: The Aristotelian Model and Mental Disordermentioning

confidence: 99%

Mental disorder as a puzzle for constitutivism

Heney

2018

Evaluation Clinical Practice

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“…13 If I say 'there is something wrong with my teacher' I might conversationally implicate that the defect is a defect in a teacher, but I do not say this. 14 I borrow this use of 'internal' and 'external' from (Fix, 2019). But Fix identifies the idea of a standard that is internal to a kind under which a thing falls with the idea of a standard to which that thing is "by nature" subject (15).…”

Section: Consider Now This Passage From Gilbert Harmanmentioning

confidence: 99%

My Job and Its Requirements

Smith¹

2023

The Ethics of Social Roles

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This chapter concerns the ethics and metaphysics of occupations, such as teacher, waiter, and priest. It argues that teacher is a functional kind, but teachers are not functional objects. If you are a practising teacher, it is likely that you perform a function and serve a purpose, that of imparting knowledge and cultivating minds and skills. This is what teachers, generically, are for, and it is what your school is for. But it is not what you are for. Easily confused senses of ‘job’ are distinguished: occupation, position, requirement, and function. The chapter explains that the requirements of your position and occupation do not entail ability, reasons, or fault (if not complied with), and that if you are not as your position and occupation require, you are not as you ought to be, but it does not follow that there is anything wrong with you. The chapter includes some metaphysical speculation about positions, and examines some sources of, and remedies for, workplace alienation and anxiety.

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“…Constitutivism comes in many forms, but it is especially present in recent practical philosophy in the Kantian and Aristotelian traditions (Foot 2001; Thompson 2008; Korsgaard 2009; Lavin 2017; and Schafer 2019). I develop a basic metaphysics of constitutivism elsewhere (Fix 2019). In this section, I present an account of capacities that embodies that basic metaphysics and explain what it implies about the nature of rationality (see also Fix 2020).…”

Section: The Contours Of a Capacitymentioning

confidence: 99%