Moral Thought in the Age of Therapy

The ascendance of psychology in the twentieth century and beyond has had consequential effects on our frameworks for understanding the moral life. This talk will explore the importance of literary and philosophical approaches to moral reflection in the context of influential psychological paradigms reaching from psychoanalysis to cognitive science. In drawing out literary forms of moral reflection, particular attention will be paid to the under-acknowledged case of rumination (as opposed to deliberation or judgment). Authors to be discussed include Hannah Arendt, William James, Iris Murdoch, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf.

Amanda Anderson is Visiting Whitney J. Oates Fellow in the Humanities Council and the Department of English.