Description
About the Author
Agnes Callard was born in Budapest, Hungary, raised in New York City and received a BA from the University of Chicago. She left Chicago for the University of California, Berkeley, where she received an MA in Classics and a PhD in Philosophy, and subsequently returned to the University of Chicago to teach in the philosophy department. Her areas of specialization are ancient philosophy and ethics.
Reviews
But undoubtedly, further research will build off of Callard's valuable contribution to understanding how and why people aspire. * Rabbi Dr. Stu Halpern, Yeshiva University *
Agnes Callard develops and defends a fascinating new idea about aspiration, the form of agency involving the rational process by which we work to care about something new. For Callard, aspiring agents exhibit a distinctive form of rationality that is not a matter of decision-making at all. Choosing to undergo a personal revolution is, rather, aspiring to a certain type of self-change. Deep and broad in its philosophical reach, the book makes a major contribution to our understanding of practical rationality and moral psychology." - L.A. Paul, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
A superb, agenda-setting addition to recent philosophical investigations into 'transformative experience', the kind of experience that results in changes to one's basic values. Callard rightly singles out "aspiration" - a change in one's values that, she argues, is rationally guided by what those values will become - as a critically important species of such experience, and brings out, with clarity, insight, and brilliance, the deep connections between this phenomenon and a range of other central topics in moral psychology and the theory of practical reasoning, such as the nature of moral responsibility, internalism about reasons, and akrasia." - Ned Hall, Harvard University
Moving, quietly profound..."-The New Yorker
I may suspect that classical music has value, though I cannot myself see it. And so I may strive to uncover the sublimity of Schumann. Yet such aspirational attempts to acquire taste are bewildering. For if I cannot see the value of classical music, why should I pursue it so ardently? Agnes Callard seeks to solve this puzzle by claiming that aspiration is dualistic. When we aspire, we are in transition: we are shedding who we are now and becoming who we aspire to be. As such, says Callard, our aspirational behaviour must answer to both aspects of our being: to our current values and our inchoate grasp of our later values."-The Times Literary Supplement
Book Information
ISBN 9780190085148
Author Agnes Callard
Format Paperback
Page Count 306
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 350g
Dimensions(mm) 209mm * 140mm * 19mm