Ambivalence: A Philosophical Exploration 1786601540, 9781786601544

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Beginnings
Introduction
Philosophical Approaches to Ambivalence
Life with Ambivalence
Unity in Plurality
Behavioral Conflict
Conscious Ambivalence and Its Bearings on the Character of Consciousness
Pursuits of Harmony, Integration, and Freud’s Person
Structures of Ambivalence
Self-Deception, Ambivalence of Belief, and Basic Rationality
Ambivalence of Value Judgment, Deliberation, and the Logic of Value
The Openness of Desire and Action in Ambivalence
Appendix A
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

Citation preview

Ambivalence

Ambivalence A Philosophical Exploration

Hili Razinsky

London • New York

Published by Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd. Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB www.rowmaninternational.com Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd. is an affiliate of Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706, USA With additional offices in Boulder, New York, Toronto (Canada), and Plymouth (UK) www.rowman.com Copyright © 2017 by Hili Razinsky All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: HB 978-1-78660-152-0 PB 978-1-78660-153-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Razinsky, Hili, 1971- author. Title: Ambivalence : a philosophical exploration / Hili Razinsky. Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield International, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016037469 (print) | LCCN 2016041375 (ebook) | ISBN 9781786601520 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781786601537 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781786601544 (Electronic) Subjects: LCSH: Ambivalence. Classification: LCC BF575.A45 R39 2016 (print) | LCC BF575.A45 (ebook) | DDC 128—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016037469 ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgmentsvii Prefaceix Part I: Beginnings

1

1 Introduction3 2 Philosophical Approaches to Ambivalence: A Road Map of a Rough Terrain Part II: Life with Ambivalence

35 59

3 Unity in Plurality: The Case of Emotional Ambivalence

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4 Behavioral Conflict: The Case of Emotional Ambivalence

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5 Conscious Ambivalence and Its Bearings on the Character of Consciousness

97

6 Pursuits of Harmony, Integration, and Freud’s Person Part III: Structures of Ambivalence

131 163

7 Self-Deception, Ambivalence of Belief, and Basic Rationality

167

8 Ambivalence of Value Judgment, Deliberation, and the Logic of Value

199

9 The Openness of Desire and Action in Ambivalence

235

v

vi Contents

Appendix A

259

Bibliography265 Index273 About the Author

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Acknowledgments

Chapter 4 is adapted from Razinsky, H. 2014. “The Behavioral Conflict of Emotion.” International Philosophical Quarterly 54. Chapter 5 is partially taken from Razinsky, H. 2016. “Conscious Ambivalence.” Human Studies 39, with permission of Springer. Chapter 8 is traceable to Razinsky, H. 2013. “Ambivalence of Value Judgment Cannot Be Deliberated Away.” The Philosophical Forum 44 (Wiley); and to Razinsky, H. 2014. “An Outline for Ambivalence of Value Judgment.” The Journal of Value Inquiry 48, with permission of Springer. Chapter 9 is partially taken from Razinsky, H. 2015. “The Openness of Attitudes and Action in Ambivalence.” South African Journal of Philosophy 34. This book includes excerpts from C. P. Cavafy. “Ithaka.” In Collected Poems: Revised Edition. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Princeton University Press, 1992 ©. Robert Frost. “The Road Not Taken.” In The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lauthem. Copyright © 1916, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, copyright © 1944, by Robert Frost. Reprinted by arrangement with Henry Holt and Company, LLC. All rights reserved. Nathaniel Hawthorne. “Egotism; Or The Bosom Serpent.” In Mosses from an Old Manse. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1881. D. H. Lawrence. 1992. Women in Love. Wordsworth Classics. Doris Lessing. “Eldorado.” Copyright © 1953. Featured by kind permission of Jonathan Clowes Ltd., London, on behalf of The Estate of Doris Lessing. In This Was the Old Chief’s Country. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd © (Lessing) (1973). In African Stories. Simon & Schuster, 1981 ©. vii

viii Acknowledgments

© Ahlem Mosteghanemi. 2013. The Bridges of Constantine, translated by Raphael Cohen. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. © Cover photograph by Mili Ani.

Preface

This book is the culmination of many years of research. During these years, I have received fellowships and awards from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Israel Association of University Women; the Edelstein Center for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology, and Medicine; the Shlomo Pines Society; SIAS Summer Institute on Action Theory in Philosophy and the Social Sciences (National Humanities Center, North Carolina); the British Academy (for a stay in King’s College London); Ben-Gurion University (Kreitman fellowship); Haifa University; and CAS (Centre for Advanced Study, Sofia). I thank them all. Many individuals contributed to the development of this study through comments, discussion, and support and encouragement. I am grateful in particular to Nadav Avruch, Oded Balaban, Yemima Ben-Menahem, Charles Blattberg, Hagit Benbaji, Arnon Cahen, Bill Child, David Enoch, Harry Frankfurt, Sebastian Gardner, Amihud Gilead, David Heyd, Hagi Kenaan, Arnon Keren, Hemdat Lerman, Maggie Little, Ariel Meirav, Lucy O’Brien, Sarah Richmond, Shoshi Shamir, Saul Smilansky, Judith Suissa, Ruth Weintraub, Rachael Wiseman, and Avital Wohlman. Ben Young has been my language editor and friend. Sarah Campbell and Isobel Cowper-Coles from RLI helped at the final and crucial stages. My parents, Batya and Gideon Razinsky, have always been there for me. For their critical reading of my work, ongoing support, and the influence of their own thought, I would also like to express special gratitude to Meir Buzaglo, Ayal Donenfeld, Eran Dorfman, Dalia Drai, Raimond Gaita, Avishai Margalit (who supervised my PhD thesis on ambivalence), Yogev Zusman, and my brother, Liran Razinsky, whose enduring help has made this book possible.

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Part I

Beginnings

What is ambivalence, what character can it take, and how is to be understood? How is ambivalence related to such matters as mental attitudes, subjectivity, and rationality? The introduction (chapter 1) begins our investigation into these issues, presents a variety of examples, and explains the approach taken in this book. It opens with an overview of the topic and the book. The existence of ambivalence challenges most of our conceptions regarding subjectivity, agency, and judgment. Chapter 2 explores the character of ambivalence by drawing a map of the ways in which a wide range of philosophers, thinkers, and researchers have dealt with ambivalence, and especially the ways ambivalence is disavowed, marginalized, and explained away.

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Chapter 1

Introduction

Ambivalence: Reuben wants to go to the theater, but also to stay at home and rest. Simeon wants and does not want to be respected. Levi loves his mother, but hates her as well. Judah loves his father, yet is a bit ashamed of him. Zebulun thinks that the show is fantastic, although, perhaps, too long. Issachar judges Judah to have been right, and yet terribly wrong, in convincing his brothers to sell Joseph. Dan understands that the family should leave for Egypt, but really does not want to. Gad wants to harm Joseph, for which he despises himself. Asher wants to save Joseph, but does not try to. Naphtali does not know what he wants. While ordering the arrest of his brothers, Joseph is sure that he loves them. Grieving for his dead mother for years and years, Benjamin is ambivalent as to whether it is good that he feels this way. Dinah, having heard that her brothers sold Joseph, cannot believe it, yet believes it anyway. The situation is peculiar: people are regularly ambivalent. Again and again, language invites us to characterize the conduct, feelings, thoughts, and enterprises of people in terms of ambivalent attitudes that they have. This is manifested in everyday conversations, in literature, and in various theories about human issues. However, in many other theories, ambivalence disappears from the scene, and in particular it is often disregarded, denied, or reinterpreted when basic aspects of subjectivity, action, belief, and value are under investigation. To a philosophical eye, ambivalence appears to be impossible, or at best to characterize only marginal human possibilities, irrationality, and paralysis. It seems that by attributing contrary attitudes to a person, we must be contradicting ourselves. Alternatively, if a person can have contrary attitudes, it seems that she is somehow split in two. Or, if she is one in her 3

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Chapter 1

ambivalence, it would appear that the conflicting poles of ambivalence cancel each other, leaving her with nothing to want, judge, or feel. Ambivalence often calls for metaphors of division and might verge on states of confusion; yet it is neither of these. To have a tension-fraught attitude toward something or someone is, all the same, to have some attitude. Levi, for example, is not indifferent to his mother. Rather the contrary: he both loves and hates her. United in a conflicted attitude, his love and hate constitute interdependent points of view. He loves the mother who is hateful to him and he hates her whom he loves. The topic of this book is ambivalence in this rather strong sense. Yet predominant conceptions of subjectivity exclude such ambivalence. If we are to accept them, ordinary cases of ambivalence are illusionary, and the task they pose us is to explain the illusion and redescribe the phenomena. Should we, however, accept such views of personhood that debar ambivalence? The main thought behind this book is that if human lives are in fact often ambivalent, this may be conceived as an invitation to rethink our notions of personhood and rationality, as well as those of mental attitude, desire, judgment, emotion, action, and consciousness. Thus, one aim of this book is to study ambivalence and subjectivity together—namely to analyze ambivalence as an ordinary mode of subjectivity and investigate subjectivity in a way that takes the phenomenon of ambivalence as seriously as it takes, for instance, emotions and beliefs.1 In working toward such an analysis, I also aim at exhibiting the variegated field of ambivalent life. Indeed, we shall find that in some form or other, ambivalence is always part of the game of life, so much so that the character of one’s ambivalence often counts more than the question of whether one is ambivalent. It may be objected, however, that some domains of human life are surely exempt of ambivalence. In particular, ambivalence regarding objectivity seems impossible on special grounds. Perhaps, the objection would go, it is possible to have conflicting desires, or be sad and happy about the same thing, but when someone believes that such and such is true, she could not also believe it false, or wonder if it is true; nor, presumably, can one judge that a certain person is kind, or that some action ought to be performed, yet also entertain a value judgment to the contrary. For what could it mean to believe and yet not to believe that your spouse loves you? What would you judge if you ambivalently judge both that you ought and that you ought not to resign from your position? It seems that the relations between objectivity and belief, as well as the logic of objectivity, undermine such attributions. So it often seems, yet it is hardly unusual, that a person believes and does not believe that her spouse loves her or that her friend did something she takes to be unlike him, and questions of value often call for ambivalence if anything does. It is hence a concern of this book to analyze such ambivalence and its implications.

Introduction

5

Ambivalence can be described as a unitary tension-fraught attitude toward something or someone. It can also be described in terms of a person’s having two opposing attitudes to one and the same thing.2 Both descriptions may seem confusing, but if this book is not entirely wrong then they are neither inappropriate nor vacuous. Conversely, if they are appropriate, then the various ways that suggest themselves for denying that people may be strictly ambivalent are inadmissible. Thus, it might be thought that when people are “ambivalent,” then they, in fact, want one aspect of a thing and do not want another aspect of it, or they love one aspect of a person and hate another. Yet in many cases the person is not at all concerned in her conflicting attitudes with different aspects of the object, and when different aspects play a role in putting the person in conflict, the person is not merely concerned with these aspects but rather has opposed attitudes toward the person, state of affairs, or action themselves (appendix A). In quite another direction, can ambivalence be discarded by relegating it to some “low” order or level of human life? In Phaedrus, for example, Plato describes the soul as a chariot consisting in a charioteer and two horses drawing in different directions. However we interpret Plato’s parable, the imagery suggests that the soul as a whole perhaps involves conflicting parts, yet the true soul is the inherently wholehearted charioteer.3 Yet identifying “the true soul” as the domain of mental harmony is not a good way to deal with ambivalence if there is no level of personhood that is exempt from ambivalence, or again if hierarchic aspects of personhood presuppose ambivalence between levels. In fact, the horses are problematic even if we throw away the charioteer. Ambivalence involves two opposed attitudes of a person, but it is nothing like two horses, or two persons. Is ambivalence one tension-fraught attitude or two opposing attitudes? This book centers on the second formulation. According to the main definition we shall use, a person is ambivalent if she holds two opposed attitudes toward the same object, given that the term “opposed attitudes” implies that the attitudes are held by the person as opposed. At the same time, it is central to this book that ambivalence can be described both as two attitudes and as one ambivalent attitude. We shall see that some forms of ambivalence are significantly unitary—think of love in which one inherently “kills the thing one loves”— whereas other cases of ambivalence include rather distinct opposed attitudes. We shall also see that ambivalence always involves taking two opposed life courses, but in taking them, the ambivalent person always also takes a unitary ambivalent course. While internal conflicts depict us as irreducibly plural creatures, they also demonstrate mental unity rather than challenging it. Yet mental unity appears to exclude an ambivalent plurality. In particular, the momentary consciousness of the individual person—the bits of the ongoing first-personal waking (or dreaming) hours experiences of individuals— may be thought of as a locus of personal unity, which is one reason why it is

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Chapter 1

supposed to be impossible to maintain two opposed attitudes in one stroke of consciousness. It seems that at any particular time that a person consciously wants something, it is necessarily not the case that she consciously averts from it, or that whenever someone feels shame about a matter, she is not feeling pride about it. All the same, ambivalence is often strictly conscious in a way that sheds light on ambivalence and consciousness alike (chapter 5). Again, one can manifest one’s ambivalence by performing a single act that expresses the opposed poles together (chapters 4 and 9). The appearance to the contrary is presented in chapter 2, sections 1 and 2.4. At the same time, it is central to this study that ambivalence is not a mere momentary feeling or behavior, but rather it has the time span of attitudes, and in particular it often characterizes our medium- and long-term attitudes: we are ambivalent in our relationships, toward our work and regarding public matters, and in appreciating the facts regarding important matters, and also as to what is important. As is the case for other ways of engaging with people and things, instances of ambivalence constitute threads in our lives. We spin these threads in dealing with our ambivalence, and by the same token, we give the ambivalence its shape. Should we attempt to solve our ambivalence, this would itself be part of an ambivalent path (chapter 6). In other cases, we do not try to solve it at all. Some readers who have been tolerant so far may be alarmed by the last claim. Why? Partly because of something true: namely that ambivalence is, by definition, problematic for the ambivalent person. Then, again, because of a purported philosophical problem: it seems that if the notion of an ambivalent subject is not self-contradictory, then the unity of an ambivalent subject must consist in her trying to resolve her ambivalence. To strike a different note, it appears that if ambivalence has a place within rational life, then ambivalent people must aim at resolving their ambivalence. Indeed, whether rationality is thought of in regard to the way we act or to the way we judge, or to our well-being, freedom, integration, development, or creativity, ambivalence always seems to threaten it, and if there is a sense that persons are by definition rational, then it seems that people just cannot be ambivalent. Why think, however, that persons are inherently rational? This view, which is as old as philosophy, has been defended in a new way in the twentieth century by Donald Davidson. Davidson argues that in saying of a person that he takes some attitude to something4 or acts in a certain way, we necessarily appeal to rational connections between this attitude or action and other attitudes of this person (and, more generally, to actual and possible connections between any of the person’s attitudes). Underlying this analysis is the fact that attributions of attitudes only make sense together and that the sense of utterances about attitudes is not only a matter of speaking about attitudes, but also a matter of having attitudes. If, for example, you think that a person is going home to take a rest, you also think, typically, that she believes

Introduction

7

that she would be able to rest at home. If a person is supposed to want to go home to rest, but entertains neither this belief nor any other attitudes that would make her desire rational, then we do not merely ascribe to her an irrational desire, but our ascription becomes incomprehensible. The pages that follow defend the view that rationality is constitutive of personhood—we shall speak with Davidson of basic rationality in order to emphasize that such rationality is basic for personhood and that any particular attitude, behavior, and so forth that a person might have is rational in the relevant sense. A further aspect of this view is that although a particular attitude consists in its actual interlinkages with the rest of one’s mind, these interlinkages are not logically necessary for this attitude.5 Dan’s desire, or Gad’s emotion, is rational in terms of its connections with other attitudes and complementary because it could and can form other connections. If personhood is bound up with basic rationality, are we to infer that people are not ambivalent, or stop being persons when they are ambivalent ? Davidson shares with many others the view that rationality excludes ambivalence. The thought would often be that in understanding a person as rationally having a certain attitude, we, by the same token, accept that she does not maintain an opposed attitude. When rationality is conceived as basic, such that attitudes must be rational, this becomes the thought that in understanding a person as having some attitude, we already accept that she does not have a conflicting attitude.6 And yet you may have understood some of the opening examples, and have understood them as examples of ambivalence. Indeed, we daily take people to maintain two opposed attitudes, which are opposed for them who take them. What then? According to Davidson, the “consistency” of attitudes is a part of the definition of basic rationality, but this does not follow. Attitudes do not have to be consistent or harmonious to be understood in terms of the sense lent to them by their connections with the rest of the mind. As we are to see, ambivalence demonstrates the basically rational character of mental attitudes. (The account of basic rationality is developed in particular in chapters 4 and 7, and in terms of the complementary notion of the unity in plurality of the mind in chapters 3 and 6. Davidson’s view is investigated in chapter 7.) In attributing ambivalence to Dan or Gad, for example, we attribute to them two opposed attitudes; and precisely as is implied by the notion of basic rationality, we, by the same token, understand these attitudes as borrowing their sense from their connections with other attitudes, behavior, and so forth. More importantly, in such cases we understand the opposed attitudes as connected with each other: to take a person to be ambivalent is to understand each of his conflicting attitudes as part of his ambivalence. In Dan’s case, for instance, the point is that he is hostile to something—the move to Egypt—that he himself takes to be essential. Moreover, not only are the poles connected as the poles of

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Chapter 1

ambivalence, but rather the ambivalence makes sense in terms of its further mental interlinkages. Thus, to understand that Dan might judge that the family should leave, and yet not want for this to happen, is to take his opposed attitudes as connected with the further attitudes, acts, feelings, and thoughts that form the concrete character of his ambivalence; it is what he does or says—or his silence, or the way he says it—that suggests to us that his attitude is ambivalent. To summarize this book in a sentence: our attributions of ambivalence imply that ambivalence is basically rational in the same way that the attribution of wholehearted judgments, conduct, and so on implies their basic rationality. However, if ambivalence and its poles are basically rational, then studying ambivalence should provide a revised understanding of basic rationality in general. It is not generally accepted, however, that mental life is basically rational. David Hume famously conceived of the human mind as a nonrational bundle of states, and this view has many adherents among philosophers and researchers of the mind today. May not ambivalence fare better with a naturalist view, according to which mental states can be identified independently of each other? Since the person’s states would not be rationally connected, ambivalence might perhaps simply consist in two opposed mental items, which characterize the person at the same time. In what sense would these items be opposed, though? And why say that the person is ambivalent between them? The difficulty in answering such questions might be part of the reason that contemporary naturalist accounts tend in fact to deny and explain away ambivalence; but this they may not do. I argue that any account of the mind must accommodate ambivalence and that ambivalence is not reducible to pairs of rationally unconnected elements. This is of course not to deny that ambivalence can be irrational. Ambivalence is often irrational in various ways, although “irrationality” in the sense that may apply to ambivalence depicts modes of basic rationality rather than its break.7 Self-deception is one case in point. Chapter 7 analyzes this phenomenon as a particular form of ambivalence of belief and, by the same token, conducts a more general investigation of basic rationality, and its relations with irrationality. Ambivalence can also take the character of weakness of the will, or involve paralysis and vacillation, confusion and self-alienation, as well as be stagnant or unstable, intolerable or miserable. Here, however, one might be too quick to agree. “Of course persons can be ambivalent,” one might be saying, “Indeed they too often are! Leading a rational and harmonious life is not easy. It is not easy to think well, act significantly, be good to others and be happy!” Such ideas run across Western philosophy side by side—or, more often—combined, with the thought that ambivalence is impossible. If it is accepted that mental attitudes are as a rule basically rational and that ambivalence is not an exception, ambivalence may,

Introduction

9

in a similar manner, seem to play the role of a central irrational possibility, assuming that ambivalence is only basically rational, in contrast to more substantial forms of rationality. Yet this assumption would be wrong. The scope of ambivalence goes far beyond such modes of living that are appreciated as irrational. The forms and instances of ambivalence often make sense, and are sensible, in ways that would depict them as wise, justified, functional, and so forth. It is not only that ambivalence need not be irrational, but its basically rational structures often make ambivalence highly rational. Similarly, ambivalence can be more integrated and integrative than wholehearted attitudes (chapters 3 and 6). Ambivalent life can be active and resourceful (chapter 9, chapter 6, section 3 in regard to Freud, and chapter 8 in the context of value judgments), and one’s ambivalence can develop such as to constitute a direction in one’s life, a meaningful course of living that transcends the pair of attitudes as well as the mere fact that one is ambivalent between them. But this is not all. The opposed attitudes can be better (richer, more sincere, more appropriate, more sensitive) for their opposition. The concern with truth may recommend ambivalence of belief rather than either a dubious wholehearted belief or the suspension of belief (chapters 7 and 8). The concern with truth, but also sensitivity, creativity, and well-being, often call for ambivalence in shaping our concepts (chapter 8). In questions of value, ambivalence can be the best way to appreciate a situation (chapter 8). Furthermore, ambivalence can proceed by rather calm and stable paths. Perhaps more importantly, ambivalence allows for substantial and successful compromises between the conflicting attitudes (chapters 4, 6, and 9), just as the ambivalent person can demonstrate one-sided resolution in overcoming certain of her affections, desires, or judgments (section 1). And since ambivalence is on the one hand always close at hand, and on the other susceptible to much variance, a clearer view of ambivalence might itself help one to pave one’s paths well. Ambivalence is bound up with discomfort—it is a tension-fraught way to live. Yet I hope that our investigation will show that ambivalence is neither paradoxical nor a marginal aspect of human life, but is rather an ordinary mode of intentionality. Furthermore, although we are not always ambivalent, it can be said that we are ambivalent beings. First, structures of ambivalence are central to belief, action, and value in general. Belief and judgment, desire, choice, and decision in non-ambivalent contexts were incomprehensible unless certain forms of ambivalence recurrently suggested themselves. Moreover, while the leading question of this book is whether and how ambivalent subjectivity is possible, the analysis of the mind that follows suggests that subjects who cannot be ambivalent are impossible. Ambivalence is said in many ways. It can describe thoughts and feelings, behavior and character, perception and memory, as well as whole societies,

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Chapter 1

collective memories, texts, and institutions. However, the concept of ambivalence that concerns us here characterizes in the first place the person and her mental attitudes. Focusing on the holding of opposing attitudes toward the same object, we shall analyze in particular ambivalence of emotion, ambivalence of (factual) belief, ambivalence of value judgment, and ambivalence of desire.8 This categorization is neither dichotomous nor exhaustive. Yet the special structures and concerns that pertain to each of these forms may justify it, as well as the fact that the categorization is a key to the identification of modes and instances of ambivalence that go beyond the categorization, fall between its branches, and combine them together. This primary division also enables the study of ambivalence in this book to be at the same time an investigation of emotion, action, desire, belief, value judgment, and value, while more generally the book analyzes personhood in terms of the mind’s unity in plurality and basic rationality. Finally, we shall connect the main definition and categorization of ambivalence with further modes of ambivalence. Section 2 of the introduction presents the methodological approach of this book, as well as beginning to analyze ambivalence. There we shall consider various forms and definitions of ambivalence, including some that will not be covered sufficiently in the proceeding chapters. As ambivalence is a matter of mental attitudes, a preliminary conceptualization of mental attitudes and of the mind is provided in section 3, while section 4 comments on the relation of ambivalence to further mental elements, including character dispositions and concepts. Chapter 2 considers some of the ways that ambivalence is regarded theoretically. The rest of the chapters divide between Part II and Part III of the book, both of which begin with a brief presentation of their respective contents. For now, however, let us turn to an example of ambivalence. 1. A Story of Ambivalence Shaharazad’s story is hardly the kind of case we think about when we think of ambivalence. In One Thousand and One Nights, the king of Persia discovers that his wife has been unfaithful to him, and from this point on, he dedicates his nights to the raping of virgin girls and the following mornings to their killing. After three years, the emperor’s diligence and the resulting flight of young women from the country have made the candidates spare. Shaharazad remains, however, and is personally safe, her father being the great Wasir. However, when the day comes and the Wasir, who is in charge of providing a daily victim to the king, cannot find a girl, Shaharazad insists that she herself go to the emperor’s room. She is a storyteller, as we, together with the king, are to learn for one thousand and one nights. In each of these nights, she builds up the narrative tension, and then stops short at the most thrilling

Introduction

11

point. This saves her life for another day, as the king wishes to know how the story ends. The next night, the story would give birth to new side stories, which are again to be suspended. Meanwhile, the stories begin to soften that cluster of rage, women-hatred, and egocentric self-pity, within which the king has wallowed: through the chain of stories, he gradually recovers from his murderousness. Shaharazad’s conduct is intelligent, unhesitating, and unvacillating, and, moreover, she is resolutely one-sided in making herself a captive of the king, regardless of her fears and repulsion. She might appear to constitute a contrary figure to that of an ambivalent person. Yet our understanding of Shaharazad implicitly attributes to her ambivalence. This is already implied in the one-sidedness we ascribe her: we see her as acting with one of two opposed sides of her attitude (or with one of her opposed attitudes). Consider the day before Shaharazad enters the palace: surely, she does not want to be there. She is afraid and does not want to die. However, she also wants to be there. Ordinary usage would not have “want” here, but the point is that Shaharazad maintains an attitude in favor of delivering herself to the king. She wants to help her father, and she thinks she has a chance to change the king’s heart and save the women of her country. Thus, her aversion to falling into the king’s grip is opposed to her judgment that she ought to put herself into his grip, and later, on the first night, for example, her aversion is opposed to her judgment that it is good that she is there. Moreover, Shaharazad’s ambivalence does not merely consist in having opposed attitudes toward the same thing. True, she has a conflict between her fear or her aversion and her judgment in favor of subjecting herself to the king’s murderousness. However, these opposed attitudes do not play a symmetric role in her conduct. Her judgment has moral aspects, while it is, it appears, inherent to moral judgments that in holding them under ambivalence, we also hold that we should keep to them, rather than to the conflicting attitudes. We often maintain attitudes in favor and against attitudes in nonmoral contexts as well, and the hierarchic character of Shaharazad’s ambivalence may have more than one reason. In any case, Shaharazad endorses her judgment in favor of her terrifying task and judges by the same token that her fear ought not to be conceded or that her desire not to be at the palace ought not influence the way she handles the situation.9 Thus, in addition to her opposed first-order attitudes toward her subjection, she has a negative attitude toward her aversion. Hierarchic ambivalence, namely ambivalence between an attitude Y toward some object X and a negative attitude Z toward attitude Y, can have various forms, and in Shaharazad’s case it has the form of self-overcoming. Selfovercoming may be described as an ongoing, effective effort to get rid of an attitude or disarm it, and is thus to be contrasted with a state in which one has

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Chapter 1

already overcome that attitude (or that one comfortably allocates it a low priority). People who have overcome their past attitudes need not be ambivalent, while Shaharazad successfully engages in overcoming her simultaneously conflicting attitudes, and is as such ambivalent. Shaharazad fulfills the desire to take upon herself the task in question, sufferings and risks included: she convinces her father to hand her to the king as the daily victim, she actually leaves her home and goes to the palace, and she is doing her best once she is there. However, what would make a person’s fulfillment of a desire resolute unless it involves fighting obstacles? And for Shaharazad, the primary obstacles are internal: she does not want to be there.10 Why say she doesn’t, however, if she simply fulfills a conflicting desire? Well, because in presenting this desire, her ambivalence is implicated, but also because she doesn’t simply fulfill it. In fact, the fulfillment of a wholehearted and strong desire does not have to have anything resolute about it; while when a person’s resolution demonstrates ambivalence, identifying her engagement as resolute involves identifying it as ambivalent. If we can see that Shaharazad is fighting obstacles, there must be more to say about her behavior and consciousness than that she fulfills her pro-captivity attitude. First, we may suppose that the fact that Shaharazad does not want to be the king’s captive is revealed in her thoughts and feelings, in her slow steps into the king’s room, or in her conversations with her younger sister (whom the king permits to stay with her) when the king leaves them for the day. However, it is as important that the main one-sided line of Shaharazad’s conduct does not only fulfill what she judges right, but also expresses, in a negative way, her misery and her aversion to what she is doing. Shaharazad is terribly ambivalent, and this is part of what we note when we note her resolution: she expresses her endorsement of the one pole over the other in avoiding her soft spots (fleeing her mother’s tears) or in avoiding the temptations posed by time (“at least don’t decide today! If you are still settled on it in a week . . . ,” her family entreats her, but she refuses). Again, in the palace, she endorses the judgment in favor of her cruel mission by rejecting, controlling, and appropriating on behalf of this mission, the anxiety, repulsion, hate, and despair she feels. Shaharazad’s story has further aspects, yet they hardly make her any more wholehearted. In particular, she has ambivalent beliefs in regard to her chances of success. On the one hand, at least so far as her first night in the palace goes, we may suppose that she rationally believes that her chances to survive the next morning are very low. After all, the emperor has killed about a thousand girls before her, and while she has a plan, and may know something about her talents, she has never taken such an enterprise before, nor even has she heard about anyone else who has. Of course people may believe implausible things. Shaharazad, however, is not deluded to think that the task

Introduction

13

she is undertaking is clearly possible, as we can appreciate if we consider that her efforts could only end tragically unless her thinking was very sober. Indeed to have any chances at all, she must be extremely sensitive to reality, and extremely precise in handling the situation. Thus, she must continuously feel where the king is “standing,” identify the right time for a pause, and lead the story skillfully into the thrilling moment that would leave the king waiting for the next day to hear more. On the other hand, to maintain such sobriety and sensitivity, Shaharazad must be capable of some calmness. If she wholeheartedly estimated that she will apparently die by the morning, it is easy to imagine that she would be paralyzed and unable even to begin the story, or that she would be telling it in such a way that the king would hear in it nothing but the screams of a hunted game. Also, without some calm—without also believing, ambivalently, that she will be alive come the morrow, then supposing that Shaharazad is somehow telling the story, it is hard to imagine her stopping at the right minute, rather than feverishly continuing it, being too frightened to leave things to the hands of fate. If Shaharazad acts like a capable lion tamer, it is perhaps because her belief that she probably will die by the morning is undermined by a belief to the contrary, namely that that she will apparently succeed in her plans, at least for the present day, and live to renew her storytelling the following night. Moreover, through the chain of stories, Shaharazad engages the king in a therapeutic process.11 His heart gradually opens to the morals of her legends and to the life possibilities they indicate, just as he gradually begins to love this woman who is willing to tell them to him. Such an ongoing involvement on Shaharazad’s part appears to require a belief that her efforts will not be futile, even if this belief is constantly undermined by the appreciation that in the first crisis, the powerful murderous patient would just put an end both to her life and to the therapy. This brings us to another way that Shaharazad is ambivalent. We may assume that Shaharazad judges the emperor the worst creature on earth. However, unless this view is challenged by her taking him also to be a redeemable person, it is unclear neither how Shaharazad can generate the saga of parables for the king nor how she can demonstrate sufficient care about him, as well as belief in his possibilities, for her storytelling to actually offer him something.12 Again, if Shaharazad also heals that rapist and murderer by coming to love him, then the years of captivity must be years of ambivalence between love and hate. Finally, we may consider One Thousand and One Nights also as a story about literature. May it not be the case that Shaharazad wants to address her tale to the king because a story may not be told unless it is always endangered by early destruction? Think of literature as the representation of life. In life and in literature, meaning intermingles with meaninglessness. Just as in

14

Chapter 1

life, and more than life, stories have meanings (they have unsettled, and continually re-appreciated, meanings).13 Just as in life, narrative moments cannot comprise the culmination of a meaning unless they refer to proceedings that can always stop abruptly, arbitrarily, meaninglessly. Adding to this the idea that the addressee of a story is a coauthor, Shaharazad’s stories require the real threat posited by the king. Shaharazad wants to risk their story, because she wants it told.14 2. Explicating Ambivalence The domain of this book is the phenomena of ambivalence. These phenomena belong to life in the first person: I hear a story, feeling a mixture of admiration and repugnance for the protagonist. Or, being asked for a favor, I react ambivalently, and this reaction is conscious.15 The phenomena of ambivalence also characterize people in the third person, that is, we can say of a person that she, or he, is ambivalent.16 For example, my ambivalence characterizes me in the third person in the sense that the person who asked the favor, or people around, may perceive my ambivalent reaction; ambivalence characterizes someone in the third person if it allows us to understand from various things said and done by him that he finds a certain offer an undesirable temptation. The phenomena of ambivalence are often partially linguistic, that is, they consist in speech, writing, and other verbal behavior and consciousness. More generally, such phenomena assume a language with which we express ambivalence, attribute it, ask people about their ambivalence, complain about it, and so on. From this point of view, our domain is the language of ambivalence, a language around expressions like “ambivalence,” “want something and yet not want it,” “do what one thinks that one shouldn’t do,” and many other words and phrases, so long as they are used to characterize possible phenomena of ambivalence. This book is concerned with human beings as creatures who live in the sense that entails consciousness and intentionality, and who speak rather than merely being spoken of (as it is with dandelions and electrons).17 To philosophically understand ambivalence, subjectivity, desire, and so on, would be, as I see it, to clarify the concepts of ambivalence, desire, and so forth, which we possess just by living our human life with language. By contrast, the investigation to come does not aim at some folk psychology regarding ambivalence or other mental concepts. The question is not what we would say or think if we were asked about ambivalence, rationality, or whatever. Rather, the methodological and ontological approach in this book derives from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later writings, from the phenomenological conceptions of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre, and from

Introduction

15

Davidson’s understanding of the mental realm.18 I take it that to understand such aspects that pertain to our lives as subjects, for example, ambivalence or emotion, we ought to extricate from our life with language the concepts capturing these aspects, that is, we ought to analyze the open, undetermined concepts, which are manifested and shaped in the life and language(s) we share. Aiming at a theoretical articulation of that which already belongs to our life with language does not mean, however, clinging to the ways that relevant words and phrases are actually used. In particular, we are concerned with the language of (mental) ambivalence rather than with the word “ambivalence.” This word does not always refer to internal conflicts, and we will ignore in this book its other senses.19 Conversely, ambivalence pertains to our life and language also when the word itself is not used, and I will feel free to extend its application to such cases. This is in line with another point we need to acknowledge, namely that a philosophical investigation interferes with the concepts it discusses. However, the kind of intervention here taken is that of extrication. It ought to comprise, for author and readers alike, a work of recalling to mind. If it to some extent changes ambivalence by discussing it, let it be ambivalence that has changed. The investigation in this book will engage us with research on various topics from consciousness to emotion, as well as with diverse philosophical accounts of ambivalence, from Freud and Sartre to contemporary thinkers. There is a growing body of research concerned with ambivalence, whose harbingers in the twentieth century include Bernard Williams, Martha Nussbaum, Philippa Foot, Harry Frankfurt, Joan Stambaugh, Patricia Greenspan, and Philip Koch. We shall look at this field in the next chapter, as well as in the much broader arena of theoretical, and especially philosophical, approaches to ambivalence. A remark on the reading of this book may also be opportune. The multiplicity of voices mentioned above reflects, as may be suspected, the fact that this work does not straightforwardly belong to some single discourse with shared assumptions. Naturally this may provide many occasions for a reader to disagree, even before considering the rejection in this book of entrenched views concerning ambivalence. Patience, however, might be all that is needed: I would suggest, for example, that you don’t rule out from the start the analysis of ambivalence of value judgment, because you disagree with my construction of value judgment. Part of the difference may be insubstantial, and as for the rest, you might gradually come to see what you are ready to take from this book, and in what form. In the same spirit, I ask you to accept in a tentative way the suggestion that the life and language of ambivalence carry with them a substantial, though vague, concept of ambivalence.20 We can now begin to account for it in terms of the two-faced “definition” already presented. Why the inverted commas?

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Chapter 1

Because it is not intended as an independent definition, but is to be understood in terms of our undefined basic concept of ambivalence, and such examples of ambivalence as delineated above; and because the two-faced definition does not exhaust the concept of ambivalence, but must be complemented by other “definitions,” structures, and aspects of ambivalence. A person is ambivalent (this will be our main definition in its main form) if she holds two opposed mental attitudes toward one and the same object. The attitudes must be opposed in their capacity as that person’s attitudes. Less formally, they have to be opposed in a sense that implies they are opposed from the point of view of the ambivalent person. A person is ambivalent according to this definition who, for example, wants to change her life, and yet at the same time does not want to change it, or again, who judges an acquaintance kind and also, ambivalently, judges the acquaintance unkind. What is involved in ambivalence, according to this definition? First, ambivalence implies a subject. There must be someone, a unitary subject, who maintains both attitudes and is ambivalent between them. Jonathan may be ambivalent, but if Jon wants to live in the city and Nathan wants to live in the country, nobody has to be ambivalent. Similarly the opposed attitudes must be simultaneous—love turned to hate does not constitute ambivalence. The unity of ambivalence is not exhausted, however, in the fact that the love and hate, or belief and doubt, are simultaneously held by a single person. Rather, the ambivalent person demonstrates her unity concretely in being ambivalent. This is because ambivalence does not merely consist in two attitudes that are opposed from some perspective or other, but rather it is inherent to ambivalence that the person maintains the attitudes as opposed. Let me explain by contrasting ambivalence with a case in which subjectivity is implied without being concretely demonstrated. Thus supposing that you want a different government for your country and that you also want ice cream, these two desires characterize you as a single unitary person who maintains them both, but in typical cases they need not demonstrate your subjectivity together. By contrast, if you are ambivalent (perhaps between these two desires, given that the ice cream company is known for donating to the governing party) then it is a concrete aspect of your subjectivity that you jointly hold both attitudes in the form of being ambivalent between them.21 The definition of ambivalence, thus, involves a unitary subject who is concretely unitary precisely in being ambivalent. Now add to this that ambivalence implies a unitary subject whose attitudes stand, genuinely, in tension. If, for example, a person holds something to be good in one respect, and bad in another (independent) respect, then her two attitudes are not opposed in the relevant way. A pair of attitudes would not stand in tension—they would not be opposed in the sense in which they constitute ambivalence—unless in holding any of them the person holds it, that is, lives with it, as opposed to

Introduction

17

the other attitude (they can, however, be thus held in unconscious, irreflective, and distorted ways). Contrast ambivalence with cases of having two desires such that to fulfill one of them will, in fact, but without the agent’s knowledge, defeat the other desire. Jane, for instance, is not ambivalent if she wants to give John a certain book and wants him to enjoy her present, if she is unaware that that John hates the author of this book. Her attitudes are opposed in an important sense, but not in the sense that would make her ambivalent between them. Thus our main definition commits us to understand ambivalence both as an irreducible form of unity and as an irreducible form of opposition, that is, of oppositional plurality. Is this a contradiction? I hope this book will show that it is not one. Otherwise, ambivalence must be impossible, for it is precisely the irreducible opposition involved in ambivalence that implies the unity. The definition above already implies, in an abstract manner, that an attitude does not constitute a pole of ambivalence unless it is held as standing in conflict with the opposed attitude, and, thus, as inherently connected with it. If the notion of entertaining opposing attitudes is not vacuous, however, the unity between the poles must always take some concrete shape or other in our lives. We can ask what it means for Jonathan to want to live in the city and yet, ambivalently to want to live in the country, and not in the city. From another angle, the unity between the poles of ambivalence invites us also to speak of a unitary ambivalent attitude toward an object—hence our two-faced “definition.” We shall use both formulations in what follows. This will permit us, on the one hand, to distinguish among cases of ambivalence. On the other hand, however, we shall speak interchangeably (nuances aside) of any ambivalence both as an ambivalent attitude and as two opposed attitudes. We cannot, however, be content with understanding ambivalence as the simultaneous holding of opposed attitudes toward a common object, and as a unitary tension-fraught attitude. One way that ambivalence may not suit this demand is by being hierarchic. Let a high-order attitude be an attitude about another attitude of the person. An attitude that is not of a high order constitutes a first-order attitude (Achilles loves the turtle), and when, as is typical, the object of a high-order attitude is a first-order attitude, the high-order attitude is of the second order (Achilles finds loving the turtle frustrating). First-order ambivalence will be ambivalence whose poles comprise first-order attitudes, while analogously the poles of second-order ambivalence are second-order attitudes toward the same attitude (the king wants and yet does not want to get rid of his rage). These variants of our main definition of ambivalence should be complemented, however, with a conception of hierarchic ambivalence between an attitude B toward A and a higher-order disapproving attitude C toward B.22 We have already encountered hierarchic ambivalence in the story

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Chapter 1

of Shaharazad. We have seen there that in hierarchic ambivalence the person actually maintains both attitudes, and that she holds each as opposed to the other. If the illustration is correct, then hierarchic ambivalence manifests the same fundamental concept of ambivalence qua “internal” tension within a person’s attitudes as ambivalence between two attitudes toward a single object. It can also be shown that hierarchic ambivalence is often tantamount to a first-order ambivalence. At the same time, hierarchic ambivalence has a distinct character. Chapter 6 briefly analyzes such ambivalence as a part of the person’s unity in plurality, also considering how hierarchic ambivalence bears on the way that hierarchic aspects are essential to subjectivity. Hierarchic ambivalence also forms distinct modes of ambivalence, including both self-overcoming and weakness of the will. However, I will not be able to investigate weakness of the will in this book.23 The definition of ambivalence in terms of a single object may be challenged in further ways. What about ambivalence without an object? Ambivalence sometimes consists in a mood of sadness mixed with happiness rather than in sadness about something mixed with happiness about it. However, moods as well as more enduring objectless attitudes can be interpreted as directed to some general sort of object (the world, myself, etc.). Again, ambivalence of certain kinds can be formulated in terms of taking attitudes toward opposed objects, and in particular toward contradictory propositions. Thus, ambivalence of desire can be attributed by the pattern “S wants that P and yet S also wants that not-P.” (“S” stands for persons, “P” for propositions, and “not-P” for complex propositions of the form “It is not the case that P.”) However, why say that S is ambivalent unless S’s desire that not-P implies that she does not want that P, that is, that she has a negative attitude toward the realization of P? The two patterns are complementary, and neither of them may be ignored. The main definition should, however, be complemented somewhat further, as these two patterns present ambivalence as inherent, but ambivalence can also be described by such patterns as “S wants that P and yet S also wants that Q” when S is supposed to regard P and Q as contingently incompatible.24 There are two weddings, in distant cities, that Sami wants to go to tonight, and thus he is ambivalent simply because of the way the world has fallen (where “the world” is contrasted both with language and logic, and with the part of the world that his attitudes form). Moreover, speaking of ambivalence toward propositions is somewhat misleading, since there is often no incontestable answer to whether two sentences—two series of words that express propositions—express a single proposition, that is, whether they say the same thing (Quine 1951). And once we think of P and Q as sentences, we find that ambivalence of desire (and similarly ambivalence between other propositional attitudes, such as beliefs)

Introduction

19

is often formulated as wanting that P and yet wanting that Q, while P does not logically imply or follow from Q in an incontestable manner, regardless of whether P and Q (clearly or contestably) formulate independent possibilities that are merely contingently incompatible. The examples are numerous, but one may consider such ambivalence in which a person wants to dance tonight, and yet also wants to rest, or, again, ambivalence in which a person wants to dance and yet does not want to have a good time, when having a good time is part of what dancing means for the person at this stage of her life. Descriptions of ambivalence in terms of two sentences, neither of which logically implies or contradicts the other, may help to characterize any particular ambivalence, even such that is adequately formulated in terms of opposing attitudes to a single proposition. When the ambivalence is contingent, descriptions in terms of two propositions, P and Q, are especially important, capturing the contingent character of the ambivalence. But this is not to say that ambivalence—or contingent ambivalence—is not directed to a single object. For, taking a person to want that P and yet want that Q, and thus be ambivalent, presupposes that in wanting that Q this person does not want that P. Although Sami wants to go wedding 1, he also does not want that, in the sense that he does not want to do something that would prevent his going to wedding 2. Appendix A defines contingent and inherent ambivalence in terms of ambivalence toward a single object and considers in outline the relations between this distinction and the possibility and character of ambivalence. There I also present a distinction between weak and strong ambivalence, as well as a distinction between primary and secondary ambivalence, which has to do with the relative separation between the opposed attitudes. There is another way that the main definition of ambivalence in this book can be challenged. Up to now we assumed that ambivalence is the holding of two opposed attitudes as opposed, but why cannot the number of opposing attitudes be larger? In fact, it can, and we are sometimes multivalent. At the same time, these phenomena are hardly a reason to change the main definition. For one, multivalence in the sense that implies conflict presupposes an underlying structure of ambivalence (literally “both two valences”). One can be multivalent in various ways and between attitudes of various kinds, but the basic point can be illustrated in regard to ambivalence of desire. Consider for example a student who is multivalent between four ways of spending the summer vacation: she really wants to travel, but she also misses her family back home and wants to go there for the summer, both of which stand in conflict to staying in the city, either for a summer semester that attracts her very much as it would allow her to graduate sooner or for an intensive working period that would pay for her next year, which she judges wise to do. People often consider various options without any of them reaching the point that

20

Chapter 1

the person actually wants or does not want to fulfill it. The cases that interest us are, however, those in which the person does form attitudes in favor of the various options, and these attitudes stand in tension. This means, however, that she also maintains negative attitudes toward each of the favored objects, hence the binary element of ambivalence. It happens that there are four (or three, or five) ways the person in the example wants to spend the summer, but if she is multivalent, then she takes the fulfillment of each attitude to exclude those of the others,25 and as such she also has an attitude against it. Multivalence does not always take the form of a conflictual holding of a definite small number of opposing attitudes. We can also be multivalent between a vague and indefinitely multiplying number of conflicting attitudes. Rather than challenging the binary character of ambivalence, vague multivalence elucidates central aspects of it. First, ambivalence between two attitudes often also has a multivalent aspect that reflects the ongoing mutually challenging constitution of the attitudes in ambivalence. Instead of a conflict of a definite character between two attitudes subject to clear descriptions, the ambivalence consists in an array of interlinked conflicts. Second, vague and indefinitely multiplying ambivalence can consist in a tension between conflicting attitudes that is superficially similar to multivalence between a small number of opposed attitudes. You may for example be caught up in a situation in which you want to do this, but also do that, or maybe that other thing, and why not a fourth one—the expression “embarras de richesse” captures some of these phenomena. Such forms of ambivalence are bound up with stagnancy, but moreover, the person uncreatively adheres to each of the multiple poles as if it stood alone and to the conflict as pure conflictuality that is not understood in terms of the opposing attitudes. In fact, the relation of these phenomena to ambivalence is ambiguous. Such forms of vague and indefinitely multiplying multivalence are interesting because they comprise borderline forms of ambivalence calling for describing the multivalent person as too ambivalent, and thus, perhaps, as not ambivalent. We can speak of them, and of related two-attitude states, as “defeated ambivalence,” to suggest both that the poles are exercised in an inherently unsuccessful way, and that the person does not quite maintain the opposed attitudes, they being to some extent defeated by the structure of these engagements. While vague multivalence and other forms of defeated ambivalence make liminal instances of ambivalence, they are basically rational engagements, which connect the opposing attitudes or “attitudes” as if they are separate. I hope to defend this proposal in a separate essay. What is common to all the definitions mentioned is that ambivalence is presented as a matter of mental attitudes. Ambivalence is predicated primarily on the person and her attitudes. But how are we to understand this? And what is, anyway, a mental attitude?

Introduction

21

3. Some Terminology and Conceptualization Regarding the Mind Let me set a terminology that recalls, in a preliminary way, some basic mental features. The following chapters should establish and clarify this characterization, and should do this in a way that is radically different to that which might be allowed were ambivalence not acknowledged. Our key term is that of “mental attitude,” or, for short, “attitude.” We attribute mental attitudes to people, as in “Jacob loves his son,” “Jacob believes his son is dead,” and “Jacob is highly ambivalent whether to consent that Benjamin would leave with his brothers to Egypt.” I am going to speak, in what follows, of the mind, in order to refer to one’s mental attitudes together (including their interrelations). This should in no way be taken to suggest that attitudes are not bodily, or that a mind is a mere part, or a distinct part, of the person. Nor should it be assumed that the mind, in this narrow use, exhausts the mental domain, or even that it exhausts the (mentally) intentional domain. The terminology here insists, however, that a person is an intentional being. The term “intentional” often describes the property of being about something, or being directed toward an object (toward a person, a thing, a proposition, a state of affairs, a type of state of affairs, a possibility, etc.). It is in this sense that the term was introduced to philosophy by Brentano, but although Brentano-intentionality is central to intentionality, and even more so to the intentionality of attitudes and ambivalence, it is neither sufficient nor strictly necessary, for the concept that concerns us here. Again, “intentionality” can depict the property of being an intention to do something or an intention in doing something. We may, and as need be will, speak of attitudes and actions as intentional in this sense. This, however, would serve us as an abbreviation for “narrowly intentional,” namely, “intentional in a narrow sense.” Although intentions and (narrowly) intentional actions are intentional, the use of “intentionality” in this book is more general, and very close to that of Davidson and of Husserl.26 The idea is that intentionality constitutes subjectivity at the concrete level. The intentionality of some aspect in the person’s life characterizes this aspect as a manifestation of her subjectivity, while one is a subject or a person in having such concrete manifestations. In other words, this book regards people as subjects or persons, such that personhood requires that central aspects of persons, for example that she loves X, or that she does Y, are intentional: they imply that the person herself “intends” the aspect as described (as loving X, or doing Y). If a cluster of thoughts, actions, and so on has the meaning of a certain attitude of love, it is the person herself who “means” it as such, and it is from her point of view that this cluster takes the direction of love or constitutes a tendency that is love. Mental attitudes and

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Chapter 1

actions, as well as many other mental and behavioral aspects of the person, are intentional. They involve the person in some way, rather than merely making something true about her. Don’t miss, however, the inverted commas on “intend” and “mean.” They are to clarify that these words do not refer to attitudes of intending or meaning, and intentional entities such as loving X and doing Y do not consist in non-intentional entities to which something further, the intention, is added. Instead, the action, emotion, pain, thought, or ambivalence itself comprises a manifestation of subjectivity of a particular character. To speak together of actions, attitudes, and any other intentional manifestations of subjectivity, I will use the term “engagement,” and I will use the term “mind” more broadly to refer to the array of attitudes and other engagements of a person.27 The main concern of this book is more specifically with mental attitudes. How should we understand them? Here is a list of some (mutually dependent) features. The unity of the mind and the relations between mental attitudes are investigated together with ambivalence in chapter 3. The logic of mental attitudes, and especially the relation between attitudes, behavior, and ambivalence, is analyzed in chapter 4. The relations of the mind, attitudes, and ambivalence with consciousness are studied in chapter 5. An attitude comprises, and is lived by its holder, as an aspect of one’s life.28 In addition to loving his son Joseph, Jacob has further attitudes and other engagements. An attitude is a disposition to behavior and consciousness. For example, loving his son, Jacob sews for him an extraordinary suit, avoids sending him to work, feels pangs of anxiety when he has to send him away for some task, imagines his future successes, and might do, feel, and think further suitable things. At the same time, the disposition, which an attitude is, comprises an outlook and is thus intentional. To compare, salt has the disposition to dissolve in water, as is instantiated by actual salt solutions. It might be said that this disposition confers the outlook of cooks and chemists on actual solutions,29 whereas when a person is afraid of water, his evasions of water, his misery when he enters the water, and so on express his own outlook (which is moored in third-personal perspective). Being an outlook, an attitude is typically toward something. Jacob’s disposition is directed to Joseph, and it is a perspective or outlook of love, and of some particular love, which he maintains toward Joseph. The object of an attitude can be formulated in different ways. In particular, propositional attitudes—attitudes toward linguistic propositions—invite a theoretical multiplicity of descriptions. Propositional attitudes, for example, believing that Joseph has been eaten by an animal, may be thought as directed to propositions, to potential or actual states of affairs, to the proposition’s topics, to its

Introduction

23

grammatical subject, and so on. While the differences may be a matter of formulation or express a substantial disagreement, I will not assume that the openness to different formulations is in itself a problem. One way that the dispositional character of attitudes has to be complicated is that attitudes are constituted jointly with their behavioral and conscious expressions and with further mental attitudes and other mental characteristics. Jacob is disposed to behavior, thoughts, perception, and feelings that express his love for Joseph, and his love is connected with further attitudes, such as a belief that Joseph is special or worries about his safety. Here too, as a first approximation, the case is similar to that of salt, since the solubility of salt is constituted together with its potential instances and with the disposition of water to dissolve salt, as well as with more general dispositions of atoms and molecules to ionize, other dispositions of salt, and so on. However, the intentionality of attitudes, unlike solubility, makes the resemblance superficial. Consider first the connection of intentionality with consciousness. The intentionality of attitudes—their being the person’s own outlook—can be captured by saying that attitudes, and their connections with other engagements, can be held consciously: they can be lived as these attitudes in the first person. For example, Jacob kisses his son and this conscious action goes out as his love to Joseph. At the same time, the requirement that attitudes (and other engagements) can be conscious should be understood very weakly. Attitudes are not necessarily acknowledged, reflected on, attended to, and so on. Jacob’s anxiety, for example, can lead him to avoid thinking of his son with words of love, such that the love is never acknowledged. Conscious attitudes need not be explicit: Jacob’s love may consist in no more than the loving “register” in his momentary satisfaction when the boy says something clever. Some attitudes can be conscious only in a distorted form. Perhaps, Jacob’s feelings of love won’t expose its anxious character. Furthermore, for all sort of reasons, mental attitudes can remain forever hardly conscious, and, moreover, it can be part of the attitude’s intentional character that it eschews consciousness or clear consciousness (as in self-deception); attitudes can perhaps be unconscious in a psychoanalytic sense. Yet, even then, what is attributed to a person is an attitude that he maintains, and this notion is anchored in the counterfactual possibility for him to maintain the attitude in the first person.30 The special character of mental connections is brought out in the possibility of conscious attitudes and of conscious connections between the person’s engagements. Complementarily, mental connections are different from those of salt dispositions in demonstrating a sense in human life, or what may be called “a subject logic,” or, as we shall call it, basic rationality. We shall see that intentionality implies basic rationality in that sense of the term that

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anchors it in mental interlinkages: in understanding something as intentional, and in particular as an attitude, it makes sense for us as something that makes sense for the engaged subject. This is, however, no abstract or mysterious matter, but, rather, a subject being a creature who is engaged in multiple ways, an attitude makes sense in regard to other engagements. It is interlinked with the person’s behavior, further attitudes, and so on. We understand the attribution of Jacob’s love to Joseph in terms of the suit sewing, the anxiety, and so forth. At the same time, an attitude (or any engagement) cannot be equated with any definite array of interlinkages if they are to make it basically rational and intentional. Jacob, for example, expresses and develops his love for Joseph, among other things, in sewing the suit for him. This, however, implies that these two engagements are sufficiently separate for us to understand a change in their interlinkage: an actual past, or future, change, a change of interpretation, a counterfactual change. For example, it can be suggested that Jacob might have avoided the suit sewing precisely because he loves Joseph, if only he had considered the danger involved in this demonstration of favoring Joseph over his other children. The sense in human life is hence bound up with a soft identity of mental attitudes, which is to say that while a person’s attitude is in a sense defined by its interlinkages with behavior and consciousness, further attitudes, and other engagements, it also transcends any such definition and is essentially open to redefinition. When ambivalence is defined in this book as consisting in two opposed emotions, judgments, and so on, it is, thus, defined in terms of two opposed dispositions—outlooks; and for ambivalence itself to be an attitude entails that the ambivalent person has and is disposed to have various engagements connected with his ambivalence, such that the ambivalence constitutes a perspective capturing this cluster of interlinkages. We shall have to see how this is all possible. One assumption should, however, be cautioned against in advance. As ambivalence is defined in terms of attitudes, and as attitudes comprise, in a sense, a middle level of concreteness in the person’s life, it may seem as if there is a more concrete level in which people are not ambivalent. Yet ambivalence is by no means the sum of non-ambivalent behavior and consciousness, and indeed, our momentary behavior and consciousness can be ambivalent through and through. A person can be ambivalent in selling (rather than killing) his brother, or in kissing his “Benjamin,” the remnant, and vehicle of death, of a beloved wife.31 At the same time, the poles of ambivalence logically constitute attitudes. In seeing his behavior (or thought, etc.) as ambivalent, we ascribe to the person two opposed outlooks, which is also to say that we take his deed or thought to express two opposed ways to conduct himself, each transcending and unexhausted by the third, ambivalent, way.

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4. The Wider Mental Realm and Ambivalence The mind, in the sense of the person’s array of mental attitudes, captures a focal part of the person’s intentionality. Conceived more broadly, the mind comprises the totality of intentional life. We use, however, the term “mental” also beyond intentionality. In particular, in addition to attitudes (Jacob’s love for Joseph), we also attribute to people character dispositions (Joseph is a spoiled child). Such dispositions have to do with attitudes in various ways. A spoiled person, for instance, may be inclined not to want to pursue exerting activities, as well as easily judge potential activities as exerting. However, being spoiled, or cautious, or friendly, is, typically, not itself an attitude: such inclinations comprise outlooks in regard to the person concerned, but they do not constitute outlooks of the person. In explaining, for example, that Joseph refuses to help his brothers because he is spoiled, we are not suggesting a sense the refusal has for Joseph in making it. Contrast with “he refuses, preferring to play.” This implies that ambivalence, being intentional, is not primarily a matter of character qualities. Joseph may be both spoiled and ambitious, and this may often occasion ambivalence on his part. The question is, however, whether these traits conflict for him directly. We shall sometimes say that they do, but this would be to identify them as attitudes (as is sometimes right also in non-ambivalent contexts, e.g., when someone makes a point of being spoiled).32 Nothing changes when “personality opposites” are considered. When boldness and cowardice, or kindness and unkindness, are presented as mutually exclusive and are not attributed together, the question of ambivalence does not arise. When they are attributed to a person together, they still do not have to occasion ambivalence at all: a person can be kind and unkind in different respects; or she can be kind as well as unkind in a way that requires ambivalence on the part of those who take the person to be both, but not of the person herself. In other cases, not only does such a character duality occasion instances of ambivalent attitudes, but it expresses an ambivalent attitude, for example, ambivalence toward people in general, or an ambivalent attitude toward those who have power over one.33 One way or the other, to introduce ambivalence into the discussion is to introduce attitudes. We also speak, however, of dispositions to ambivalence. A person may have a tendency to particular forms of ambivalence, for example, to ambivalent indecision, or she may have opposed tendencies by virtue of which she is again and again ambivalent about something or other. Furthermore, human beings in general, as well as the members of various groups and societies, are disposed to various particular forms of ambivalence, many of which are articulated by Freud.34 For example, such pleasure that conforms to Freud’s pleasure principle involves the person in recurrent ambivalence, for such

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pleasure is both achieved and lost in the relaxation of excitation. Or again, the life and death drives, in addition to combining in non-ambivalent ways, make us fundamentally ambivalent creatures. It may even be said that in every engagement a person must ambivalently aspire both to “life” (connections) and to “death” (loosening of connections). This will make every attitude and engagement also an ambivalent attitude.35 In addition to character dispositions, there are other ways that the mental realm goes beyond intentionality. In attributing engagements, we also take the person to be characterized by various mental aspects that constitute what may be called “the matter-of-course background” of her engagements. Like engagements, such aspects capture routes of sense in the person’s life, yet the person is not engaged with them. The notion of a matter-of-course background is suggested by Wittgenstein’s understanding of intentionality. According to Wittgenstein, the notion of intentionality collapses under the supposition that the ways that we are involved in the world as subjects are generally intentional. I accept Wittgenstein’s view that such a background realm is implicated by personhood, and also accept that it is essential to background elements that they can lose their matter-of-course character and engage us.36 This happens by definition whenever they are opposed by a conflicting attitude, and similarly ambivalence is by definition an intentional, rather than a matter-of-course, aspect of one’s life. Among matter-of-course mental aspects, we can count conventions, which are too basic to intentionally accept or follow, rules guiding one’s conduct without being ascertained, and certain aims one never cares to actually be concerned with. We can also count as matter of course many beliefs that are too fundamental for the person to intentionally believe. Furthermore, our concepts typically belong to this matter-of-course background. Wittgenstein formulated this in Philosophical Investigations by speaking of the mastery of a language and its relevant parts, and of the blind use of rules (§219) and concepts. The matter-of-course categories may be considered by virtue of an example. Thus suppose that someone wants a cup of coffee. To have a desire for coffee is bound up with readiness to fulfill this desire, and this raises the question of what would count as a way for this person to fulfill it. There are no definite answers here, but certain things are precluded. Thus in attributing a desire for coffee in ordinary circumstances, it is assumed that the person does not take snatching her neighbor’s cup of coffee for an option. The assumption is not that she takes this as a bad option, having a negative attitude toward it, but rather that in rejecting such ways to get a coffee she shares a matter-ofcourse convention. Similarly, it would usually be assumed the person believes as a matter of course that the expected cup of coffee will have the taste that coffee has had so far. We can formulate this, exploiting the intentional tones of “believing,” by saying that she does not even have to believe the cup will

Introduction

27

have the familiar taste of coffee, so far it is from coming into question. When one thinks of very basic beliefs as characterizing how the person concerned sees the world, without answering any question the person actually faces, or relieving any doubt, indeed without comprising an attitude of belief, it might appear more natural than surprising that when a belief is clearly an attitude, it is often the pole of an ambivalent pair.37 When we attribute to a person a desire for coffee, we must also assume that she possesses a whole bunch of concepts. These include an array of mental concepts, among them concepts of kinds of attitudes (the concept of emotion, the concept of love), and concepts of the person herself, as one who possesses attitudes and encounters them in others, and of “other people,” who as people hold attitudes and can attribute attitudes to her. When someone wants a cup of coffee, various other concepts she holds are also presupposed in particular, for example, the concepts of coffee, of drinking, perhaps of rest from work if this is the context of her desire for coffee, thus of work, and so on.38 Do we attribute attitudes to this person in ascribing these concepts to her? What could it even mean that a concept is intentional? Well, one could intend a concept to have a particular character, but this is not the general case. When someone living in Italy asks for coffee without further qualifications, she would generally be satisfied only by a certain kind of coffee, namely, espresso, but she does not intend the concept or the word “coffee” to be inflected as espresso: she is interested in having a coffee rather than in having the concept. In general, a person wanting a cup of coffee, or drinking, or enjoying the smell of coffee, or talking of coffee from some perspective or other, does not intend any notion of coffee to apply to her engagement. Rather, any inflection that the concept takes up is just what it means for this specific engagement to assume the concept of coffee.39 Yet, sometimes, the inflection of a concept is intended. The person is engaged, so to speak, with answering a question on how the concept of coffee should be inflected. Then the concept is held as an attitude, which may be ambivalent when two inflections of the concept of coffee compete in the person’s drinking, or speaking of coffee, and so on. Suppose we describe how a teenager drinks coffee so as to prove, or be, adult. We may attribute to her a state of mind of conceptual ambivalence: on the one hand, she drinks coffee as that beverage that adults drink; yet on the other hand, and by the same token, she uncomfortably judges that the concept of coffee ought not to be thus inflected, since it does not have this character for the adults themselves, who drink coffee, say, as a mere morning drink. Now, imagine her meaningfully sipping meaninglessly from her coffee. . . The phenomenon of conceptual ambivalence is central to the relations between language and human life (Razinsky 2015). It is also connected to the possibility of meaningful contradictions. Conceptual ambivalence and

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meaningful contradictions are investigated in this book in regard to value concepts (chapter 8). The book also analyzes ambivalence of belief and ambivalence of desire in terms of the inherently tension-fraught character of the concepts of belief and of desire fulfillment.40 If a teenager can be drinking her coffee in the manner above described, ambivalence cannot be easily dismissed—yet it is by and large denied and marginalized by philosophers and other theoreticians. I turn to examine this situation in the next chapter. notes 1. In this book, a person is a psychophysical creature and by the same token a subject—the subject is a person. While the book always deals with the human person, and indeed with persons of more or less familiar times, places, and languages, much of the analysis connects ambivalence to such concepts as personhood, subjectivity, belief, or desire in ways that go beyond the human being. Conversely, the notion of subject or person analyzed in this book is applicable for some human beings, such as young babies, only in a liminal way. 2. There are also two complementary clusters of linguistic ways to describe ambivalence, in terms of two opposing attitudes to a single object. First, ambivalence can be described by pairs of sentences that are in other contexts contradictory, for example, by instances of the pattern “S wants that P and yet S does not want that P,” or of “S loves T and yet S does not love T.” (Replace “S” and “T” for persons’ names and “P” for a sentence expressive of a proposition, for example, the sentence “The family will resettle in Egypt.”) Similarly people often express their ambivalence by answering “yes and no” to the question whether they want something to hold. When a sentence of the form “S does not want that P” is used in the attribution of ambivalence, the “does not” is not used to claim the absence from the person’s life of the attitude just attributed to her, but rather the presence in her life of a conflicting attitude of not wanting that P or not loving T. Logical negation is not irrelevant to such negatively described attitudes, however; in particular, it is not irrelevant to such attitudes when they are part of ambivalence—for one, the “does not want that P” implies that the person does not wholeheartedly, that is, non-ambivalently, want that P. The form of contradiction stresses, moreover, that the poles of ambivalence challenge each other as the person’s attitudes, complementing in this respect the second linguistic cluster, wherein ambivalence is presented in terms of two positively described attitudes such as “S wants that P and yet wants that not-P” or “S loves T and hates T.” A doubly “positive” ascription makes clear that the complementary ascription ascribes two attitudes and also says more about the particular character of their opposition. The “positive” versus “negative” ascription makes clear that what is ascribed is ambivalence. 3. An attitude is wholehearted in this book if and only if it is neither ambivalent nor a part of ambivalence, and a person is wholehearted (regarding something) if and only if her relevant attitude is wholehearted.

Introduction

29

4. Davidson refers primarily to propositional attitudes, namely to attitudes that can be presented as aimed at some proposition. Such attitudes can be ascribed by saying of the person that he has an attitude of the relevant type (in Davidson, especially, a desire or a belief) “that such and such is the case.” “Dan wants the family to settle in Egypt” would attribute Dan an attitude of desire toward the proposition that the family settles in Egypt, and “Dan believes that they will never return” would depict Dan as having an attitude of belief toward the proposition that they will never return. 5. Nor can they be described in terms of natural necessity. 6. As we shall see, far from blatantly assuming that ambivalence does not exist, Davidson agrees that in certain irrational cases we maintain pairs of clearly opposed attitudes and immerses himself in the task of explaining how basically rational creatures can, on his view, depart from their basic rationality and have opposed attitudes. 7. We are also often irrational in the sense that our basic rationality is loosened, and we maintain certain attitudes that should be relevant to each other, and yet are not connected—but then we are not ambivalent. For example, we often contradict ourselves, unaware of this fact. 8. “Desire” is used in this book as the noun parallel to the verb “want.” 9. She wants this desire not to influence her conduct in any inappropriate manner; in any case, this is what she can achieve. 10. The use of “internal” in this book ought not to be read as endorsing some dichotomy between mind (or brain) and body, or between consciousness and behavior. Regardless of the origins of the metaphor of internality, “ambivalence” is synonymous with “conflict” in this book, and the adjective “internal” contrasts this use with that of conflict between different people. Again, an attitude is referred to as an internal obstacle to the pursuit of an opposed (especially higher-order) attitude, in contrast with obstacles that are posed by external circumstances. 11. Kahanoff (1978) wonderfully analyzes One Thousand and One Nights in partly psychoanalytic terms. 12. Can the story of Shaharazad and the emperor be told as one in which Shaharazad does not at all judge the king to be an irredeemably evil person, a bad beast? I think not. The betrayed king (and betrayal may be implied in the role of a king) needs complete faithfulness. He requires his therapist to be faithful to him—he who is a bad beast, who may, any day, simply kill you, after you have given him your body and soul. 13. The often ambivalent instability of meanings is shown in One Thousand and One Nights in the way that stories echo and change each other. Suppose, however, that the relations and significance of the stories that form a particular version of One Thousand and One Nights, and the big story interwoven from them, can be described in terms of a linear or a Hegelian view. This view is then further problematized when Shaharazad is thought of as the storyteller of the various versions of this work, to which variability is inherent. 14. I stop here, but as is often the case with ambivalence, Shaharazad’s ambivalent attitudes may multiply in further directions. 15. It is conscious in the same way that looking at my watch and checking the time would typically be conscious. My use of “conscious” and “consciously” in this

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book distinguishes thoughts, conscious actions, conscious attitudes, and so on from attitudes, behavior, and other engagements, which are not at the particular time experienced as these attitudes or behavior. It does not carry the colloquial meaning more emphatically expressed by “self-consciously.” Such “self-conscious” engagements, in which a person is engaged with things in a self-absorbed way, or is attentive to the way that she is engaged, or to the way she appears to others, are far from being exhaustive of our conscious lives. 16. Ambivalence is a third-person phenomenon in the sense that it can be ascribed to people, and thus be spoken of as hers/his, but not as characterizing (the inanimate) “it,” for ambivalence inherently characterizes persons. To acknowledge that the thirdperson perspective involved in attitudes refers to persons is also to reject the view that first-person and third-person perspectives have independent logic (as held by Strawson 1959, Anscombe 1975, and others), emphasizing instead that in maintaining attitudes consciously we live in the world as persons, to whom attitudes can be ascribed, and that in ascribing attitudes we take the person to be able to have attitudes in the first person. (This is not necessarily to say that we take the person to be able to consciously have the particular attitudes, and we shall not suppose that the existence of conscious ambivalence simply follows from the ascription of ambivalence.) In concerning people rather than things, the third-person perspective is also inherently related to the second grammatical person, that is, mental attributions are such that we can in principle meet the person we speak about. Indeed, we meet others in their ambivalence. Thus, the beloved, or other people, can tell the ambivalent lover “your love is as cold as hate,” or, in a different case, “your love burns with hateful fire.” 17. An intentional life is a life concretely consisting in engaging with things, for example, in wanting, having judgments, and acting. I discuss intentionality in section 3. 18. I am not adopting Davidson’s understanding of the mental realm as supervenient on the purely physical. 19. “Ambivalence” is sometimes used to denote the feature of texts and of linguistic expressions more frequently referred as “ambiguity.” Ambiguity is central both to the possibility of language in general and, as we shall see, to the language of mental attitudes and thus to ambivalence. Language for its part can be ambiguous only because people can be ambivalent as regards meanings (some of this is argued in Razinsky 2015). These relations only emphasize that ambivalence is not a derivative of ambiguity or vice versa. “Ambivalence” can also refer to certain oppositions that characterize persons, but do not depict aspects of the persons’ subjectivity or intentionality, as the opposed poles are not attitudes between which the person is ambivalent. Thus, Freud refers in some cases to sadism and masochism as an ambivalent pair. Contrast this with a pair of a sadistic and a loving attitude toward a single person (in accordance with Freud’s more ordinary use of “ambivalence”). Ambivalence can pertain to groups of people in a way that both implies the ambivalence of many individuals, and grounds the ambivalence of these individuals. The subtle relation between group ambivalence, on the one hand, and the ambivalence of many of the people related to the group, on the other hand, is augmented when

Introduction

31

the ambivalence concerns issues of group identity. Both points may be suggested by “Russians,” Sting’s highly successful song against the Cold War. We can think of this song (and its success) as expressive of a Western mass ambivalence: Kruschev, the USSR leader, said that they will bury us, sings Sting, adding that for his part, he rejects this point of view on the assumption that the Russians also love their children. “We” ambivalently judge that the Russians as a group aim, and do not aim, at burying “us.” It is important in ambivalent ways, supporting and undermining both conflicting attitudes, that Sting sings “I,” thus rejecting the division of the world into “we” and “them” and the adoption of attitudes from that standpoint, but also endorsing this approach by implicitly contrasting the communal point of view of the “Russians” with the Western individualism. Again Sting expresses the ambivalence in more than one way when his rejection of “this point of view” is targeted at the same time at the view that “they” want to bury “us,” at Kruschev’s intention to bury the Americans or the West, at Kruschev’s speaking on behalf of the Russians, and at the point of view that recommends burying the others, or regarding them as “others.” 20. A concept, in the sense presented above, can be seen as a thread in language. There is no assumption that the concept is explicable in terms of a set of necessary and jointly sufficient conditions. At the same time, this use does not diverge from the ordinary view of a concept as a notion or idea, and any linguistic thread that only brings up the accidental use of words is not our concern. Thus, while this conception of a concept can be traced to Wittgenstein, see Razinsky 2015, it is irreducible to Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblance. 21. If you want to have ice cream, having forgotten for a moment about the company’s governmental relationships, then (given that your forgetting is not deliberate), your attitudes are not held by you as opposed, and you are not ambivalent. Similarly, inadvertent entanglement in contradiction is not a form of ambivalence. 22. More broadly, hierarchic ambivalence connects two of a person’s attitudes such that if a certain attitude B stands at one of the poles, then the opposed pole consists in (1) a negative attitude toward B, or (2) a positive attitude toward a potential or actual attitude that is opposed (in the narrow sense of ambivalence between two attitudes toward a common object) to B, or (3) a positive attitude toward a potential or actual state of not maintaining B. 23. Weakness of the will is nowadays usually analyzed as neither ambivalent nor hierarchically structured. Hierarchic ambivalence can be crosswise in the sense that the person maintains an attitude which she both affirms and rejects, or in that she maintains negative attitudes toward her two opposing first-order attitudes. Both ambivalence of belief and ambivalence of value judgment also have dimensions of crosswise hierarchic ambivalence, but I will ignore this in the discussion. 24. Ascriptions and expressions of two attitudes of the same kind toward contradictory or incompatible propositions do not always suggest ambivalence. Consider “it would be lovely to go to the park and it would be lovely to stay home.” One can also identify ambivalence between opposed nonlinguistic objects: “Although Theresa judges nonviolence an inviolable duty, she cannot but judge some violence as permissible or even a duty.” Theresa (who lives under oppression) may also be ambivalent between the love of peace and the love of freedom. Peace and freedom are in this

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case opposed, at least from the point of view of Theresa’s ambivalence. Then, there are such cases as “Theresa loves Jules and Jim,” “Theresa loves both mom and pa” (or somewhat differently, “Theresa loves most both mom and pa”), all of which involve attitudes toward different objects. However, to take such cases as constitutive of ambivalence is to see the love for the one person as interfering with the love for the other, and this suggests a complementary formulation in terms of a single object: “You do love Jule? So how can you love Jim? You love Jule and yet you do not really love him.” 25. For the sake of simplicity, I ignore multivalence of desire consisting in more complicated combinations. 26. Davidson speaks of intentionality in regard to action, but his point is not merely that actions are intended in order to achieve something, but rather that action constitutes a manifestation of subjectivity: it is carried out by the person with some intention, in other words under some description (1963). Davidson’s view of mental attitudes also fits the present notion of intentionality. As for Husserl’s notion of intentionality, it is adopted here in a revised way. In particular, the intentional structure of Husserl’s cogitazione (the intentional unit) is first-personal through and through. This book, however, accepts and supports the view that consciousness implies the possibility of a third-person perspective regarding the person and vice versa. 27. Engagements include in particular (intentional) behavior. To describe behavior as being in order to fulfill something, such that the intentionality in question is intention to fulfill something, we shall speak of act or action (I use sometimes these expressions more broadly when the distinction is immaterial). The noun “intention” will be employed as it is used in nontheoretical contexts, that is, for certain pre-action attitudes (“he intends to help us tomorrow”) and for intention in action, as Searle has named the narrowly intentional dimension of action. (This dimension is often explicitly referred to in the ascription of unsuccessful actions, for example, “John dictated his daughter’s homework essay to her and she failed. However, he intended to help.”) The verb form “intend” will stand in this book for “intention” as well as for “intentionality.” In addition to intention in action (also to be called fulfillment intentionality), the intentionality of behavior has many other forms, and in particular it may express attitudes in other ways than by fulfilling a desire. For instance, the action of helping someone can also be an action of giving this person water, as well as an intentional behavior expressive of a concern about this person’s condition. Behavior may have a direction in a sense that extends the notion of intentionality in an unproblematic way. The direction may depict a way that the behavior at stake is directly intentional. More generally, in seeing some behavior as revealing a particular direction (e.g., fulfilling some desire), we take the direction to capture a part of the person’s intentionality—an attitude or a wider unit of behavior—and depict the behavior as connected with her other engagements or wider behavior. For example, certain cases in which a person keeps postponing something appear to also be cases of avoiding it altogether, even if the particular acts of postponement are not acts of intentional avoidance. I shall speak, in unproblematic contexts, of behavior that is (1) in some way intentional and (2) has the direction of fulfillment of X as an action in the direction of fulfilling X. 28. Or an aspect of the person, or of the mind.

Introduction

33

29. Nothing changes if we speak of the disposition of a particular pinch of salt. 30. If we think that Benjamin has an unconscious desire to kill his father, we may say “Benjamin would consciously want to kill his father, if he had not repressed his desire.” Moreover, we are always ready to show how the possibility-in-principle is significant in one’s life, even when consciousness is in fact impossible. In the case of psychoanalysis, if the talk of unconscious wishes, beliefs, and so on is not metaphorical—that is, if they are to be intentional—then the key might consist in the concept of therapy. Both therapeutic success and the empirical validity of a psychological analysis require that attitudes gradually become conscious. 31. The New Testament says that Judas kissed Jesus and that the kiss was intended as a mark for his prosecutors. Was there no other way to expose him or was it also a kiss of love—a treacherous disciple’s ambivalent kiss of leaving? 32. In such cases conscious expressions are called forth, as in “sorry, I know I promised to come [to help]. I am so spoiled. Really sorry,” to be imagined as said in a spoiled tone of voice. There are cases that the same terms are frequently used both for attitudes and character qualities (e.g., “ambitious” in the adjective form). Nor need it be clear or well-determined whether something is an attitude or a quality. Thus, “Judah likes Benjamin” clearly attributes an attitude, but consider “Judah likes chocolate.” Vagueness, disagreement, and lack of fact of the matter pertain to all mental distinctions, and are possible for any sort of mental characterization. This is especially true for the distinction between attitudes and their matter-of-course grounds presented below. 33. If a person tends to be ambivalent about people one by one, but not as a whole, then she has a general disposition toward ambivalence, which is not an attitude, but in such cases, vagueness is the rule. 34. The Oedipus complex, and the related forms of ambivalence toward the parents, might comprise a group disposition, imposed by the bourgeois patriarchal family on male infants. 35. At the same time Freud’s work denies the importance of death and the fear of it in human life (Razinsky, L. 2012). Razinsky exposes a deeply ambivalent approach to death in Freud’s writings, and studies its legacy in the development of psychoanalysis. 36. I argue for both points in regard to the relations between the person’s intentional life and the mastering of language and concepts, as well as mooring both points in Wittgenstein’s account in Philosophical Investigations (Razinsky 2015). On Certainty is also preoccupied with non-intentional or quasi-intentional concrete aspects of subjectivity. 37. The interplay between the limited place of doubt in our lives and the role that doubt plays in believing runs across Wittgenstein’s work. Sartre famously argues that belief requires doubt in “Bad Faith,” see chapter 7. 38. As this study is about ambivalence—a mode of existence of the individual— and about subjectivity, I refer here to concepts as mental features. However, individuals live in public spheres, and concepts as mental features are closely related to public concepts. That is, we cannot have concepts without sharing most of them, although we share them in a sense that recommends also the terminology of different personal concepts. Thus, John and Jane share a language, a concept of coffee included.

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However, their concepts differ insofar as John knows nothing about the exploitation economy of coffee, whereas Jane knows enough for guilty drinking. 39. Otherwise, our Italian coffee drinker would, in addition to intentionally asking for coffee, and intentionally meaning “coffee” in the sense of espresso, have to intentionally inflect espresso as a drink of such-and-such characteristics, and so forth. 40. Meaningful contradictions appear, however, in various further domains. In particular, the enterprise of science may be shown to be bound up with ambivalent concepts. I elsewhere argue that scientific theories or conceptual systems inherently maintain such concepts in a way that complements and transcends the Kuhnian closed character of conceptual systems. This scientific conceptual ambivalence shows that the worries about rationality in science as an inter-theoretical enterprise are unwarranted. Meaningful contradictions, and the ambivalence they raise, can also be ontological. It appears in particular that such a contradiction is accountable for the “the body-mind problem” (and relatedly for that of freedom and determinism). While it is, I believe, simply wrong to assume a dichotomy between mind and body, the problem doesn’t perhaps disappear by better accounts, as there may be an indispensable tension between the concept of a bodily-mental person, or our lives as such creatures, on the one hand, and that of the merely physical body, on the other. Whether ontologically or as part of a history of these concepts, they appear to jointly presuppose and contradict each other, and to do this in a way that allows us ambivalent but meaningful understanding and learning. Another ontological tension may be bound up with the relations between rationality and its end or limits (contingency). This tension is usually recast in a way that hides from us how basic rationality depends on, and allows for, nonrational aspects of people, the world, and the dynamic character of life. The tension, expressed in the debates of idealism versus realism and, again, of freedom versus determinism, does not, however, completely disappear. Third, the notion of a person is that of an individual, but of such an individual that inherently lives with others. This raises the question how subjectivity is related to interpersonal relationships. As I see it, three contradictory relations are at play together: interpersonal contacts and relationships presuppose, destroy, and enable personhood. Finally, I believe that the meta-issue of the existence of ontological contradictions is dealt with by a certain religious approach that can be found in various religions: ontological contradictions negate atheism, and their existence is marked by speaking of God.

Chapter 2

Philosophical Approaches to Ambivalence A Road Map of a Rough Terrain

1. Ambivalence Disavowed? There are three related clusters of philosophical problems to do with ambivalence. First, ambivalence may appear impossible because it implies the existence of an ambivalent person—a subject with two opposing attitudes—yet this seems paradoxical.1 Second, ambivalence seems to make the person incapable of action. If attitudes imply suitable action, this also constitutes another reason to take ambivalence as impossible. Third, it seems that even if ambivalence is possible, ambivalence regarding objectivity (truth and value) is not. All three clusters suggest that ambivalence is not a mode of rational life, although the problem from objectivity and the problem from behavior are sometimes taken to permit certain kinds of ambivalence. Thus, ethicists tend to deny that one can have conflicting moral judgments, but, taking the phenomenon of reluctance to act as one ought to as fundamental to ethics, they often agree that moral judgments can conflict with other attitudes of the person. Again, in the philosophy of emotion, the same purported problem with ambivalent judging has opened the door, in a seminal article by Patricia Greenspan (1980), for acknowledging the possibility and rationality of emotional ambivalence (based on a purported contrast of judgment with emotion). Yet even given that judging and acting leave room for some forms of ambivalence, the problem from subjectivity seems to suggest that no phenomena of ambivalence, in the ordinary and strict sense endorsed in this book, can be admitted. The notion of a subject with two opposing attitudes seems selfcontradictory, whatever these attitudes are and however the person might be dealing with them. Notwithstanding, this book argues that a wide range of phenomena demonstrate a basic concept of ambivalence as a tension-fraught yet unitary attitude. This concept of ambivalence is primarily explicable as 35

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consisting in the simultaneous holding of two opposed attitudes toward the same thing, such that the attitudes are held by the person as opposed. The introduction presents and begins to argue for this conception in a positive manner. The following chapter provides a road map to the philosophical approaches to ambivalence and explicates the concept of ambivalence from a mostly negative point of view: the chapter shows some of the general ways the existence of strict ambivalence is denied or marginalized, as well as some of the ways that the study of ambivalence is limited by a partial commitment to the prejudices against ambivalence. The understanding of personhood, agency, and judgment as exclusive of ambivalence (or of certain kinds of ambivalence) can take the form of arguing that ambivalence is impossible, or of postulating its impossibility, or alternatively everything can be framed in a way that does not leave room for ambivalence. Although such implicit exclusion of ambivalence may be found, combined with other approaches, everywhere in philosophy, it rarely appears in philosophy in its pure form. This is because philosophical thinking problematizes concepts, and thus, even if the phenomena of ambivalence simply cannot be seen under some conceptualization, the phenomena are usually allowed to challenge these conceptualizations, at least to some extent. Thus, neighboring disciplines may sometimes reveal more clearly the kind of construal in which ambivalence is not even denied. In subjectivist (Bayesian) decision theories, for example, ambivalence is left out from the start. Such theories are concerned with picking the best action (relative to the person’s desires) in situations of uncertainty. In order to prepare the arena for the analysis of complicated cases, these theories accept a certain view of the person’s mental attitudes. On these accounts, attitudes consist in desires and beliefs, both sorts coming in numerical degrees. Given that P is a proposition, for instance, the proposition that a certain package contains candies, a person wants that P to some degree (say 80 percent), that is, he gives P a value between 0 and 1 (0.8); similarly a person believes that P to some degree (say 60 percent). Under this framework, the idea that someone wants and does not want that P (or that he wants it to a large extent, say 80 percent, while also to a large extent, say 70 percent, he does not want it)2 cannot be formulated, nor is there place for the idea of a belief (or an estimation of a high degree) that P being opposed by a disbelief (a low-degree estimation) that P. Of course, a formulation of ambivalence would at least be incipient were we allowed to attribute to a person at one time both a belief (say of 0.8) that P and a belief (say 0.7) that not-P, or both a desire that P and a desire that not-P. But this is just what decision theories preclude, for it is a condition on the theory that the laws of probability apply and if John gives the value of 0.8 to there being candies in the box, then by definition he gives the value of 0.2 to it not being the case that there are candies in the box, and



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that similarly if he wants to the degree 0.7 that something be the case then he wants to the degree 0.3 that it be not the case. What then if a person is ambivalent in his beliefs or desires? At most, one would be attributed attitudes of 0.5 both for P and for not-P, just as a person would if he cared nothing about the options in question or had not developed an attitude in whatever direction, or had no opinion as to where the truth lies in the matter at hand.3,4 One way to see this book is as a response to the clusters of problems posed by ambivalence for our conceptions of personhood, action, and objectivity and judgment. This chapter considers a range of philosophical (and wider) responses to some of these problems. We shall not, for the most part, be concerned here with the objectivist cluster, which is addressed in chapters 7 and 8.5 While we will be engaged with the problems from subjectivity and from behavior, it should be noted that my own answers, and their reasons, are only hinted at this chapter. Everywhere in this book I will defend the view that people are ambivalent subjects. If behavior has a constitutive role in human life, this also means that ambivalent behavior is possible. The book shows that ambivalent people can behave in functional and creative ways and thus rejects two notions that the problem from behavior suggests. According to one of them, ambivalence is impossible. According to the other, ambivalence is a dysfunctional mode of life: like Buridan’s ass who died both of hunger and thirst since he found himself in the middle point between a bucket of water and a pile of hay, ambivalent agents seem to be precluded from significant behavior. The idea that ambivalence does not allow for significant behavior is related to viewing ambivalence not so much as impossible, but as bound up with confusion, misery, and sometimes self-absorption. Just as it is often held as central or basic to subjectivity that persons cannot be ambivalent, ambivalence would sometimes be conceived on these lines as a state of marred personhood, whereas such a view also often expresses a competing approach to ambivalence, according to which ambivalence is the archetypal form of human disease or sin. Sometimes the presumed fault lies not in inaction, but in acting wrongly (weakness of the will); sometimes it lies not in confusion as such, but in self-induced confusion (self-deception). In the existentialist thought of Kierkegaard and of Heidegger, ambivalence constitutes the wrong way to live a human life—in fact, Kierkegaard entitles one of his works Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing. However, other thinkers of existence, especially Nietzsche and Sartre, think of human life as inherently ambivalent; when Nietzsche analyzes more specific modes of life, he is, by the same token, characterizing different modes of ambivalence, some of which are more praiseworthy than others.6 Although insofar as it is regarded as paralyzing or confused, ambivalence is at least conceived as part of human life, and this approach is closer to the

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denial that ambivalence is possible than might be expected. This is because ambivalent stagnancy, vacillation, confusion, and weakness are possible only on the background of other ways to be ambivalent. Moreover, various phenomena of ambivalent paralysis, confusion, and vacillation constitute cases of ambivalence that are more truly borderline. Here, I refer to such cases in which a person “does not know what she wants,” and this not for epistemic reasons, but because, more than actually holding both opposed attitudes, she is toying with them, or is overwhelmed with conflicting possibilities or demands, or is exhausted into indifference by a tragic conflict. If such forms of liminal ambivalence also serve as ideal examples of ambivalence, it is for reasons that are similar to those that make theater, or the paintings in Egyptian burial caves, ideal representations of life. Harry Frankfurt describes ambivalence as a miserable condition, providing an account that verges on the denial of strict ambivalence. Frankfurt’s writings investigate the role of second-order attitudes—attitudes toward the person’s own attitudes—in the constitution of persons as subjects rather than “wantons.” Frankfurtian wantons act on inclinations, but it is only subjects, who endorse and reject these inclinations, who have a will; a will, Frankfurt holds, in line with others, must be wholehearted. Indeed, from Plato to Frankfurt, the exclusion of ambivalence is one of the main roles of the analysis of personhood, mind, or self in terms of a hierarchic internal division. This role, however, Frankfurt finds, cannot be completely achieved. While Frankfurt revises his account of personhood time and again, let me refer in particular to one article, The Faintest Passion (1992), which focuses on the issue of ambivalence. Frankfurt tells us that the person’s first-order desires and feelings can conflict with each other, but that such clashes do not constitute ambivalence, since at this wantonian level, there is no one to be ambivalent between the opposed tendencies. What then about real attitudes that engage subjects, that is, on Frankfurt’s account, the second-order attitudes toward the first-order desires? In truth, nothing prevents such attitudes from standing in conflict, and making the person ambivalent. Thus, Frankfurt acknowledges ambivalence, after insisting that ambivalence pertains only to the secondorder volitions of subjects (1992, 8–9). Yet at the same time, he insists that ambivalence undermines the subject and the will: “The problem is rather that since his mind is not made up, his will is in fact unformed. He is volitionally inchoate and indeterminate” (10). From this point of view, Frankfurt’s analysis exemplifies what we may call a multiplicity response to the objection from subjectivity. We shall consider in what follows three types of analysis of persons and ambivalence based on endorsing the objection, taking ambivalence as incompatible with the unity of a subject. (The actual responses that manifest these three forms usually also endorse the objection from action, and often also the objection



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from objectivity.) The multiplicity approach responds to the existence of ambivalence by denying that the phenomena of ambivalence involve a unitary subject. This approach has two distinct forms: either we are subjects, but only until we are ambivalent, or we are essentially plural creatures rather than subjects. Frankfurt develops a version of the first position, identifying ambivalence with the annihilation of the subject. Human beings are unitary subjects also on Donald Davidson’s analysis of personhood as a matter of basic rationality. On Davidson’s account, mental unity consists in the rational interrelations and consistency of the attitudes; when a person has conflicting inconsistent attitudes, for example, when someone deceives herself, Davidson’s version of the multiplicity solution is to argue for a sort of partition within the mind, which allows us to speak (seriously but not literally) of two quasi-subjects. (This book defends a revised version of Davidson’s notion of basic rationality and argues that ambivalence is basically rational and engages the unitary subject.)7 Davidson and Frankfurt find the existence of ambivalence a worry because they take mental unity to be central to persons. Yet from Hume to contemporary naturalism, many deny that people comprise unitary subjects. It may seem surprising that ambivalence is as unwelcome to naturalist philosophers who argue for a multiple mind, as it is to rationalists. In fact, since part of the naturalist drive is often wherever possible to get rid of the intentional and basically rational dimensions of human life, naturalists do not tend to endorse “new” intentionalities, that is, newly acknowledged concrete manifestations of subjectivity, but would often accept the traditional condition of harmony on intentionality.8 Yet Hume himself allowed to some extent for the existence of ambivalence. He was ready to acknowledge that the phenomena of intentional lives include phenomena of ambivalence, while attempting to explain away the intentionality of ambivalence as well as that of non-ambivalent passions;9 and he had a point in admitting “ambivalence” into his system: insofar as ambivalence is understood purely in terms of the irreducible multiplicity of its two opposed parts, naturalists can try to assimilate it to states in which two disharmonious attitudes emerge somehow, remaining however irrelated to each other. The problem for this approach is that ambivalence involves unity and multiplicity together. To ignore that the conflicting poles are connected in the person’s life as the two poles of her ambivalence is to explain away ambivalence, since an ambivalent person does not merely hold each of these attitudes, but rather is ambivalent between them, that is, holding each as an attitude opposed to the other conflicting attitude.10 Some contemporary philosophers who view the mind as including multiple irrelated items argue from this that ambivalence and other mental oppositions are possible. In particular, it has been argued that a person can have opposed beliefs. The possibility of such opposition has become a matter of concern in

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regard to self-deception, on the one hand, and to all kinds of more or less automatic irrationalities, on the other; while supporters of the plural mind more often argue that what seems to be ambivalence is in fact a non-oppositional multiplicity (Mele 2001, Funkhouser 2009, Schwitzgebel 2010), others suggest that intentionality ends where oppositional multiplicity begins (Gendler in “Alief and Belief” (2007)) or that opposed beliefs are possible, they being nothing but irrelated items of the plural nature of the person (Gertler 2008). The two rubrics of apparent conflicts of belief are not, however, similar. The debate on automatic irrationalities covers a diverse range of phenomena, to which ambivalence may be irrelevant or only tangential, although some of these phenomena are clear cases of ambivalence. Self-deception is a special form of ambivalence of belief, or thus I argue in this book. I have mentioned above Spinoza’s image of Buridan’s ass standing, say, halfway between a stack of hay and bucket of water, strongly desiring both, and condemned to die of hunger and of thirst.11 We are sometimes ambivalent in this frustrating way, trying to act on one pole and trying independently to act on the other pole, to no avail.12 When ambivalence is admitted by naturalists, a central thought is that such cases of paralysis and vacillation are exemplary of ambivalence, and, furthermore, that the conflicting attitudes are separate from each other, and Buridan’s ass is not ambivalent in the ordinary sense: although it has opposed desires, it is not ambivalent between them. If it does not move, the thought goes, this is because the contrary tendencies balance each other, similar to a block of wood that one person wants to move left, the other right, and which both push with equal force. States of vacillation, even when ended by a momentary action, are understood in the same way. Here the model example is that of a person who hesitates in the voting booth, until finally one attitude gets the upper hand and the person fills the envelope. On the naturalist reading, this is understood in terms of the coexistence of two independent and opposed attitudes.13 The hesitation in the booth can also terminate by a special act of decision. Perhaps, a coin is thrown. In the debates over free will, advocates of free will sometimes conceive of the relations of ambivalence and freedom as a process of hesitation and decision, which is read under a model of low-level dispositions, subjected to an act of will.14 Insofar as the low-level conflict of dispositions is considered alone, ambivalence is interpreted as a mere multiplicity, but by adding a second level of will, this view in fact demonstrates another way to dispense with strict ambivalence, which is open to philosophers for whom persons are unitary subjects. The high-order subject response can accept that human lives are not free of ambivalence or conflict while maintaining that subjects cannot be ambivalent by locating these elements within a hierarchic account. The person or the human being is analyzed in terms of hierarchically ordered aspects, such that the real subject constitutes the higher



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level or order of the person or mind, wherein ambivalence is impossible. Here “order” may have a more technical sense, according to which a secondorder attitude is directed toward a first-order attitude of the person, and the subject consists in his attitudes about attitudes. Less technically, the higher order of the person may be outlined in whatever way, insofar as it is intended to capture that which is central to subjectivity (the rational soul, the will, spontaneity, etc.).15 We have already seen that Frankfurt offers such a view, except for the fact that ambivalence does not disappear at the higher level, and must, hence, be tackled in another way. Insofar as the conflicting attitudes are not located at the higher level of the self or will, Frankfurt explains, they are not the attitudes of a subject, who is thus not ambivalent between them. Not only does Frankfurt deny that conflicts between two first-order attitudes involve anybody in ambivalence, but nor does he acknowledge what is called in this book “hierarchic ambivalence” (see Introduction, 17–18). This form of ambivalence—which, all the same, it is Frankfurt who has made a philosophical issue—is described by him as a conflict between the (second-order) attitude of the person and a first-order attitude that is exogenous to her. The idea is that the higher-order attitude confronts something alien. Frankfurt’s typical examples concern addicts who do not identify with their desire for the drug, and we are encouraged to think of such desires as if they were an external obstacle to the realization of the person’s will, perhaps similarly to the way that a thicket makes it difficult to cross the forest.16 This book proposes that hierarchic ambivalence requires a subject who has two attitudes between which she is ambivalent. While subjectivity appears to be bound up with the possibility to form high-order attitudes, far from suggesting a high-order subject, this shows hierarchic ambivalence as a central mode of subjectivity. While Frankfurt’s higher-order subject would be ambivalent at the higherorder level (i.e., if this ambivalent subjectivity did not amount to a mere multiplicity), Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals presents a higher-order subject view such that conflicts are impossible at the higher level. The Groundwork, however, construes the ambivalence between higherlevel and lower-level attitudes in an ambiguous manner. On the one hand, Kant acknowledges full-blown hierarchic ambivalence, analyzing our moral engagements in terms of self-overcoming: while a person has nonmoral tendencies, he ought, according to Kant, to overcome them and do his duties. Moral action does not imply, according to Kant, that all conflicting desires and feelings must cease to exist. Typically they would exist, and it is as such that they should be overcome.17 The explication of morality as bound up with occasions of hierarchic ambivalence is doubtless one of Kant’s major contributions to moral philosophy. Indeed, Kant posits a two-level antagonistic relation at the heart of the human condition, taking human beings to consist in two kingdoms at once, the low kingdom of nature and the high kingdom of

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freedom. From this perspective, Kant does not take the real subject to consist in a high level but rather he views the subject as the two related kingdoms. His more explicit line, on the other hand, places the subject at the kingdom of freedom. Freedom, spontaneity, self-constitution—this is what being a subject is all about, he tells us. Moreover, this high kingdom comprises an independent level that can stand alone, even if only for “angels” rather than humans, and it is such beings, for whom hierarchic ambivalence is irrelevant, who are full-blown subjects. Whether we speak of angels or of humans, ambivalence as a mode of existence of the (pure or high-order) subject is excluded: one may not ambivalently judge both that one ought to do something and that one ought not to do it, although in order to guarantee this Kant deploys also a harmony approach. We have considered two ways of explaining phenomena of ambivalence when subjectivity is supposed to imply mental unity with which ambivalence is incompatible. People, according to the multiplicity approach, are not subjects, either insofar as they are “ambivalent” or in general; whereas on the other approach, the subject per se comprises a high-order or high-level of personhood, while phenomena of “ambivalence” pertain in whole or part to a low level of personhood. Both responses allow for some phenomena of ambivalence to constitute mental states that include two opposed poles, and yet the most usual response to the existence of ambivalence is to explain away the opposition between the ambivalent person’s attitudes. The harmony approach consists in reinterpreting the opposed attitudes (or the ambivalence at large) as such attitudes or other engagements, which are harmoniously connected.18 A central version of the harmony response that can be found everywhere from epistemology to ethics and to philosophy of action is the reduction of ambivalence to cases of deliberation between two options or hypotheses. Thus, when opposed value judgments are concerned, they are reinterpreted in terms of grounds for potential value judgments. For example, cases of ambivalently judging it both good and bad to tell a devastating truth to a friend are recast as judging harmoniously that there is something for as well as something against telling the truth to the friend. A different form of harmonizing such ambivalence—although the two approaches are often combined—is to interpret the ambivalence as a judgment that might be formulated as “A is good and bad” (or “A ought to be done and ought not to be done” or “A is nice and is not nice”), but which, in fact, concerns different values, to which the value in question is split. For instance, the person would be seen as judging that it will be useful for his friend that he tells her the devastating truth, but also that it will be painful for her and thus an uncompassionate thing to do. While such interpretations are true of some phenomena in which we are not ambivalent, we shall see in chapter 8 that ambivalence cannot be explained away by them. These are only examples, however: the harmonious



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intentionality approach can take highly diverse forms. Thus, Tamar Gendler’s multiplicity approach toward certain phenomena of purported opposition of beliefs (2008) complements a harmonious intentionality approach on her part toward the phenomenon of self-deception (2007). Typical forms of selfdeception involve opposed beliefs, such that the person deceives herself into believing a proposition, P, while more sincerely she believes that it is not the case that P (see chapter 7). Gendler, however, takes this to be a misconception and reinterprets the two attitudes as, in fact, harmonious. She accepts that the self-deceiver that P typically believes that not-P but denies that he also believes that P. Rather, his true belief is harmoniously interlinked with playfully imagining that P.19 2. Ambivalence Acknowledged? Philosophy is, thus, uneasy with the very idea of ambivalence in the strict sense in which it constitutes a conflict for the unitarily involved person; yet, recent years have seen the beginnings of change in this regard. The phenomenon of ambivalence is gestured toward more than ever in various subfields of analytic philosophy, and, furthermore, ambivalence is more often an object of direct investigation (and even publication). Thus, Aristotle’s “virtue ethics” has been understood and renewed in the last century, such that virtue and “the good” imply harmony. The rejection of this view by Nussbaum (1985) and Stocker (1990) finds support in contemporary reconstructions of virtue ethics wherein a virtuous person would often be ambivalent because his different virtues prompt him to form conflicting attitudes toward the same thing, and even (esp. Kristjánsson 2010) wherein the rational relation between such attitudes is acknowledged. Similarly, Frankfurt’s work has recently led some philosophers who are interested in personal autonomy to study ambivalence (Poltera 2010, Swindell 2010), the discourse of social identity has led Benson (2005) and Poltera to investigate the ambivalence between a person’s competing identities, and Greenspan’s work on emotional ambivalence has inspired more work on this topic (Tappolet 2005, Pugmire 2005). I shall have more to say about these beginnings below, but first let us extend our perspective. 2.1 Ambivalent Deconstruction Post-structuralist continental philosophy is often informed by the phenomena and concept of ambivalence, and yet, partially because subjectivity and intentionality are often disavowed, this understanding tends to be implicit and ambivalent, limiting the phenomena to special contexts or ignoring the meaning of their analysis. While the post-structuralist discourse is beyond

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the scope of this book,20 let us consider an especially interesting example, that of Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology. Derrida’s magnum opus manifests a subtle understanding of conceptual ambivalence, yet it stops short of acknowledging ambivalence, while also seeing it as the mark of a confused age. On the one hand, Of Grammatology analyzes a historical age that is characterized by the use of certain ambivalent concepts, that is, of concepts that involve an inherent tension (logos, the subject, sign, writing, supplement), including the actual ambivalence manifested in their formation by thinkers such as Rousseau or Saussure. Moreover, these ambivalent concepts and texts are not devoid of meaning on Derrida’s reading: rather than being confused mixtures of ideas, they have the oppositional unity of ambivalence.21 Yet, precisely when Derrida becomes rather explicit about exposing a tension-fraught meaning, he also presents it as unsatisfactory and unnecessary. Arguing that our confused age is approaching its end now that its tension-fraught truth has become more manifest, he hopes that a new and coherent conceptuality may appear.22 In this way, deconstruction embraces the illusory ideal of a harmonic meaning, and at the same time it exposes the role played by this notion for the age and the philosophy of the age. This view would, however, acknowledge ambivalence, even if it deprecated it, were it to admit that meaningful contradictions are moored in the possibility of conceptual ambivalence, that is, of cases in which concepts serve as mental attitudes, and ambivalent attitudes at that, such that two competing ways to take the concept in some context are held by a person together, intentionally and ambivalently.23 As I see it, Of Grammatology suggests, in fact, two logics. On the one hand, Derrida exposes a denied logic, which all the same stands at the heart of the age of logos. This is the logic of “supplementarity,” according to which well-determined and unitary entities, such as being, the subject, or any unambiguous instance of a subject speaking about something, are impossible, and yet they are always made reference to in terms of entities that replace and complement them. On the other hand, he affirms the logic of “writing,” which goes beyond the bipolarity of Being and supplement, or speech and writing,24 even while he denies that he can describe or affirm this logic and often identifies the two terms of supplementarity and writing, which I here distinguish. I agree with this other Derrida that our life and language obey a logic whose positivities are inherently open to new significations. This openness—to be met in this book in the soft identity of mental attitudes, objects of desire, and value concepts—comprises another reason why he should have acknowledged ambivalence. For concepts and attitudes would not be soft and open to re-signification if this only reflected some theoretical perspective on the identity of concepts or attitudes. Rather “the logic of writing” pertains to how we live as creatures who share concepts and who have attitudes and encounter them in others. This requires that the openness can be moored in



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actual attitudes people may have. The openness of concepts, in particular, would not describe us, one by one or collectively, if a person could not engage with concepts in a way that actually acknowledges that these concepts can be engaged with otherwise. To thus engage with a concept implies, however, a conceptual ambivalence, for you thereby take the concept to have some character, and yet not to have it; conversely, to be conceptually ambivalent is to hold each of the opposed inflections of the concept in a way that acknowledges that the concept is open to inflection at least in some particular—and opposed—direction.25 Yet on Derrida’s grammatology, ambivalence must be disavowed. It is subjectivity that is to blame, and this is again partially surprising. As a philosopher who takes “writing,” or communicative signification, to capture reality in general, Derrida not only takes subjects (those who use signs) seriously, but recognizes that they are never out of the game. “Writing” should have been bound up with a new understanding of subjectivity. This, however, doesn’t happen. Rather, the notion of a subject, like that consciousness, is, for Derrida, a notion which is central to “the age of logos” and to which pure simplicity, unity, and fixed determination are focal. Thus, while rejecting this subjectivity, Derrida does not diverge from the tradition and does not challenge the idea that subjectivity ought to be understood this way. And indeed, Derrida is uneasy about subjectivity for reasons apart from the presupposition that it rules out ambivalence and indeterminate logic. The very condition of a focal point of view—intentionality—is distasteful to him, even if the particular engagements and their basic rational unity, and thus the subject, are always open to re-characterization and re-appreciation. Let me emphasize: to the extent that Derrida wishes to get rid of the focal character of intentionality, ambivalence is not an easier case than other attitudes. Ambivalence does not merely presuppose a subject who is ambivalent, but moreover, it demonstrates subjectivity concretely. In particular, the poles of ambivalence may not be understood as quasi-attitudes: ambivalence is not a case of would-be attitudes, as when a person is open to the suggestion of two potential opposed attitudes in a way that undermines them both to the extent of abolishing them in advance. Instead, ambivalence is itself an attitude with its positive (tensionfraught) character. Complementarily, ambivalence consists in two attitudes, which are positively held and which stand in opposition.26 By virtue of this positivity, ambivalent subjectivity moors the openness of attitudes in general. 2.2 Political Ambivalent Subjects What happens when we move from continental philosophy to continental political theory? There, where the focus is less ontological, and the analysis of subjectivity (or of objectivity) is not the definitive aim of the investigation, we

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find sometimes an acute understanding of the unity of ambivalence.27 In particular, postcolonial thought begins with Frantz Fanon’s ambivalent subjects whose self-contempt and self-appreciation both lie in accepting that “virtue is white” (Black Skin White Masks (2008), 106). Adopting for themselves their oppressor’s whiteness, they do this in a way that their own devaluation is endorsed. Again, the black hole at the center of the soul of the wretched of the earth forms (in Black Skin White Masks) a second ambivalence, for this degrading and dejecting emptiness not only is central to the ambivalence above, but also articulates an opposed whiteness-free zone—one may dare to fall into this emptiness and rise again as a human being (2008, esp. 2–3). In a third ambivalence, arising together with the possibility of struggle, whiteness and whites are ambivalently relevant again, as by saying “no” to them, a human and black “yes” becomes possible—the yes-attitude to life presupposes the “no”-attitude without canceling the tension between them (chapter 7 B). In addition, in Wretched of the Earth (2004), Fanon connects morality with moral ambivalence both in regard to (ambivalently) justified violence and in regard to blatantly immoral attitudes and action toward others. Such attitudes and actions do not imply that the agents do not judge (in an engaged rather than merely theoretical way) that they ought not to act as they do. Even convinced torturers, Fanon shows, may well know better. The figure of the convinced torturer is not at all a figure of a wholehearted torturer (2004, 194ff). Ambivalence is just as central to the other father of post-colonialism, and Edward Said’s Orientalism is the study of the ambivalent relation of Europe—and of actual European and American scholars, artists, and imperial administrators—toward the “Orient.” Said shows us how Europe is charmed by the Orient at the same time that it disdains and exploits it. He shows how the enchantment is a central form of the disdain, which is not to say that the enchantment is not real, or that it is not appreciative. Moreover, Said demonstrates that this ambivalent attitude of enchantment-disdain also constitutes a single pole in a further ambivalence, the other pole of which consists in judging the Orient threatening. Unsurprisingly, a perceptive analysis of various forms of ambivalence is found in more recent postcolonial research as well. We shall have an occasion to look at an analysis of certain movies that mix sex with racism in a way that provides happy ambivalent compromises for the sex-directed ambivalence of their spectators (Shohat 1991),28 but might have also considered Bhabha’s articulation of the colonial mocking and self-mocking recognition of the equality and rights of the colonized (1994, chapter 4), some of Butler’s work, including interesting analysis of racial-queer Freudian ambivalence (1993, chapter 6) and of aggressiveness that ambivalently goes hand in hand with other-focused morality (2000), and many examples in Gilroy’s account in The Black Atlantic of the experience, writing, art, and activism of black Americans and Britons (1993).



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Combining postcolonial thought with a queer feminist theory, Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands (1987) comprises a multileveled description of a region of unitary and significant ambivalence. The “mestizi” (people of mixed descent) of the Mexican-American border, the political activist who is part of the community yet “queer” to it, the ideal Goddess who is both bad and good, independent and appropriated by Christianity, an Other and oneself—the political and committed life Anzaldúa is writing of and shaping is a profoundly ambivalent life. In the simplest example, she concludes the report of a frightening encounter with a snake with the sentence: “Since that day I’ve sought and shunned them” (26). Fanon, Said, Anzaldúa, Shohat, and Gilroy all show in their work the inextricable unity between the conflicting attitudes of the ambivalent person. We can say that they acknowledge both that the ambivalent bipolarity implies “hybridity” rather than a pair of separate attitudes and that the ambivalent hybridity implies oppositional bipolarity. The second point, however, is sometimes lost in postcolonial thought. This book analyzes ambivalence as involving two poles, which are mutually connected and which are jointly connected and connectible with further engagements of the person. I also argue that such connections and openness to connection constitute mental unity. In the next sections, we shall consider a problematic assumption in the research on ambivalence according to which ambivalence consists in separate poles. In postcolonial discourse, the notion of hybridity (as in Bhabha 1994) is central, and the objects of investigation are conceived as mutually connected and connectible, similarly to Derrida’s universe of “writing.” Ambivalence requires, however, that the conflicting poles are connected as conflicting, that is, that they form an oppositional mental interlinkage. Since, moreover, hybridity is bound up with some notion of opposition, it may be worthwhile to emphasize that hybridity is not necessarily ambivalent. Let us say, in an abstract manner, that people or cultures have hybrid characteristics when they have characteristics that are traceable to certain pairs of elements and form a midpoint between them, or comprise a fusion of them, given that the two elements are opposed from some relevant perspective, but not necessarily that of ambivalence. The pair that makes the point of reference in a particular case might consist in two conflicting mental attitudes such that the hybridity constitutes a form of ambivalence, and hybridity is in important cases closely related with suitable forms of ambivalence also when the pair does not consist in mental attitudes (but, rather, in a personal characteristic that transcends intentionality, or in a social or cultural characteristic, see Introduction, section 4). None of this is essential to the notion of hybridity, however, and hybridity can also be such that a person has the hybrid features without having any of the opposite characteristics, or again that the person

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maintains these opposite features, while they are harmoniously merged in the hybrid form. 2.3 A Note on Ambivalence in Psychology Postcolonial and queer studies are not the only cases beyond philosophy in which ambivalence is studied. Ambivalence plays an important role in many psychoanalytic theories and approaches, as well as in Festinger’s 1957 masterly study of a case of cognitive dissonance, and in Zygmunt Bauman’s ongoing investigations of postmodernity. I limit myself in what follows to a brief comment on the study of emotional and attitudinal ambivalence in empirical psychology. The study of emotion adopts, as a rule, a categorization of emotions in terms of their positive or negative (or sometimes neutral) “valence,” usually signifying pleasure and displeasure, and this considerably limits the work in this area in two ways. The larger problem is that ambivalence is by and large precluded by this framework and is thus usually disregarded in asking questions and devising experiments. Second, when ambivalence is acknowledged (e.g., Oceja and Carrera 2009 and Larsen and McGraw 2011), the same framework leads to assuming that ambivalence is composed of two separate emotions, such that the conflictual character of ambivalence is obscured. Thus, the existence of ambivalence is taken to strongly suggest the existence of distinct brain processes bound up with sadness and happiness, and, more importantly, this goes hand in hand with the view that the conflicting emotions are mentally independent experiences or attitudes.29 Yet if the positive and negative emotions are simply two kinds of emotion that one can have together, the contrast between positivity and negativity disappears. All the more, it is unclear why the opposition of the “valences” constitutes ambivalence between two simultaneously present emotions, that is, why it comprises opposition from the point of view of the person. What is it that makes a person ambivalent in being both happy and sad about the same event, we might be asking. Aren’t these just two harmonious and separate components of the person’s mental state at a certain time? At best, the oppositionality of valences would be reducible to opposed behavioral dispositions (“approach” vs. “withdraw”). Yet what would it mean to be ambivalently disposed both ways if these dispositions are not held as conflicting by the person?30 There is now a growing body of knowledge on attitudinal ambivalence and conflicting value judgments,31 yet this research also tends to reduce ambivalence in a cluster of ways to pairs of independent attitudes, beliefs, and feelings, which leave the ambivalence itself inexplicable.32 This theoretical framing leads to identifying emotional and attitudinal ambivalence mainly in such cases that the conflicting thoughts, feelings, and behavior are



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relatively separate, or when they can to some extent be thought of as following from the separate operation of the opposed behavioral dispositions or the evaluations of different aspects of the object, or again from separate contingent influences. Attitudinal ambivalence has relatedly been connected with relative inaction and with vacillation between the poles in accordance with minor influences (e.g., persuasion). I propose that attention to the interlinked character of opposing attitudes may limit the scope of such findings. An approach to ambivalence that understands it in terms of distinct but inherently connected attitudes would allow the investigation of the field of ways of being ambivalent (consciously and generally), of the aspects that influence the particular character the ambivalence takes, and of the dynamics of modeof-ambivalence change. I hope this book will contribute to the psychological research on emotional and attitudinal ambivalence as well as to the investigation of social, economic, and cultural phenomena that involve ambivalence, although I won’t be able to refer directly to the ways ambivalence is accounted in these areas. 2.4 Ambivalent Behavior: A Road Not Taken Returning to the study of ambivalence in contemporary analytic philosophy, I believe that work done so far has been too reserved in two related ways. The first concerns the problem from behavior. The rest of this chapter refers to research in which the phenomenon of ambivalence—including the two conflicting attitudes and their standing in conflict from the point of view of the agent—is to a large extent acknowledged. In particular, in this research the problem from behavior is not taken to exclude ambivalence. At the same time, the view that ambivalence is dysfunctional, at least inasmuch as acting on a single pole and ignoring the other is not an option, is, by and large, retained in this discourse. The worry is that the significant expression of any one of the poles of ambivalence implies that the other pole cannot be significantly expressed. The problem from behavior is especially noteworthy in regard to ambivalence of desire, where it appears that in wanting and not wanting something to be true, one must both act to make it true and avoid acting in this manner. The relation between desires (or action-motivating value judgments), beliefs, and action has been influentially formulated by Aristotle and is known as “the practical syllogism.” This book maintains that it is inherent to ambivalence that its poles suggest mutually exclusive lives, and also that conflicting desires require contradictory actions to fulfill them. Yet, I shall argue, it doesn’t follow that ambivalent behavior is the conjunction of two contradictory practical conclusions of the syllogism, but only that ambivalence is a challenge for our conduct—one to which we respond in all sort of resourceful ways.

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The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost, begins as follows: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other

Frost presupposes in this poem that the ambivalent person must choose or be paralyzed. While the study of ambivalence in analytic philosophy provides a richer and more subtle picture of ambivalent behavior, the fork image never ceases to guide it all the same. Emotional ambivalence is assumed to make life more limited and stagnant than an emotional life may otherwise be. Where desire, value judgment, and factual belief are concerned, the assumptions about behavior are, on the one hand, even less permissive, and, on the other hand, are even more taken for granted. It is more or less presupposed that either the ambivalent person cannot act (or must vacillate) or she acts with one side of the ambivalence (Swindell 2010 describes ambivalence as either paralyzing or residual, the second form primarily including behavior in one direction33). In fact, the reasoning against the possibility or rationality of ambivalence is accepted, that is, it is assumed that any action or course of action under ambivalence would be in accordance with one of the poles of the ambivalence and in contrast with the other. The conclusion that ambivalence must entail contradictory actions is avoided by allowing that one pole is not acted on.34 Whether ambivalent people are supposed to vacillate to no avail, or are permitted at times to act on one pole of their ambivalence, the underlying presupposition is that to express one’s opposed attitudes in behavior is to separately express each of the poles, and, in particular, that to try to fulfill one’s opposed desires is to act separately with each of the conflicting goals. Martha Nussbaum (1985), for example, argues that ambivalence is sometimes appropriate, and, moreover, that in such cases, the virtuous agent ought to express both attitudes in her behavior. Yet she takes such conduct to consist in two distinct chains of words and gestures. Focusing on desire fulfillment, namely on the problem of fulfilling what one wants when one is ambivalent, on the line taken by Stocker (1990, chapter 4) and Stark (2001), ambivalence is simply not concerned with how to act, as is indeed sometimes the case, for example, when one wholeheartedly wants to leave a city35 and yet is sorry to leave it.36 Other lines of inquiry explain the action on one pole by appeal to repression or to some other way of leaving one pole aside for a time (Carr 2009), as well as to prioritization, decision, or choice.



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While ambivalence can take these forms, ambivalent behavior does not conform to the image of the fork. The reason for this, to make a long story short, is that attitudes are not separate courses of action—people, rather than isolated attitudes, being those who act—and that ambivalence is a way that a person’s attitudes can be connected: they can be connected as opposed attitudes, between which one is ambivalent. Conversely, understanding behavior under ambivalence in terms of acting separately on one or both poles reduces ambivalence to a mental split. Consider the analogy of twins who are confused for one person. In such a case, we may come to discover that there are two of them by discovering two separate courses of action in their conduct, for instance, that one indulges in city life while the other avoids it. If ambivalence could be analyzed as a twin-like pair of attitudes, however, the fact that the ambivalent person is ambivalent between her opposed attitudes would be left out. Re-inverting the perspective, if the poles of ambivalence are not like independent twins, then it may be reasonable to expect ambivalence to be characterized by compromise behavior, rather than by acting or failing to act separately on one or both poles. Freud’s notion of ambivalent compromise behavior will emerge in what follows as a suitable way to understand ambivalent conduct. (Freud’s own work is investigated in chapter 6, section 3. I argue that Freud conceives of persons as unitary creatures who are inherently ambivalent at the same time that their ambivalent lives are regulated by an aim of harmony.) There is a sense that ambivalent behavior is always a compromise behavior. Even when we do act on one pole rather than the other (for reasons, or by way of throwing dice, under repression, or by habit), our behavior does not conform to the model of the separate poles, and generally speaking it expresses in some way or other both attitudes. Ambivalence often involves creative compromise behavior that forms an ambivalent yet substantial direction in the person’s life. Ambivalence allows for compromise action, in which we jointly fulfill both opposed desires (chapter 9): consider a painter who, wanting and not wanting to paint realistically, produces crossed-out realistic paintings. The poles of ambivalence also find a joint expression when someone bursts into tears because she has fought her sorrow too hard, or when someone expresses her genuine indifference to her ex-lover in a way that shows that all the same she still cares. The error in the separate poles model is also revealed in the fact that it is not always clear whether we should say that the person acts on one pole of his ambivalence or on both, and that even when a choice between the poles of ambivalence has been made by the agent, this does not have to settle things for him. This was a central point of Bernard Williams’s Ethical Consistency (1973b, orig. 1965): suppose, Williams grants us in this groundbreaking essay, that the ambivalent person actually acts on one desire rather than the

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other. Or suppose that the agent, maintaining two opposed judgments, X and Y, as to what he (morally) ought to do, makes up his mind that it is for the best to act on X and that he acts accordingly. This does not have to end his ambivalence, Williams argues, for consider what happens after the action: look at the regrets, the cases of remorse and the attempts at reparation or compensation (170, 172–73). Williams’s argument for the existence and perseverance of ambivalence thus also constitutes an argument against the framework of isolated behavioral expressions of each of the poles: while nominally accepting that when an agent is “acting [on one pole of the ambivalence] for the best,” this particular action constitutes the action performed by him, Williams, in fact, undermines this assumption by bringing to our attention the “remainder” behavior that complements “the action” and constitutes together with it the ambivalent person’s behavior. One of the aims of this book is to take up Williams’s invitation to explore the range of relations between ambivalence and practical rationality. 2.5 Separate Poles The understanding of ambivalent behavior is, however, part of an understanding of ambivalence in general. I argue in this book that a person is inherently engaged in plural directions, while her plural attitudes and further engagements make sense in terms of their mutual rational connections and connectability. Ambivalence, I argue, is an exemplary manifestation of our “unity in plurality” and our basic rationality (see the introduction of the chapter for a general presentation). As such, ambivalence consists in two opposed attitudes, but it does not consist in mutually isolated attitudes. This brings us to the second way in which ambivalence may require a more radical departure from its traditional treatment than research in analytic philosophy has so far offered. It is not enough to affirm the irreducible plurality of ambivalence, that is, the fact that the two poles of ambivalence do not form parts of a harmonious single attitude. We also have to take account of the unity between such attitudes that are held as opposed, but this has so far been done in a very partial manner. In the following chapters, we shall see various modes of oppositional interlinkage, in which it is as if the poles of ambivalence are disconnected from each other or in which they are in some partial and relative way indeed disconnected. Such possibilities, however, constitute ambivalence only because the disconnection has a limited character which presupposes interlinkages between the poles and because other forms of ambivalence manifest more robust unity. In what follows we shall encounter various ways that the poles of ambivalence constitute distinct and yet connected attitudes, just as we shall face various conceptions that interpret ambivalence in terms of separate poles.



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Indeed, I can only think of two nonambiguous examples of recent defenses of ambivalence—Rorty 2010 and Poltera 2010—that do not claim that the poles of ambivalence express, constitute, or are grounded in, mutually foreign domains. Not only is the contrary assumed across the board, but it is thought to explain why ambivalence is possible, and to some extent rational. Thus, Greenspan argues that emotional ambivalence is possible only because an emotion can be held on some grounds without taking the grounds against the emotion into account. According to Nussbaum 1990, Aristotelian virtue requires the person to acquire a rich and keen perception of the situation at hand. While the situation may be perceived ambivalently, this would mean that the person separately acquires each of two conflicting and harmonious perceptions. Williams (1973b) argues that moral ambivalence is sometimes appropriate, in which case the two conflicting judgments as to what one ought to do both apply, but this is tantamount on his analysis to their mutual irrelevance: they do not cast doubt on each other. Yet the following investigations will propose that ambivalence, ambivalent conduct, and ambivalent judging are interdependently unitary and plural. Once ambivalence is not denied or reinterpreted, the separate poles model must also be abandoned. The next chapter analyzes the person as the “unity in plurality” of her attitudes and shows that emotional ambivalence is unitary, and often substantially integrated, by being irreducibly conflictual.

notes 1. While rejecting the problem from subjectivity, this book identifies the notions of a subject and a person and understands ordinary people (human beings) as the primary examples of subjects. 2. Ambivalence of belief includes a belief to a high degree combined with a disbelief, and it typically takes the form of ambivalence between two contradictory high-degree beliefs (see chapter 7). The illustration of ambivalence by definite numbers is, however, misleading both in regard to beliefs and ambivalence of belief and in regard to desires and ambivalence of desire. Considering ambivalence of desire, the point is that while the strengths of the conflicting desires are part of the character of the ambivalence, any definite degree is undermined by the ambivalence. One reason for this is that although the conflicting desires may be strong (and the ambivalence may be strong in the sense that the person is ambivalent between two strong desires), there is a sense in which a desire or any attitude which is a pole of ambivalence is by definition not strong, namely that this attitude is not wholehearted, but rather is a pole of an ambivalent attitude. In addition, ambivalence undermines (in contradictory directions, ambiguous ways, and according to the case) other dimensions of the attitude’s degree, such as how strong it feels, and its effectivity in engaging the person in suitable ways (e.g., the person’s striving to fulfill his desire).

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3. Once this conceptual frame is adopted, ambivalence cannot be referred to. The need to justify the fundamental principles was addressed, however, in the development of the framework and is still addressed in its interpretation. The basic argument in regard to beliefs has been, since Ramsey 1980 [1926] and de Finetti 1980 [1937], that Dutch books can be made against the person, that is, that a person’s conflicting beliefs (modeled on inconsistent estimations regarding the chances of horses in races) might lead to results that defeat one’s desires. This argument presupposes, however, that beliefs and desires are interdependent, while desires conform to a set of rules, which in particular exclude ambivalence of desire. Moreover, even when we consider cases that are analogous to ideal betting in which nothing but the money matters and ambivalence of desire that is not dependent on the ambivalence of belief may be ignored, this view refers only to cases (which also can happen and do happen), in which a person unwittingly maintains a contradictory set of beliefs. From this point of view, the Dutch book argument does not leave room for ambivalence of belief, which requires that the person is ambivalent between his epistemic attitudes, that is, doubting his (acknowledged) belief. 4. Baker 2010 criticizes decision theory for failing to describe (what I call) inherent ambivalence, in which the person’s attitudes toward the object are directly or necessarily conflicting, that is, the opposing attitudes do not respond to two different aspects that happen to unite in the object. When the conflict between the poles is a contingent matter, the conflict may seem to be explicable in terms of two harmonious desires, which are not directed to the object of ambivalence, but to the different aspects that make for the respective attitudes. Ambivalence is, however, sometimes inherent (see appendix A), and then it clearly implies that the person gives two opposed values to the same object. At the same time, the existence and forms of contingent ambivalence reflect the irreducibly plural character of human concerns, and this underlies a complementary criticism of decision theory. Decision theories cannot accommodate the phenomenon of contingent ambivalence, since in their view desires (or value judgments) confer on their various objects some or other degree of a single determinate value, as if it is the same kind of thing to want a candy and to want to behave respectably when such a candy is laid before you, and both desires can be measured on a single scale (Nussbaum 1990, Stocker 1990; Morton 1991 makes a similar criticism from a point of view that marginalizes ambivalence). 5. The problem is presented in the Introduction (4). 6. Even Kierkegaard’s “purity of heart” is not really foreign to ambivalence, as we can see if we consider Fear and Trembling. Kierkegaard’s account of Abraham’s faith there is a subtle account of a variety of ambivalence of belief. Nietzsche is considered in chapter 6, section 3.1. Chapter 7 is partially a reconstruction of Sartre. 7. See Introduction, 6–7. 8. The notions of intentionality and of basic rationality are presented in the Introduction, 6–8 and section 4. 9. See Razinsky 2016, the section, “Phenomenalist Ambivalence?” 10. Naturalist approaches do not always construe the mind as merely plural, but they quite generally exclude the full-blown character of ambivalence and are often reluctant to allow internal oppositions of any kind.



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11. Spinoza 1994, II, the scholium to proposition 49. 12. There is a second class of Buridan’s ass examples, which are grouped, without sufficient distinction, together with those of paralyzed ambivalence. This other kind goes back to Al-Ghazali who mocks the idea that one cannot choose between means, saying: “Even so, in our [own human] case, we do not concede that [the choice between similar things] is inconceivable. For we will suppose that there are two equal dates in front of someone gazing longingly at them, unable, however, to take both together. He will inevitably take one of them through an attribute whose function is to render a thing specific, [differentiating it] from its like” (Al-Ghazali 2000, 23, discussion 1, §46). I agree with Al-Ghazali that there is no general problem of choosing between two different ways of fulfilling a single desire (e.g., to eat or to eat a date). I also agree with Mintoff (1999, section 2) and Weintraub (2012, III) that Al-Ghazali cases should be analyzed in terms of the practical rationality of fulfilling a single desire (rejecting, however, their assimilation of paralyzed ambivalence to means-end rationality). Desires always allow for various ways to fulfill them (any slight difference in our movements would change our action), and for the most part we do not have desires that distinguish between these ways, and are hence are not ambivalent between them. A person who is situated between two dates may perhaps simply walk to the date to which he happens to turn his face (Weintraub 2012, II, 283ff. includes related claims). Only then is he engaged with getting the particular date, while other aspects of this action, such as walking on the sidewalk rather than on the road, may be only quasi-intentional, that is, quasi-engagements that are part of the matter-of-course background of the person’s basic rationality. In other cases, a person intentionally regards different means as options without reaching the point of wanting any of them in particular. It does not follow from these remarks that the means to an end are never themselves the objects of ambivalence. A person can become ambivalent between walking on the sidewalk and on the road, and this ambivalence can show good sense, for example, when the road is dangerous and the sidewalk muddy. A person can also become ambivalent about the dates, wanting to get the one, and wanting to get the other instead, even given that both are the same to him. It might be just because he is too hungry or because he is a philosophy student who takes his classes too seriously and is hence obsessively concerned with choosing. In such cases, the person may want to drink in a way that involves two conflicting desires, or something similar to this, between two glasses of water, and these desires form a Buridan-ass paralyzed ambivalence. 13. The interpretation of ambivalence as the coexistence of two forces is rarely argued for or explicitly presented in writing nowadays but is often endorsed in informal discussions. Hobbes analyzes deliberation as the alternation of the movements of the passions (2005, chapter VI, 39), and Reid criticizes the model of the balanced block (1786, Essay I, chapter 4, 57–58). 14. This tradition, going back to Duns Scotus, finds echoes in Pink’s radical distinction between the passivity of desires and emotions, which may arise under practical deliberation, on the one hand, and the act of decision on the other hand (2009), as well as in his understanding of decisions as tie breakers (1996, 123). The model above would be complicated, however, by the ways that the rationality of deliberation

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is understood. In any case, it is a different model than the reduction of ambivalence and hesitation to harmonious deliberation of options and prima facie reasons. 15. Wolf 1990 considers a similar notion of “a real self,” where the real self is supposed to ground freedom in a deterministic and nonautonomous way. 16. In addition to his 1992 work, Frankfurt analyzes hierarchic conflicts in this manner, for example, in “Freedom of the will and the concept of a person,” “Identification and externality,” and “Identification and wholeheartedness” (all reprinted in Frankfurt 1998), “Autonomy, necessity and love” (Frankfurt 1999), and Taking Ourselves Seriously and Getting It Right (Frankfurt 2006). 17. Hierarchic ambivalence and its mode of self-overcoming are presented in the Introduction, 11–12. Kant’s view of morality as bound up with actual self-overcoming is suggested, in particular, by his use of the present tense in such sentences as “beneficence solely from duty, even when no inclination at all drives us to it, or even when natural and invincible disinclination resists . . . can be commanded” (Kant 2002, 15, my italics). 18. More broadly understood, the harmony approach would also include interpretations of ambivalence as non-oppositional plurality of nonintentional states, and as non-oppositional plurality of irrelated states. We can alternatively include such interpretations under a more broadly understood multiplicity response. Engagements are in this book any intentional aspects of the person or her life (Introduction, section 3). 19. Central forms of the harmonizing approach are considered in chapter 5, section 3.1. 20. The philosophical background of this book is also, regrettably, broadly European American all over. 21. Chapter 8 shows that tension-fraught concepts can be meaningful. To see in a condensed way that Derrida, in one pole of his thought, agrees, see Derrida 1997, 244–45. Derrida moves there from an apparent contradiction in Rousseau’s Essay on the Origin of Languages (see also 232) to a meaningful contradiction or tensionfraught conceptuality. He uses scare quotes to distinguish the meaningful contradiction he identifies in the text from the thoughtless blatant contradiction that seems to be there, while emphasizing that the Rousseauian text is indeed self-contradictory (246). 22. The theme of a future that is—such is the undertone—more clear-eyed, and which the last days of the former age, including Derrida’s reflections on it, vaguely anticipate, is central to the book (see Exergue). On 245, Derrida writes: “[I]t would be necessary to define a space in which this regulated ‘contradiction’ has been possible and can be described. What is called ‘history of ideas’ would have to begin by disengaging [dégager, clearing] this space before articulating its field in terms of other fields. These are, of course, questions that can only be asked.” 23. Concept uses can but need not be explicitly linguistic, and they reshape the concepts concerned. Reflection and deliberate conceptual development are special modes of concept uses. 24. Derrida opposes speech to writing but gives them asymmetrical meanings. “Speech” represents an impossible state—the ideal of the age of logos—in which the speaking or hearing subject or consciousness are one, or in self-proximity, with the spoken words, the idea signified, and the thing referred to, all of which are



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well-determined and univocal. Everything else—and thus everything—belongs to “writing.” He, however, develops the concept of “writing” further—and this is how I regard it above—such that it is not only that everything is writing, but rather the notion of writing ceases to function as a pole in a duality, that is, it ceases to refer to the idea of speech as impossible self-proximity. 25. I argue that the openness that is essential for language requires conceptual ambivalence in Razinsky 2015. 26. At the same time, the positivity of ambivalence—as of other attitudes and of concepts—is pervaded by negativity. 27. Freud and Sartre should be acknowledged here. As relative it may be, the distinction between philosophy and political theory is challenged, in particular, by Judith Butler’s analysis of sexuality. Butler’s work emphasizes a level of existence, which, on the one hand is, in general, not intentional, but, on the other hand, is bound up with intentionality, and which, by the same token, is a mode of collective and personal self-construction that is bound up with ambivalence. Butler is closer than Derrida to accepting and elucidating both subjectivity and, at times, ambivalence. Yet her thought of a desirable future of a general queer society also tends to conceive of this future as free from (sexual) ambivalence. (Even Anzaldúa’s ambivalence-imbued Borderlands [1987], which is considered below, ambivalently presents the new mestiza as non-ambivalent [in chapter 7].) I wonder, however, whether ambivalence will not have to change rather than disappear from the scene of sexuality if the future society is to be a queer one, rather than a homogenous society in which types of sexual distinction do not exist. 28. See the opening to Part III. 29. Emotions on my account are bound up with affective consciousness and with cognitive and behavioral aspects. Cacioppo and Berntson 1994 is a key article both in regard to the neurological hypothesis and in regard to a general conception of separability of the opposing emotions. Focusing on attitudes in the psychological sense, this paper also analyzes ambivalence in terms of a behavior-related notion of valence. Oceja and Carrera 2009 and Larsen and McGraw 2011 offer important contributions to the investigation of ambivalence between positive and negative subjective feelings, which they, however, bind up with the independence of the opposing emotions (see their papers for a further bibliography on this topic). 30. Emotional ambivalence can, on my account, be strictly conscious. 31. Conner and Armitage 2008 suggest a state-of-the-art presentation of attitudinal ambivalence, including a summary of studies regarding the pliability of ambivalent attitude and the moderating effect of ambivalence on intention and behavior. 32. Ambivalence is regarded as a unitary experience in such measurements of felt ambivalence that ask about experiences of conflict or “discomfort that arises from having evaluatively inconsistent views of the same attitude” (Conner and Armitage 2008, 263). 33. The other pole expresses itself in minor ways that form the “residue.” 34. Some maintain that people can act ambivalently in a nonself-defeating manner, but they take this to require the division of the person’s life between isolated spheres of action (Gardner 1993, Gunnarsson 2014).

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35. Considered as a desire, wanting to leave the city is, in this example, wholehearted, that is, there is no conflicting desire to stay. Considered more generally, as an attitude toward leaving the city, it is a pole of the person’s ambivalence. 36. The example is borrowed from Stark.

Part II

Life with Ambivalence

The description of ambivalence as a substantive phenomenon meets with three general objections. The objection from subjectivity states that personhood and basic rationality imply harmonious mental unity, and thus that ambivalence is either impossible or a marginal state of personhood, or else ambivalence and subjects must be reducible to pluralities of independent attitudes. According to the objection from behavior, ambivalence frustrates significant behavior, and according to the objection from objectivity, judgment implies a concern with objectivity or truth, which makes attributions of opposing judgments to people incomprehensible. We shall consider the third problem in chapters 7 and 8, while in this part we examine the relations of subjectivity and agency to ambivalence. Chapter 3 defends an account of personhood and attitudes, according to which a person is a unity in plurality, and ambivalence is central to mental unity. Chapter 4 examines this account in the light of the problem from behavior and shows that the problem is misconceived. More specifically, both chapters comprise a study of emotion and emotional ambivalence. The problem from subjectivity may be reformulated, however, at the level of consciousness. It seems that when the “ambivalence” cannot be conscious, it does not really comprise a case of an internal conflict, and that conscious ambivalence is impossible. In chapter 5 I argue, by contrast, that consciousness demonstrates and makes possible the unity of ambivalent attitudes. Another reaction to the objections from subjectivity and from action is to conceive of persons as plural creatures who pursue harmony. Chapter 6 responds by comparing the concept of unity in plurality with those of harmonious unity and of harmonization. It shows that harmonization implies unity in plurality, as well as, especially, the unity of ambivalence. In particular, the final section analyzes Freud’s conception of personhood in these terms. 59

Chapter 3

Unity in Plurality The Case of Emotional Ambivalence

There was a pause of strange enmity between the two men, that was very near to love. It was always the same between them; always their talk brought them into a deadly nearness of contact, a strange, perilous intimacy which was either hate or love, or both. They parted with apparent unconcern, as if their going apart were a trivial occurrence. And they really kept it to the level of trivial occurrence. Yet the heart of each burned from the other. They burned with each other, inwardly. This they would never admit. They intended to keep their relation a casual free-and-easy friendship, they were not going to be so unmanly and unnatural as to allow any heart-burning between them. They had not the faintest belief in deep relationship between men and men, and their disbelief prevented any development of their powerful but suppressed friendliness (D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love)*

People can be both happy and unhappy about the same thing. We hate, despise, or dislike people whom we love and hope for what we are afraid may come true. Despite the discomforts it raises for our conceptions of personhood, full-fledged ambivalence is an ordinary mode of existence. This theoretical tension suggests that the understanding of ambivalence must go hand in hand with the acquisition of a revised account of subjectivity.1 The following chapter pursues this double-edged task by examining, in particular, the character of emotion and of emotional ambivalence. Our point of departure will be the view of emotion as a complex of other attitudes and other mental elements. This view will be revised such that emotional ambivalence is found to constitute a wider complex that cannot be reduced to two independent emotional complexes. * Lawrence, 1992 (1920), end of Chapter II, 27. In addition to emotional ambivalence (both of love and hate, and of intimacy and casualness), the passage also suggests that the protagonists maintain ambivalence of belief and self-deception regarding their actual and possible emotions and relationship.

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The main definition of ambivalence in this book concerns cases in which the person holds two opposing attitudes toward the same object (16ff.). To recall what is involved here, consider Sandra, who is both happy and sad about something. Sandra’s attitudes are opposed, and they are opposed in a sense that entails that she holds them as opposed: her attitudes compete for her on how to treat the object. As such, ambivalence presupposes a subject: a unitary person who is unitary in her very ambivalence; or, taking the term “mind” to refer to the aggregate of the person’s attitudes, ambivalence presupposes a unitary mind. Thus, ambivalence implies mental unity. That it does so, however, seems absurd, since ambivalence includes two opposed attitudes. It appears that either a person (or the mind) is a unity, or it is a plurality. To be sure, human beings have plural attitudes: they like various people, have all kinds of beliefs, are afraid of certain things, and so on, and this means that a simple unity must be excluded. Plural attitudes could hardly be a conclusive blow against the idea that we are subjects. Do we not, however, need harmony to undermine the plurality of the attitudes and let them partake in the unity of one mind? Harmony could, according to this way of thinking, constitute a quasi-simple unity of a subject or her mind—namely a person might be said to be one in that her plural attitudes toward various objects are parts of a single comprehensive attitude toward the world. If personhood requires quasi-simple unity, the irreducible plurality of ambivalence implies that ambivalence is impossible or is only a marginal phenomenon of personhood. At the same time, the understanding of the unity of a subject as quasi-simple is threatened if ambivalence itself also assumes unity. Should we presuppose harmonious unity and simply rule ambivalence out? If ambivalence appears a central mode of human life, in which the person’s opposed attitudes manifest her unity together, we are not encouraged to understand minds as plural, rather than unitary. On the other hand, we may perhaps be encouraged to question the equation of mental unity with harmonious unity. We may do well to study anew in what sense persons must be unitary, and right from the start include in our investigation the phenomenon of ambivalence. In any case, this is the approach taken in what follows. Mental unity will be analyzed as a unity in plurality consisting in the actual and possible mutual ties in the mind. An opposition between attitudes is itself such a tie between them, and, in addition, concrete forms of ambivalence constitute further diverse concrete ties in the mind. We shall begin by turning to a paper by Philip Koch (1987). Koch studies emotional ambivalence in relation to the question of the unity of mind. His analysis also binds mental unity with mental organization, or mutual mental connections, but ambivalence according to Koch is a state of unorganized plurality, an intermediary failure of the processes of organization. We will see by contrast that ambivalence is unitary and that the subject is unitary in his



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ambivalence. Furthermore, we will see that ambivalence is not only constitutively unitary, but can be significantly integrated or integrative. Koch’s central example of emotional ambivalence refers to the relations of a certain Peter to a certain Sandra. Peter is ambivalent regarding Sandra, his ex-lover, and regarding the possibility of meeting her again. This chapter likewise suggests various forms of ambivalence that versions of Peter have toward Sandra and objects linked to her. We may, to begin with, think of Peter as both happy and unhappy that he is going to meet Sandra tomorrow, or as having toward her a persisting love mixed with disappointment and dislike. 1. Reduction of Emotion and Emotional Ambivalence to Other Mental Elements Koch accepts as a basic supposition that emotions are reducible to complexes of bodily feelings, attentional sets, evaluations/judgments, and desires/ impulses/inclinations to behave. Feeling restless . . . feeling of warmth focussed on an image . . . this is what it is like to feel bodily a longing . . . To be longing to see Sandra is in part . . . to notice things reminiscent of her . . . to judge the seeing of her valuable . . . Peter’s emotion essentially involves . . . desire. This is manifested by the way in which he directs his thoughts . . . by the sense of readiness for action. (Koch 1987, 260–61)2

Since emotions are complexes of the four elements, emotional ambivalence is also determined by them and Koch moves from the definition of emotion to understanding “emotional ambivalence” as a general name for oppositions pertaining to one of the elements (opposed judgments, opposed desires, etc.). This chapter also understands emotions as tantamount to complexes of various mental components. At the same time, we will understand emotions as mental attitudes toward objects. In fact, not only are the complex view and the attitude view complementary, but it would follow from the analysis of subjectivity as unity in plurality that these views, appropriately taken, presuppose each other. I begin by examining Koch’s version of the complex of emotion. This will lead us to a revised account: we shall see that the level of complexity required is rather high in several ways. Koch regards emotions as complexes of mental elements. In response, I observe, first, that the character of the relations between the elements of the complex and between the emotion and the elements is itself part of the complexity: for these relations do not always fit a model of a whole and its elements, nor do they fit such a model in every sense. This is one way that

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emotions do not supervene on the members of the complex.3 For example, a judgment that it is high time that he and Sandra met up might be fairly described as part of Peter’s longing to see Sandra, as a separate attitude that sheds light on his longing and also as an attitude that includes his longing to see Sandra; in addition, Peter can abandon his judgment and stick to his longing. Koch’s account of the complex must also be made more complicated in another way: emotions contain or are linked to additional mental aspects besides bodily feelings, attentional sets, judgments, and desires. Indeed, it is hard to think of any sort of mental aspect that could not participate in an emotion. In particular, while emotions are not constantly felt, they are tied to moments in which the emotion becomes “actual” or conscious. Peter Goldie calls these components “feeling towards,”4 and we may also speak of emotional consciousness. To omit the category of the felt or conscious emotion (or the emotional consciousness) is not merely to omit some aspect of emotion. The special status of the felt emotion is more generally that of the conscious attitude (in other words, of the conscious maintaining of an attitude), namely that in understanding something as a mental attitude of any type, we take it as something for which becoming conscious is, in principle, a possibility.5 If it is essential to attitudes that they can become conscious, however, then it is not qua qualitative states (qualia) that moments of consciousness moor them. Rather, what is important is that the emotion can be consciously held as that emotion, that is, as a particular attitude and more generally as of certain intentionality. In particular, Koch’s domain of bodily sensation does not constitute the required category.6,7 The conscious entertaining of emotion cannot be the bodily sensation as such. A spreading feeling of warmth in Peter’s body can be felt as love for Sandra, or as anger toward her, and the loving or vexed character of the warmth can (and usually would) be conscious. To use different terminology, Peter’s anger at Sandra is moored in a possibility that Peter would be angry at her—bodily, or in his conduct, or in his thoughts, and so on—“in the first person.” The complex bound up with an emotion must thus be augmented by the category of the conscious emotion. However, such emotional experiences for their part appeal to the emotion as a whole.8 They thus undermine any aspiration that emotions would be reduced to something else, such as might be included in the complex approach.9 Complexes of emotions include another important kind of mental element: emotions are linked to other emotions. For example, one can give reasons for attributing to Peter a love for Sandra in the following manner: “Peter does love Sandra. He was worried about her when she arrived late to the meeting. He can’t stand it when people hurt her.” And one can give reasons for attributing to Peter worry regarding Sandra as follows: “Peter was so worried about Sandra, that when she arrived and it came out that she simply had



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fallen asleep he exploded in anger,” or in another case: “Peter was so worried about Sandra that he was not angry about all that had gone between them, as long as she was safe.” Emotions (and emotional changes), like Peter’s worry in the first case, his anger in the second, and his ceasing to be angry in the third case, can be crucial to determining the central emotion at issue. Thus emotions must be added to the complex of elements, and nothing suggests that they would in any straightforward sense be simpler than the emotions they help to determine. One thing this implies is that an emotional complex is typically inexhaustible. The addition of other emotions to the categorization also entails, again, that complexes of emotion do not reduce emotions to other kinds of elements. Moreover, we might expect that emotions would attach to each other in a circular way and, thus, that extending the complex amounts to giving up its status as a reduction of the particular emotions (types or tokens) concerned. Suppose, however, that the relation between the emotions is not reciprocal. Suppose, moreover, that the emotions that are part of an emotion’s complex are more primitive, and only members of Koch’s four categories underlie them. Even this wouldn’t allow emotions to be reducible to their complexes. The reason for this is that we will frequently base attributions of desires and judgments on attribution of emotions. We will reason “he wants to run away; look how much he’s scared of him,” or we’ll plead not-guilty: “Don’t I think that this child is cute? Of course I do, I adore him.” Furthermore, even if it were possible to describe emotions as totalities of other mental features, what we are talking about is still a structure (although of an importantly loose, vague, and changeable character) and not a collection. As Koch argues, a dynamic plurality of “psychic materials” and relations to the emotional object is united into a point of view. Yet, Koch passes freely from professedly avoiding a discussion about the structural character of the emotion to a denial of that character. The emotion is reduced to its so-called components. What about emotional ambivalence? Such ambivalence, Koch argues, means a contrast in one or more of the components of the opposed emotions: the desires contrast, or the bodily sensations, and so on. This position presupposes a division of the emotion into distinct elements and stands in tension with understanding it as a structure or as a coherent viewpoint. Yet, if an emotion is to be divided into elements, then its components must be allowed, in a similar way to Anaxagoras’s basic elements, to contain the others within them or to imply them. This is indicated in Koch’s own examples. Peter, for instance, is ambivalent about Sandra and about meeting her again. In describing Peter’s bodily feelings, Koch mentions “a sudden pulse of alertness when similar people [to Sandra] appear” as well as “feeling an urge to do something” (260). The pulse relates, therefore, to attention and also to alertness,

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which one can perhaps categorize as a mood. The urge, in turn, is a bodily felt desire or, to use Koch’s own words, a bodily felt longing. Or consider another example in which Peter desires to forgive Sandra and also to blame her, where similar judgments (“She’s guilty!”), bodily feelings, and attentional sets serve both emotions. Koch concludes from this that Peter’s internal conflict consists in contrary desires. However, in the sense in which emotional conflict can consist in a conflict of desire, such “reduction” undermines the very project of reducing emotion and ambivalence to collections of elements. If the desires concerned are “pure” desires,10 then the conflict of desire is not an emotional conflict. Koch seems to acknowledge this when he treats Peter’s desire to forgive Sandra or to pass judgment on her as “two conflicting feelings” that “might both involve the judgment that she is guilty and might both involve roughly similar bodily reverberations and attentional sets” (264, emphasis mine). The desires must thus express or suggest the emotion—compare a desire to forgive out of longing to see Sandra with a desire to forgive in order to forget or then with a desire bound up with a moral commitment to forgiveness.11 The conflict must pertain to the desires as emotional desires. This means that the joint judgments or bodily feelings are part and parcel of the desires-emotions. Such joint elements also bear on the description of the ambivalence. The talk of “similar” judgments or attentional sets conceals their contribution, precisely by virtue of belonging to both poles, to the character of the ambivalence. Furthermore, emotional ambivalence can find expression in oppositions between constituents of different kinds. For example, it is easy to determine that Peter loves and doesn’t love Sandra based on such different constituents. For instance, his love may show in a strong desire to meet Sandra and renew his relationship with her. At the same time, his hostility to Sandra may account for certain negative judgments that he holds regarding her. Moreover, one can attribute ambivalence when the complexes suggest no opposition, not even one between elements of different types. We will find in the last section that ambivalence can and sometimes must be conceived as a unitary emotional complex. Even in such a case, we may still speak of two opposed emotions. For what makes the emotional engagement ambivalent is the person’s two opposing attitudes to the object of concern. 2. Unity in Plurality We have seen that instances of emotional ambivalence cannot be reduced to something else. Instead, they are bound up in non-reductive ways with other mental elements. The conflicting emotions are themselves connected. They are held by the person as opposed to each other, and there is more to say



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about the oppositional connection in any particular emotional ambivalence than that it exists: we can characterize the opposition by evoking other mental interlinkages. No reduction is involved, because just as the emotions and the ambivalence are elucidated in view of their connections with the various linked elements, so are these elucidated by evoking their connections with these emotions and ambivalence, as well as with further mental elements. In other words, the phenomena and language of ambivalence and of the mind circumscribe a concept of the person as a unity in plurality. A human being manifests her unity in plurality—the unity that consists in linking, and thus forming, that plurality—in wanting something and therefore acting, or in wanting it and yet doing nothing because she is afraid. She is similarly one in wanting something and believing that the action will help her fulfill her desire, as well as in her hope that the action will help her fulfill the desire or in her pessimism regarding the possibility of fulfillment. A person is one in that she regrets and therefore wants to make amends, in that she regrets and would have been glad if it was possible to make things right, or in that, full of regret, she unceasingly returns in her mind to the sad event. The person is one also in that she judges her rejoicing in another’s misfortune to be evil, as well as in the fact that while taking joy in the misfortunes of another, nevertheless she understands, say, that he did not deserve them. In understanding human lives through the concept of unity in plurality, I accept that the human being is a subject.12 At the same time, unity in plurality goes beyond the traditional understanding of the human being as a unitary subject, because the unity concerned is neither simple nor quasi-simple. Indeed, to take the human being or mind for a simple unity is tantamount to denying ambivalence.13 I shall from now on use the term “engagement” to refer to attitudes, thoughts, sensations, acts, and other mental elements (behavior included).14 Unity in plurality thus concerns the plurality of engagements. We can think of the unity that constitutes and depends on this plurality as the person, or, in a more technical way, as the mind. It is a matter of indifference whether “the mind” is defined in terms of the totality of engagements, or the totality of attitudes. The latter use merely emphasizes the privileged role attitudes have in human life as such engagements that are sufficiently encompassing to be understood as points of view (and thus also as the locus of ambivalence). Emotions are of course the attitudes on which we focus here. The notion of a complex of emotion, under the non-reductive understanding elaborated in the former section, presents us with the human unity in plurality. We have seen that the unity of the emotion consists in its linking to a flexible array of other attitudes and further engagements, while these engagements, for their part, are dependent on the emotion.15 However, if the emotion is connected to further attitudes, the unity that is constituted is

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not of the emotion alone. In regarding an emotion, we also encounter, more generally, the relation between a person’s attitudes and the mind. To consider a particular attitude is to take it as connected and connecting with other attitudes of the person, with possible and actual behavior and consciousness on his part, and so on. This makes the notion of unity in plurality closely related to Donald Davidson’s notion of mental holism. And, still with Davidson, unity in plurality depicts the person’s engagements as basically or constitutively rational. The reason for this is that for engagements to be related with other engagements of the person is for them to make sense as the person’s engagements. We understand, for example, what it is for Peter to be happy that Sandra is back. It means, for instance, that he has been missing her, that he hopes they may renew their relationship, that he is excited to hear the news of her return, and so on. Furthermore, it is central to Davidson’s notion of basic rationality that the person’s attitudes are not reducible to any array of interlinkages with other engagements, but rather their interlinkages are indeterminate and changeable, and here too I must agree. In attributing an attitude (or any other engagement) to a person, we appeal to known and unknown interlinkages with her behavior, further attitudes, and so on, while, by same token, we are ready to understand the attitude through other (new or counterfactual) connections— other connections with the same engagements, as well as connections with different engagements.16 According to Davidson, however, the unity in plurality of the attitudes answers to a condition of harmony—or, as he calls it, consistency—between the attitudes. Allowing for cases of disharmony or inconsistency, Davidson understands them as states in which the subject is in a sense destroyed.17 In fact, ambivalence demands a unity in plurality and does not constitute any difficulty for this concept. When a person is ambivalent in the full sense of the word, his attitudes are opposed from his point of view, that is, they are interlinked by their opposition; like any other mental interlinkage, such connection requires other related interlinkages.18 If the account above is appropriate and if ambivalence is an ordinary mode of unity in plurality, then we can use ambivalence to exemplify the features under discussion. Again, consider Peter. Peter has mixed feelings regarding Sandra’s coming back to town, and the opposition between his emotions is shaped by further interlinkages. For instance, his unhappiness that Sandra is back might mean, in particular, that he is afraid of his happiness (“I’m becoming dependent on her again, I know, with all the suffering to come,” he might feel). Alternatively, his opposed emotions may give rise to compromise behavior or compromise attitudes.19 In this case, each of the poles would be shaped as an emotion that, together with the antithetical pole, finds expression



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in the compromise behavior or attitude. For example, Peter’s unhappiness would combine with his happiness into trying to meet Sandra (he might try to fix a meeting with her partially to get rid of something that cannot be forever avoided and bring to a close the disturbing new opportunities, tasks, and decisions created by her return). One way or the other, the opposed attitudes are characterized together: Peter’s unhappiness that Sandra is back would be unhappiness at something that he is at the same time happy about. It is also part of their character as engagements and elements of a unity through interlinking that Peter’s opposed attitudes could each have different interlinkages than they actually have. Thus Peter’s happiness at Sandra’s return is a pole of his ambivalence, yet it could be held wholeheartedly.20 This can be revealed in attributions of the happiness that explicitly depict it as transcending its ambivalent interlinkages. For example, a friend of Peter might say that, true, Peter is happy as Sandra is back, but that his happiness would not take this air of masochism were he not also unhappy about her return. Similarly, the attitude of ambivalence—the opposed attitudes as mutually connected—transcends the actual connections that constitute it. Thus, it might be appropriate to say of Peter that he could be both happy and unhappy that Sandra is back and yet not try to meet her, if he learned to be more patient. 3. Ambivalence and Integration If ambivalence manifests a unity in plurality, then the opposed emotions are connected in concrete ways in which one’s life with that ambivalence consists. Yet when ambivalence, and in particular emotional ambivalence, is acknowledged, it is often analyzed in terms of two irrelated attitudes. Thus, in an influential paper, Patricia Greenspan (1980) argued that emotional ambivalence is possible and basically rational because the emotions are separate. Greenspan takes the basically rational character of emotion to consist in a structure in which an emotion is held for a reason, and she argues that opposed emotions are simply held independently for different reasons. As I see it, emotions are not always or typically held for reasons. More to the point, a single reason may underlie one’s conflicting emotions (and the opposition between them), as when the huge implications of taking a certain action are a reason for the person to fear acting thus, but also to be positively excited about it. The more basic problem with Greenspan’s view, however, is that when conflicting emotions are held for reasons and these reasons are different, this is not the whole story. First, the basic rationality of the poles and the ambivalence consists in other interlinkages beside those that capture reasons—indeed, each of the poles of ambivalence makes sense, in particular,

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in terms of its oppositional interlinkage with the other pole;21 and, second, if ambivalence is a mode of our unity in plurality, it can be expected that the reasoning for one pole would often become relevant to, and transformed by, the reasoning for the other pole. This close possibility is inadvertently acknowledged by Greenspan who elaborates on her definition of contrary emotions as “emotions it would be inappropriate to exhibit for the same reasons,” citing a reason that should have been quite alarming for her, namely that “[t]he reason for an emotion is necessarily a reason against its contrary” (1980, 236). Again, Christine Tappolet (2005) wishes to reconcile Greenspan’s account with the perceptual account of emotion, according to which an emotion consists in perceiving some value in its object. Tappolet argues that ambivalence between opposed emotional perceptions of value is possible because in such a case the person perceives different and irrelated values—for example, that a journey is both dangerous and attractive. Defenses of the perceptual account of emotion also furnish us with examples of a more radical separation between the emotions—a separation that in fact abolishes the ambivalence altogether. It is claimed (Goldie 2007, 935) as an advantage of perceptual accounts that they can handle conflicts between an emotion and judgment and between opposed emotions. The idea is that emotions under ambivalence are analogous to non-believed perceptions, such as when we have a visual illusion and realize that it is an illusion. Such a perception would be held in a certain sense separately from the belief to the contrary. It would neither be changed by that belief nor take it in any way in account, and similarly for cases of two “opposed” perceptions. The problem, however, is that with this separation the ambivalence itself vanishes. Ambivalence implies relevance, and ambivalence between a perception and a judgment implies a cognitive relevance. If you are presented with someone who is said to be fifty years old but he looks to you more like thirty, for your attitude to be ambivalent your belief that the person is fifty must be undermined by the impression of youth you get from him and vice versa.22 The poles of ambivalence cannot be separate. Must they not, however, lack more substantial unity? When ambivalence is not thought to be impossible, it is often thought to be the opposite of mental integration; yet, in fact, ambivalence always involves integrated and integrative aspects and may even be integrated to such an extent that it hardly can be described as consisting in two emotions. Investigating ambivalent emotions, David Pugmire (2005) defines deep emotion as emotion that has strong bonds with other mental states and dispositions and argues that substantial emotions require depth, where ambivalence excludes depth. Ambivalence is only possible on his account to the extent that at least one of its poles comprises an attenuated engagement, as in art or imagination.23 Yet ambivalence can be part of the interweaving that makes



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emotions deep. Suppose Peter is to meet Sandra. Is not his fear all the deeper if it is also bound up with hopes that something good will come out this meeting? Surely love is different when it is mixed with hate; but is it shallower for that? Do not certain forms of love mingled with hate serve as the clearest examples of deeply engaging emotions, precisely in virtue of their mutual connections? Moreover, might we not in these and other cases see the ambivalence itself as deep or as integrated? Many of the ways in which ambivalence can be integrated can be captured by distinguishing between primary and secondary ambivalence. According to this distinction—drawn in appendix A, 262—if in secondary ambivalence the person holds two distinct contrary attitudes to something (so that the ambivalence only comes, so to speak, second), primary ambivalence cannot be analyzed into distinct parts. Rather, ambivalence would be primary inasmuch as any presentation of one pole appeals implicitly or explicitly to the other pole or to the ambivalent attitude as a whole. The primary or secondary character of a person’s ambivalence is only a relative matter,24 but, at the same time, this is an empirical distinction, that is, some forms of ambivalence are more primary than others. Our final step in this chapter supports both parts of this claim. One form of primary ambivalence is manifested when emotional types or emotion names (e.g., “love,” “hope”) are explicated in terms of ambivalence, while the unity of the emotion is retained. Emotional types have indeed been analyzed as forms of primary ambivalence. Sartre analyzes emotions, in general, as modes of primary ambivalence: “[A] consciousness which affects itself with sadness is sad precisely for this reason . . . If I make myself sad, it is because I am not sad” (1958a, 61).25 Other philosophers have analyzed special emotions as forms of primary ambivalence. Nozick (1991) analyzes romantic love as an ambivalent fusion of a desire to possess the other completely and the need that the other be an independent and nonsubservient person. Ben-ze’ev (1993) understands unitary emotions such as love, envy, and anger in terms of conflicting evaluations. Other emotions that include an aspect of primary ambivalence are longing and hope. Longing for a no-more existing home, for example, is bitter-sweet: one is both happy and sad to remember and is sad because home was sweet, while if the sweet affection is a longing, it is affection for a home sadly gone for good. Hope (as well as fear in the sense in which hope and fear are contraries) entails ambivalence between optimism and pessimism. Its poles are not equivalent: to hope for the best is a mainly optimistic attitude. However, if one hopes, then one is not sure that the object of one’s hope will be realized. One must, then, in a way, fear that it will not be realized. The notion of perfect optimism is inconsistent. (Note that the primary ambivalence under hope does not refer to its direct object. If someone hopes to get a raise, for example, it does not follow that

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she is ambivalent about getting a raise: she does not have to fear that she may actually get a raise. Rather, the ambivalence involved in hope concerns the world, or life: one is ambivalent over whether they are promising in regard to the realization of hope.) Emotions are particularly central to this chapter as bound up with complexes of other engagements, such that the emotional perspective is captured by the array of interlinkages. Can the notion of primary ambivalence be established at this level? And how secondary can secondary ambivalence be when the emotions are distinguished in terms of their complexes? Indeed, even when emotional ambivalence is more adequately described as secondary, that is, in terms of two opposed attitudes, each with its respective emotional complex, the opposed attitudes comprise, as the phrase goes, mixed feelings. It is at most in a limited sense that the conflicting emotions are correlated to separate complexes of mental elements. First, the actual complexes are different from the complexes that could characterize each of the emotions if not for the ambivalence. Second, many elements that participate or relate to the ambivalence could hardly be placed in either complex of either of the opposed emotions. We can see in the following example both that in understanding any of the conflicting emotions in terms of their respective complex, the emotion is already taken as part of the ambivalence and that various elements of any (or both) complexes are only arbitrarily understood as particularly related with the respective emotion. Suppose Sandra is happy and unhappy that her friend has won a prize they had both competed for. Thinking of such a situation, it seems plausible that the behavioral inclinations taking part in Sandra’s pleasure at her friend’s success will be different from those that a non-ambivalent pleasure may involve (they may, for instance, be, so to speak, exaggerated). Similarly, the judgments involved in her pleasure may well be different (an appreciation of the need for her friend to win will possibly be significant, rather than the appreciation of the friend’s talents that led to his winning). Again, it is possible that Sandra’s ambivalent happiness (and unhappiness) will be accompanied by bodily feelings and instances of attention that are different than were she merely happy or merely unhappy that her friend won. For example, tiredness and irritability might bodily express her ambivalence, while events that are related to the competition, such as relevant conversations in hearing distance that would draw Sandra’s attention were she wholeheartedly either happy or unhappy, might, in case she is ambivalent, readily escape her attention. Indeed, the very model of two complexes of mental elements is unjustified, even for ambivalence in which the opposed emotions are in some significant sense independent of each other. Even when the ambivalence is best suited to be presented as two complexes, we, in fact, understand each emotion’s interlinkages with the engagements in its complex also in terms of the relations of



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the emotion and engagements with the opposed emotion and further engagements; and often, while the model forces us to locate such engagements as are involved in the emotional conflict in one or both of the emotional complexes, these engagements do not depict any of the emotions in any sense that suggests more than that they depict the complete ambivalence. To this more radical expression of the inadequacy of a two-complexes approach pertains, for instance, the attentional set presented in the example above. We are not really learning from it of Sandra’s pleasure at her friend’s success as such—in contrast with the way it is connected with her displeasure. In missing and disregarding remarks concerning the competition, Sandra indivisibly expresses her whole ambivalence. There is a third way in which the model collapses. The two-complexes model was to depict the emotions in ambivalence in terms of suitable emotional complexes, but also to depict their opposition in terms of oppositions between elements of the complexes. Yet we have seen in section 1 that the ambivalent opposition is never reducible to oppositions between components. Such oppositions may furthermore be completely absent: one can, for example, easily extend the example given above with all its details, adding a complex depicting Sandra’s unhappiness at the friend’s winning, without providing a clear opposition between any pair of constituents of one type or even between constituents of different types. The lack of opposition can go hand in hand with radically inadequate complexes that do not depict the respective emotions although they depict the nature of their connection. Thus, Sandra’s displeasure may find expression in excessive rejoicing over her friend’s winning, forgetting the competition whenever she can, tiredness, thinking that her friend will benefit from the prize much more than herself, and judging that what is important is that her friend succeeded. We say that she is ambivalent because those facts taken together express an emotional dilemma that Sandra copes with. Emotions are connected to various attitudes, sensations, and attention, but the connection changes with the concrete constellation. From this viewpoint, emotional ambivalence cannot be reduced to opposition between elements and accompaniments of the emotions. Thus, as a rule, emotional ambivalence includes integrative elements. In the above example, Sandra found a way to think, feel, and behave that is coherent enough for us to attribute to her an ambivalence that is devoid of any clear opposition between the particularities of her happiness and those of her unhappiness, if such distinct particularities there are. One can say that she formed an ambivalent point of view.26 This book argues that ambivalence may be thought of complementarily as two opposing attitudes and a unitary tension-fraught attitude. At the same time, particular cases of ambivalence can be more aptly described as one attitude or as two, or again as primary or secondary. The structure of two

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opposing attitudes allows us to think of emotional ambivalence, in general, as two opposing emotions, and because an emotion may be understood in terms of a complex of related engagements, it is tempting to conceive of emotional ambivalence in terms of two opposing complexes. Such a conception is not wrong and the model has merits, given that it is acknowledged as inherently undermined. Given that it is acknowledged that the opposing emotions are to some extent always a single emotion bound up with a common emotional complex, the notion of two complexes captures well the fact that the poles of ambivalence form different loci of interlinkages. In accordance with this, the ability to make a good use of the model depends on the case. When the ambivalence is elucidated by describing it as a unitary attitude, or as primary ambivalence, it may be primary in involving such interdependency of interlinkages that the outlining of two complexes is highly misleading or simply impossible. Is the example above a case in point? The poles of Sandra’s ambivalence are understood there in terms of two complexes that show her ambivalence together but do not respectively show her as happy or as unhappy and that do not include oppositions between their components. We can hence say that her ambivalence is to some extent primary and that the two complexes are arbitrarily divided. Yet Sandra’s ambivalence may well also be considered as somewhat secondary. First, ambivalence may be considered secondary in view of specific interlinkages of the respective poles that are taken to be of importance. For instance, we may think of Sandra as happy and also unhappy about her friend’s success and not only as happy-although-unhappy and vice versa, because her happiness is importantly interlinked to her appreciation of the well-being of her friend, and her unhappiness is importantly interlinked to the disappointment she has experienced. While the care for her friend’s wellbeing and the disappointment would only make the happiness or unhappiness understood when combined with other interlinkages, and furthermore the care and disappointment are themselves shaped within the ambivalence, they can still sometimes emphasize the two attitudes in which the ambivalence consists. Two other reasons to think of Sandra’s ambivalence as secondary suggest also that there is some merit in the two-complexes way of speaking even in regard to primary ambivalence. The first point is that if Sandra is happy about her friend’s success, there is more to say about her happiness than that it is opposed to her unhappiness. There would often be interlinkages to evoke concerning one of the poles to which the opposition is relatively irrelevant, such that we can conceive of the attitudes as suggesting two complexes even if they are closely interlinked at heart. However, and this is the second point, the core of opposition itself calls for speaking of two attitudes even when the two complexes neither depict the



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respective emotions nor suggest specific ways that the emotions are opposed. As we have begun to see in section 2, emotional ambivalence, just like other emotions and attitudes, is never understood simply in terms of its actual interlinkages. In the case of ambivalence, in identifying a tension-fraught perspective, we see the array of related engagements, however integrated as well as stable it might be, as still in a sense precarious: we understand it in terms of the two poles of ambivalence, which transcend their actual interlinkages, and in particular transcend the actual way that they are opposed and perhaps also the fact that they are opposed.27 This suggests that some ambivalence may be secondary in that its actual character invites saying things as to how the respective attitudes might be. Sandra’s unhappiness is perhaps sufficiently understood on its own that we may have some positive ideas as to how it might connect with the happiness differently, or how the unhappiness would be if Sandra was not ambivalent. We can see, for example, how tired Sandra is after congratulating her friend, and say, “Well, she is happy for her friend, but her situation is not easy. Surely if his success was not her own loss, the festivities would not exercise her so much.” Similarly, we may say, “Surely she is happy her friend has won, and if tomorrow something good turns up for her as well, she might be more ready to acknowledge that he has been an excellent choice.” We can say that Sandra’s ambivalence is secondary and in this respect appreciate the talk of two complexes even in the especially undermined form it takes in the example. It is true that some such counterfactual talk might be used in regard to any ambivalence, which is another way to say that primary ambivalence is a relative notion. Ambivalence may, however, be quite obviously primary, with actual interlinkages that make it hard to think of it as involving two emotions with two complexes of actual interlinkages, as well as to be ready to equate the poles of ambivalence with any non-ambivalent emotions. How might such a primary ambivalence look? A minor change in the example, for instance, adding a hint of cynicism to Sandra’s gesture in congratulating her friend, can cancel the relative separateness of the opposed emotions. In this case, it may be difficult to speak of Sandra as being happy, although she is certainly ambivalent. The sincerity of her congratulations, and with them of the joy, has been spoiled, even though the congratulations are not meaningless. Instead of the opposed emotions in the above example, in the current version Sandra entertains a unitary ambivalent emotion, say “embittered happiness.” In a unitary ambivalent emotion, the opposed emotions, and not only all or some of the concrete expressions of the emotions, cannot be described separately. From one important viewpoint, such ambivalence is a clearly integrated mode of existence: a unitary complex forming a unitary ambivalent perspective. From another viewpoint, one can claim that such primary

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emotional ambivalence is actually less integrated than ambivalence with more distinct poles, since the different poles penetrate each other in a way that prevents even the unity of each pole in itself. The two claims may be more or less appropriate according to the case and the particular concern with integration. One way or the other, we have seen that emotional ambivalence comprises a mode of unity in plurality and that it is in terms of the interlinkages involved in the ambivalence that particular instances can be understood and that levels and aspects of integration can be described. notes 1. While the chapter discusses human personhood, the most general points concern personhood or subjectivity in general. 2. Koch defines “emotions” as complexes of elements of the four kinds in 259. 3. Blackman 2013 takes compound accounts of emotion to be tantamount to accounts according to which emotions supervene on elements of certain other types. 4. Goldie, 2002, especially chapter 3. I disagree, however, with Goldie’s analysis of “feeling towards” as thinking of the object as having some character, the thought having a special emotional content. More generally, insofar as ambivalence is not concerned, the view defended here of the emotion as interlinked with other mental and behavioral elements is rather close to Goldie’s (see 2002, chapter 2). 5. Only in principle. The couching of attitudes in consciousness should not exclude the psychoanalyst’s unconscious attitudes, but would exclude the view that sunflowers like the sun insofar as they incline toward it. 6. See also Goldie 2002, 51–57. Goldie also criticizes the reduction of emotion to belief and desires. 7. I am not suggesting, however, that bodily sensations are “mere qualia.” I believe that this term is self-contradictory and that qualia are in any case intentional (a headache is felt as a headache), thus I only use this expression for the purposes of simplification. 8. The interdependency between mental attitudes and their conscious entertainments is discussed in chapter 5. 9. Two of the elements in the complex of the emotion—bodily feelings and attention—are by definition conscious, but they would not always express the emotion in the first person. In addition, the sets of attention that are tied to an emotion have to do with what the emotion hides no less than with what it reveals, namely with that which person is not attentive to or does not notice. Judgments and desires can also be conscious and can also be consciously connected to the emotions. 10. To be more precise, desires do not necessarily express emotions, but there is nothing like a pure desire. In any particular case, we can ask why Peter wants to forgive and why he wants to accuse, and replies would lead to further questions, positing the desires as centers of complexes of engagements. 11. Of course these motives can be mixed.



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12. This ignores young babies and people in very extreme conditions, whose subjectivity may be described as liminal. What is important for the present discussion is that subjectivity begins to crumble by the same token that unity in plurality does. 13. More on unity in plurality versus quasi-simple unity in chapter 6. 14. Engagements can be defined as the concrete manifestations of subjectivity or as the intentional aspects of a person’s life. See Introduction, section 3. 15. Emotions are also connected to mental and behavioral elements that do not for themselves engage the person, but this may be ignored. See Introduction, section 4. 16. I argue for the soft identity of attitudes in chapter 4, section 2. 17. Davidson develops his view of wholehearted holism and basic rationality in many essays. See, in particular, Davidson 1984 for his holism and basic rationality and Davidson 1985a for ambivalence as the destruction of that holistic subject. I examine and revise his account of basic rationality in chapter 4, section 2, and chapter 7. 18. Velleman 2006, 203–23 (“The Self as Narrator”) and Nussbaum 1990 constitute further “unity in plurality” conceptions of rational life; see chapter 6, 135–36. 19. In a more abstract sense, compromise—a life course in which both opposed attitudes are expressed—is a necessary or almost necessary aspect of ambivalence. 20. I call an attitude “wholehearted” if it is neither ambivalent nor a pole of ambivalence. 21. In some cases of ambivalence, one emotion may be a reason for the conflicting emotion, but this is neither the general rule nor do the conflicting attitudes ever relate merely as an emotion and its reason. 22. See Goldie 2002, 74 and Döring 2009, especially 243. Döring’s paper makes interesting suggestions regarding the basically rational relations that connect perceptions and perceptual emotions to beliefs. Chapter 5, section 3.1, discusses a complementary way in which ambivalence is threatened by its interpretation as analogous to an unbelieved perception. The presumably separate (emotional) perception and belief are, in fact, supposed to stand in harmonious relations, there being no cognitive opposition between a completely unbelieved perception, and the believing or perceiving of the contrary. I analyze ambivalence between emotional perceptions in Razinsky In review. 23. Although Pugmire’s account of ambivalence expresses a presupposition that consistency is a minimal condition of unity in plurality, his concrete classification nicely elucidates ambivalence that is full-blown and even integrated, including compromise emotions and actions (Pugmire 2005, section V). 24. It is also of a matter of perspective. The poles of ambivalence can be rather independent of each other in one respect, and less so in another. 25. See also Sartre 1948. 26. Poltera 2010 rejects the contrast between ambivalence and integration and acknowledges “constitutional ambivalence (ambivalence that significantly defines who an agent is and how she acts)” (298). Schramme 2014 defends integrated ambivalence in terms of a narrative unity of the self. 27. A merely actual character is not sufficient either for attitudes, or, even besides this, for the ambivalent opposition. Note also that the second point does not change if

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the poles of ambivalence are correlated with two quite distinct complexes. Why say they are opposed? Chapter 4 analyzes what I call the soft logic of mental attitudes and shows, focusing on behavior, that ambivalence is possible because it can take an actual form and because it cannot be exhausted by it. The relations of the mind’s unity in plurality and basic rationality with the possibility of reconnection is further defended in chapter 6, section 1, and section 2.1 in the same chapter contrasts primary ambivalence with a fused wholehearted emotion that has grown out of ambivalence.

Chapter 4

Behavioral Conflict The Case of Emotional Ambivalence

Peter longs to see his ex-girlfriend Sandra, even while he is also frightened and repelled by the prospect of a meeting. Sandra’s friend has won a professional position for which Sandra had also applied. She is both happy and unhappy that he has got the position.1

1. Ambivalence as Contradictory Dispositions to Behavior 1.1 The Problem Human beings are very often ambivalent; philosophers, however, as we have seen in chapter 2, tend to find ambivalence conceptually embarrassing. Chapter 3 analyzed emotional ambivalence as a typical example of the unitary life of a person. In defending an account of the mind as a unity in plurality—a mental unity in the maintaining of plural attitudes and other engagements—the problem from subjectivity, according to which a subject cannot be ambivalent, was dissolved. Much of the difficulty centers, however, on the relation between ambivalence and behavior: one might fairly say that an ambivalent person holds two opposed attitudes toward something,2 while a mental attitude captures a “thread” of a human life and thus a range of our actual and potential behavior and consciousness. For current purposes, we can ignore nonbehavioral consciousness (see note 10 and section 3.1). Given this, the dispositional aspect of attitudes suggests that ambivalence can be thought of in terms of opposed dispositions to behavior. Yet how could that be? How could ambivalence even imply opposed behavioral dispositions, let alone constitute them? It seems that a person in such a condition would not be 79

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able to act: she would not even be able to say, “I am ambivalent!” Nor would she be able to express one pole of her ambivalence, rather than the other.3 Most of the philosophers who deal with the problem from behavior without disavowing ambivalence altogether accept one of these alternatives (or some mixture of the two): either the person’s behavior (her words included) expresses a mere opposition of attitudes, whereas the opposed poles themselves are in fact lost, or the ambivalent person makes a choice in regard to action even if she remains ambivalent.4 This chapter explicates the relations of attitudes, behavior, and ambivalence in terms of a post-Davidsonian account of basic rationality and studies the behavioral character of conflicts of desires and especially—for reasons that will emerge—of emotion. This inquiry should strongly suggest that the two alternatives are at most modes of living with ambivalence among other modes,5 while ambivalent behavior can more primarily be conceived as compromise behavior. At the outset, however, it is more important to see that neither of these treatments of ambivalence is of any help in alleviating the problem from behavior. Worse, if the notion of opposed behavioral dispositions is indeed inconsistent, not only is it hard to see how the opposed dispositions can be acted on, but it becomes unclear what it means that they both exist. Must not such conflicting dispositions cancel each other out, thereby eradicating the ambivalence that they are supposed to characterize? 1.2 A Dispositional View of Attitudes First, a clarification is needed. We have seen that if one wishes to understand attitudes in terms of dispositions to behavior without disavowing ambivalence, one encounters a problem. Although the view that ambivalence is incompatible with rational or significant behavior is often endorsed by popular opinion as well as a wide range of philosophers and researchers, the present formulation of the problem may suggest that it only arises under a certain dubious conception of attitudes. The discussion below concerns the problem also as understood in terms of a weaker relation between attitudes and behavior. The book and this chapter accept, however, a dispositional view of attitudes, while rejecting its reductive reading for the sake of a non-reductive one. But why should a dispositional view be accepted in the first place? My reply is that I am concerned with attitudes in a sense that ought to make their dispositional character undeniable. Part of the reply would, hence, be to stress what I am not asking in the above question. The nature of attitudes is sometimes debated as a part of a physicalist discourse, such that the right view is supposed to clarify something about the brain.6 From the current perspective, however, our sole interest is with the life of a person as she pursues it and as it is encountered by others. A human life allows us to attribute a person with



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various points of view or mental attitudes, toward various matters. It may be said that the points of view capture routes in our lives. This is also why I reject the view that attitudes, or emotions, or desires are exhausted by such states in which they are consciously felt, or, again, that they are purely mental in any sense which contrasts mind and behavior.7 Retaining some vagueness, this book reserves the term “attitudes” for points of view, for example, emotions, whose scope is wider than actual behavior, namely dispositional points of view. In the term “behavior,” we may include the concrete phenomena of our lives as creatures-with-points-of-view that belong to the public sphere: anything we do, which has a physical aspect.8 Thus, to the extent that an attitude isolates a certain route taken by the agent, there is a sense that an attitude is a disposition to behavior. 1.3 The Task: A Radical Renunciation of Reduction According to the position of logical behaviorism, mental attributes are nothing but succinct descriptions of dispositions to behavior. If we should wish to speak of attitudes in dispositional terms, this cannot, however, be meant as a Carnapian explication. I am not trying to translate the language of attitudes to a behavioral language, and thus in speaking of behavioral dispositions, I do not posit a translation scheme. Instead, the terminology of dispositions to behavior is used here to articulate the close conceptual relations between attitudes and behavior. This, however, requires that we do not interpret “behavioral disposition” reductively. Two such reductions must be rejected at once. We should note, first, that no question of the translation of mental terms arises for us. Such a question does not arise because the explication of ambivalence as a matter of opposed dispositions concerns people’s particular attitudes. Our task in this chapter begins with seeing that mental attitudes, such as Sandra’s happiness that her friend has won the position, must amount to dispositions to behavior. This, however, does not have to point to a possibility of analyzing happiness in terms of behavior. Nor does it suggest that some other mental concept, which transcends the particular attitude, for example, happiness about a friend’s success, may be thus analyzed. Moreover—and this is the second preliminary precaution—nothing about the possibility of locating Sandra’s own emotion in her conduct suggests that her behavior expresses her happiness without reference to her other attitudes and further engagements.9 I argue in this chapter that the problem from behavior, in its strict and loose forms, is misconceived. According to the strict versions, attributions of ambivalence are self-contradictory, either because the opposed attitudes of ambivalence constitute opposed behavioral dispositions or because such attitudes would necessarily cause, or logically imply, contradictory behavior.

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The looser versions do not consider ambivalence impossible, since they take attitudes to suggest rather than necessitate behavior, and here I shall agree. The considerations to be presented require, however, a rejection of their form of the reductive assumption together with the rejection of the strict versions. For they assume that the actual behavior under ambivalence must ensue from the conjunction of contradictory dispositions, and that ambivalence is hence dysfunctional and irrational, or at best goes with behavior that is either limited or one-sided. Yet as we have begun to see in earlier chapters, ambivalence, in fact, allows for significant behavior. Perhaps the question is how this is possible. In answering this question, we shall also be able to elaborate on the sense in which to entertain an attitude is to be disposed to behave accordingly. I suggest that the key to the dissolution of the problem from behavior is that we stop thinking of the relation of behavior and attitudes—of behavior’s relation with emotion and with emotional ambivalence—in reductive terms. It will not be sufficient, however, to understand attitudes as (1) the dispositions of particular people in particular times and (2) constituted together with other attitudes and engagements. Thus if (1) Peter’s specific sorrow disposes him to do A when (2) he believes himself unwatched, whereas his happiness disposes him not to do A under the same belief, the attribution to him of sorrow ambivalently mixed with happiness seems as perplexing as ever. This chapter identifies, and argues against, two reductions, which still survive in our acknowledgment of (1) and (2). Insofar as the understanding of ambivalence as a person’s holding of two opposed behavioral dispositions implies that ambivalence is paralyzing or impossible, it wrongly assumes, first, the reduction of attitudes to dispositions toward specific (even if unspecified) behavior, and, second, it reduces the concept of ambivalence to that of an opposition of behavioral dispositions.10 We can think of emotional ambivalence, for example, in terms of opposed behavior and of opposed behavioral dispositions, but only insofar as such opposition is referred back to the emotional conflict. When it is thus conceived, the opposition of dispositions also sheds light on aspects and forms of ambivalence. 1.4 Conflicts of Desire We are going to focus in this chapter on emotional ambivalence, and yet the reader might well have in mind another mode of ambivalence that is interlinked with behavior in an even more definitive way, namely, ambivalence of desire. In this case, one might find it all too easy to think of the attitudes in ambivalence as independently determined and mutually exclusive inclinations to act, since our life and language include a concept of opposition of desires, and desires—the attitudes of wanting or of not wanting certain things



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to be the case—may be understood in terms of suitable inclinations to act. We can formulate ambivalence of desire as a person’s wanting and yet not wanting something to hold and infer contradictory dispositions to promote the desired state of affairs, on the one hand, and to avoid its promotion, on the other. We can also formulate ambivalence of desire as the holding of both a desire that P and a desire that not-P.11 At the risk of oversimplifying things, it can be said that a desire that P turns first on a desire to act in order that P, and, second, it turns on an inclination to act in order that P.12 Opposed desires are hence linked in principle to actions in opposed directions, and such actions are supposed to make contradictory sentences true. Thus, this formulation brings our problems to the fore once again. Does it not mean that ambivalence of desire makes action impossible? (The problem from behavior as a problem for ambivalence of desire is investigated in chapter 9.) In addition, what about the opposition of behavioral inclinations that are constitutive of ambivalence of emotion? Should it not be conceived as one or more oppositions of desires? And if it should, does not ambivalence of emotion also negate action? Will Peter promote a meeting with Sandra or not? How can we even say that he is disposed to both things? I suggested in chapter 2, section 2.4 that this cluster of concerns hampers even the work of those philosophers who acknowledge ambivalence. In order to tackle it, we need to consider the relations between attitudes and behavior. That which makes the mind a unity in plurality (chapter 3, section 2) is the basic rationality of our engagements and the open identity which as such they confer on each other. 2. Openly Interrelated Engagements: The Logic of Partial Constitution Davidson has famously articulated in regard to weakness of the will a version of the view that ambivalence of desire (and of value judgment) is inconceivable. While ostensibly allowing internal conflicts in general, his view, in fact, deprives at least one pole of such “conflicts” of its motivational character, and thus of its being a disposition to action.13 This is a pity because the concept of basic or constitutive rationality—the core of Davidson’s analysis of the mental aspects of personhood—directs us to a more appropriate understanding of conflicts of desires and of emotions. Davidson is asking what is involved in saying that a person has a certain mental attribute, for example, that she wants that something be case. He answers that mental attributions assume the basic rationality of the agent, or, in other words, that in ascribing an engagement to someone we implicitly and explicitly take it to be rationally connected with other engagements we may

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ascribe her.14 As I see it, what basic rationality captures is the character of the engagements as perspectives that the person has. Assertions on any topic may always need additional assertions in order to be understood. The central concepts of subjectivity require, however, more than the dependence of propositions on other propositions: they require that a mental attribution depends on other propositions pertaining to a certain category, that is, other mental attributions concerning this person. Moreover, this dependence must suggest the sense of such propositions for the person they concern and not just for those who ascribe them. Differently put, the concepts of subjectivity demand that the sense of an attribution of some engagement to Sandra has to do with the sense that the engagement has in Sandra’s life. The proposition that Sandra is happy at her friend’s success presents a point of view of Sandra; and, since people are not abstract points of view, in asking of the sense of the attribution—What does it mean that Sandra is happy that such and such? What point of view does she take in this regard?—we are asking what it means to be thus engaged for that person who is engaged in such and such other ways, or how that engagement is related to other particular engagements of that person. For example, a certain behavior may fulfill a desire that expresses an emotion, but which conflicts with one’s plans. Such relations are constitutive of the engagements they link. Peter longs to meet Sandra in a sense that implies a desire on his part, and Peter’s being shy about seeing Sandra is a shyness with regard to something he longs to do. Yet while contributing to the identity of Peter’s longing or shyness, these relations (and any set or array of such interlinkages) are only partially constitutive. If they were fully constitutive and simply defined the interrelated engagements—as the concepts of a point and a straight line may jointly be defined by the Euclidean axioms—these “engagements” could not impart sense to each other. This too follows from the requirement that we ascribe the subject something that is sensible or reasonable in her life, making sense for her rather than merely for observers. A feature of a person that has a determinate or “hard” identity would not capture her as a subject, while engagements require interlinkages that would give the engagements a soft identity transcending these interlinkages. To see this, suppose that Sarah’s love for her friend is bound up with warmness and hugs. If we render this an analytic statement, then this fixated so-called love ceases to comprise an attitude. The so-called hugging cannot account for the love’s existence and basic rationality. Rather, Sarah’s love is understood as a mere summary of other elements, which themselves lose their intentional character. If Sarah’s loving and hugging are aspects of her subjectivity, then we must allow for situations in which her love would not change and yet she would decline the hugs (which would imply some other rational linking of her attitudes, behavior, and consciousness).15



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The person’s engagements must hence conform to a soft logic in which their interlinkages can lend them sense only because they do not exhaustively or irrevocably determine it. Let us look into what such partial constitution means, having in view actual and potential behavior. This would be tantamount to seeing that a mental attitude, for example a desire, cannot be a fixed disposition. We may begin by recalling that wanting something and behaving in a certain related way (like any other interrelated engagements) always demand additional interlinkages. In order to know what Pedro—who wholeheartedly wants to meet his old friend Sarah—might do, we turn to what he judges comfortable or appropriate, to his worries about being intrusive, to his never-ending daily tasks, as well as to an array of beliefs and conventions he maintains. Without such additional interlinkages, Pedro’s desire is meaningless. At the same time, any such linkage over-specifies the desire. Thus, a conversation, which is perhaps itself part of the pursuing of the desire to meet Sarah, could change Pedro’s ideas regarding how it is appropriate to proceed and reveal the former “actual disposition” as misleading. In accordance with the indeterminate constitution of attitudes by the behavior to which one is liable in having the attitude, we often present attitudes in terms of certain dispositions (which would in any case be vague) in order to emphasize some aspect of the attitude. For instance, a desire is a disposition to fulfill a certain aim, but this does not mean that if one wants something, one always, or only, fulfills one’s aim. Instead, the perspective toward fulfillment, which the desire consists in, appears in some relevant way in the actual interlinkages of that desire. If he wishes to call his colleague Sandro this evening, Pedro might indeed do so, but he could also, for example, forget about it, being startled, perhaps, when it later comes to his mind. Alternatively, he might decline to call Sandro because he feels too tired, perhaps leaving it for the next day. Or, maybe, on meeting Sandro’s partner accidentally, Pedro would partly pursue his wish to call him by mentioning it, and so on. Ambivalence is another sort of instance in which we may emphasize an aspect of the attitudes by articulating it in terms of some disposition. We may note that a pole of ambivalence of desire presents a disposition that in fact is not carried out as such. Peter wants to meet Sandra and this suggests a certain course of action, but he also does not want to meet her, and this invites conduct that is inconsistent with the first course. There is much he could do in such a case, but he cannot pursue both these mutually exclusive routes. On the other hand, such dispositions help to show the point of the things that one does; they allow one to see how the poles interconnect.16 The logic of action in light of contrary desires is considered in chapter 9. For now, let us attend to an example showing the distance an action might have from the conflicting inclinations, even while one pursues them. We return to Peter’s mixed feelings toward meeting Sandra. Suppose that in

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accordance with these mixed feelings Peter wants to phone Sandra, but is also deterred by it, and in the end leaves the house and turns on the answering machine. All this suggests several conclusions. First, we see that we have the conceptual tools to speak of inclinations to opposed behavior in a conflict, without rendering the attribution of the opposed desires self-contradictory. Second, it turns out that the behavioral dispositions that explicate desire in ambivalence and in other contexts refer back to desires that no actual and potential behavior can exhaust. Third, we see that an abstract ambivalent desire that P and that not-P (e.g., that the person will have a meeting with Sandra and that he will not) might leave us rather clueless as to the character of the ambivalence. We know then that the agent is in some respect disposed to certain vague and changeable P-enhancing behavior, as well as that he is disposed to such P-preventing behavior. We also know that he wants that P, but that he wants it as something he also, in some indeterminately given way, does not want, and that this is revealed in the character of his dispositions, under his ambivalence, to fulfill P and to fulfill not-P. Yet what is the positive character taken by these structural relations, which are already known in regard to the abstract level? The interconnections of behavior, desire, and an opposed desire must presuppose actual and potential relations with the rest of the person’s life. Such relations would, in the case of emotional ambivalence, include the emotions of which the desires may form a part and which they constitute and express.

3. Conflicts of Emotional Dispositions 3.1 Emotional Ambivalence Provides a Favorable Case Study At this stage, it should be possible to generally appreciate the character of attitudes as openly interrelated with behavior, opposed attitudes, and other engagements. Thus, we can return in a concrete way to our problem and reexamine if, perhaps, ambivalence as well as the significant behavioral expression of ambivalence and its poles may in truth be possible. We are in a position to reject various proposals for the behavioral reduction of the emotions and the conflict and attend to the irreductive relations that emotions have with behavior, desires, and opposing emotions. The primary domain for this analysis is going to be that of emotions and emotional ambivalence; here, the interlinkages between emotions and desires, evoked above, demonstrate the difference between these two kinds of attitude, even while both are behavioral dispositions. After all, were we on the contrary to identify the behavioral disposition of emotion with a desire, the emotion



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would be the desire, rather than be interrelated with it, nor, as we see below, can we conceive of an emotion as a set of desires. Yet why are we turning to emotions? Our concern in this chapter being with ambivalence as a behavioral conflict, the direct relation of the concept of desire to behavior has brought the attitude of desire to the fore of our inquiry. The special relation between desire and behavior also diverts us, however, from our general concern, whereas the differences between desire and emotion recommend that we study how emotional ambivalence is related to behavior. This is because emotional ambivalence emphasizes at one and the same time the difficulty that behavior seems to present for ambivalence, and the irreducibility of ambivalence to two antithetical clusters of behavior. The focus on emotion emphasizes the difficulty because when we think about emotional behavior, we are often interested in any behavior to which we would like to say that the person is disposed insofar as he possesses a certain emotion. Regarding desires, on the other hand, we have a more specific interest, namely in dispositions to such behavior that would comprise the intended fulfillment of the desire (the fulfillment disposition, in what follows); and if we acknowledge that the concern for fulfillment is narrower than that of the disposition to behavior in which a desire can be said to consist, we may feel that ambivalence of desire does not in general threaten behavior on the desires, even if it allegedly thwarts fulfillment.17 It will thus be more suitable for dispelling the basic problem from behavior if we found that the behavioral conflict of emotion ought not to be understood reductively. We turn to this examination in the next section after first tackling a number of objections. It might be objected that emotional ambivalence is not suitable for demonstrating that the problem from behavior is misconceived. In particular, one may suggest, based on one’s preferred analysis of emotion, that emotions are not behavioral dispositions and thus that the problem from behavior does not arise at all. The replies may differ according to the objections. Concerning the view that emotion is an occurrent feeling, I will endorse the various lines of thought that reject this, in particular the two Wittgensteinian points: a feeling is possible only through the public character that its interlinkage with behavior confers on it; and the scope of emotion goes beyond actuality. A sole addition at this point: even if we can speak of certain feelings that are not attitudes—a feeling of sadness that comes from listening to the sounds of night, perhaps— emotional ambivalence by definition requires attitudes. For when we say that an occurrent feeling, thought, or deed expresses ambivalence, we go beyond the actuality toward the two opposed points of view.18 Another objection would be to propose that emotions pertain to the domain of cognition rather than to conation or to a sui generis active kind of concern: they constitute or are similar to judgments or to perception. Yet this

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would be a pseudo-objection. For emotions may have as much in common with judgments as with desires, but how could this matter to us? Judgments must be lived, or expressed in behavior, just as desires are, and contradictory perceptions suggest contradictory courses of behavior in accordance with the rest of our engagements. This objection is all the more inappropriate if value judgments and perceptions engage us in a way that is not purely cognitive (chapter 8 and Razinsky In review). The objection is again inappropriate if emotions are complexes of judgmental, behavioral, conscious, and other engagements. Yet the view that emotion is a complex of mental elements from several categories may suggest another objection according to which emotional ambivalence does not suggest a behavioral conflict at all. Chapter 3 defends a view of emotion as a complex of engagements of various categories. Arguing that emotion, and emotional ambivalence, have a high level of complexity, I argue there against the view that the complex of the emotion-related engagements is merely a compound of mental and behavioral states of several foreign categories. Insofar as the compound view is assumed, however, it may suggest that even if an emotion is bound up with a behavioral disposition, such dispositions do not conflict. This would be the case were it the connection of emotion to a number of different categories that made emotional ambivalence possible. Here the idea is that emotional conflicts may be reducible to conflicts between different categories, for example, between what one wants and what one judges. Why, however, would any two engagements form ambivalence, be it emotional or of any other character, if they instantiated foreign categories? 3.2 Conflicts of Emotional Dispositions Cannot Be Understood Reductively The first thing to note is that conduct in accordance with emotions need not be purposive—namely, that it would not always pursue a mediatory desire that P. Thus, when a person smiles because he is content, the smile expresses his contentment. It is possible, of course, but not necessary, that he smiles in order to express his contentment. More ordinarily, if asked what he is smiling for, he might perhaps answer “for no reason, I am just content about certain news I have just heard.”19 The connection of emotion to nonpurposive behavior and action— “behavior” is used below as shorthand for this—makes it futile to attempt to reduce the emotional opposition to an opposition between behavioral inclinations.20 Inasmuch as an instance of behavior is considered as an emotional expression, it cannot appropriately be described as “done in order to.”21 Once this is seen, however, the temptation to view the notion of opposed emotional



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dispositions to behavior as inconsistent loses its hold. We have noted that the notion of the opposition of actions (and, derivatively, of behavioral dispositions) as mutually exclusive captures, in a sense, the conflict of desires, for it articulates its core aspect of contradictory aims at fulfillment. Without an analogue in the case of emotions, there is reason to judge that we need not worry that emotional conflict implies pairs composed of an act and its avoidance. Although this is not the general rule, emotional behavior is in fact often related to mediatory desires. It may thus be worthwhile to extend the point to such cases by noting that the desires arising out of conflicting emotions do not necessarily conflict.22 For instance, Sandra may want, on the one hand, to stay away from her friend, unhappy as she is about her friend’s success, and on the other hand, to hug her friend when they do meet, being happy that he won the position. Thus her emotional conflict does not make her pursue contradictory aims. Moreover, a behavioral inclination around an emotional desire is not identical to the desire’s “fulfillment disposition.” The routes emotions draw in our lives involve fulfillments together with articulations of desires, announcement of them, postponing desires, finding substitutes for them, and so on. Thus, conflicts of emotional behavior cannot be understood in terms of conflicting fulfillments. What about nonpurposive behavior? Even if opposed emotions do not generally dispose us to opposed fulfillments, they are at any rate opposed dispositions to behavior. Perhaps, then, we were too rash to dissipate the reductive approach to emotional ambivalence. In order to examine this, let us focus on smiles and their like, in which natural oppositions seem to occur. Although emotions, like desires, have typical behavior, and although opposed emotions also have, in a sense, opposed typical behaviors, they are not in general opposed in the sense that pertains to the fulfillments of desires. We might, however, acknowledge an important resemblance between emotional and volitional behavioral oppositions: we saw that even the opposition between contrary desire-fulfilling actions is not determined independently. Such actions are opposed as realizations of conflicting desires; thinking only of the opposition in principle between generic desire-fulfilling actions, the opposition is dependent on their definition in terms of contradictory aims. Similarly, the opposition between the contrary emotions defines a contrast in regard to their respective characteristic behavior. Thus, crying and laughing stand in contrast due to the contrary emotions of sadness and joy that they typically express. Here, however, the affinity ends. Unlike the definition of opposed purposive actions, the definition of laughter and tears in relation to joy and sorrow does not connect them to two contradictory sentences. Two points should

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be considered regarding this issue. First, in most cases the typical behavior of opposed emotions does not suggest any contradictory descriptions of the conflicting behavioral expressions. As said above, the opposed emotions do not convey such descriptions. Furthermore, limiting our interest to typical forms of behavior, we may note that the sentences that relate to such behavior independently of the emotions are usually not contradictory.23 “He is in tears” is not logically opposed to “he is laughing”—and they are moreover empirically liable to be true together. Forms of behavior that cannot be attributed to a person at the same time (“he is in tears” and “he is chattering”) usually characterize very different, rather than ambivalent, emotions. There are cases, however, in which certain characteristic behavioral expressions of contrary emotions contradict each other. It is typical for the joyous person to laugh, and for the sad person24—and even more so for the angry person—it is typical not to laugh. The second point to which we are led by the fact that the typical behavioral expressions of conflicting emotions do not suggest contradictory descriptions would be to ask what it could mean to state that emotional ambivalence is reduced to opposed inclinations to behave. We began by formulating emotional ambivalence as the simultaneous maintaining of two such opposing inclinations and faced the regrettable conclusions of a reductive interpretation of this formulation. However, our closer inspection reveals that in the case of emotions there is no reductive interpretation to begin with. One can present the laughter (or certain sorts of laughter) as expressive of joy and the tears as expressive of sorrow. One can also try defining the sorrow through the tears and the joy through the laughter. This definition, however, hides the opposition between the emotions, unless it returns, circularly, to the joy and the sorrow themselves. Laughter and tears are not opposed except as expressions of opposed emotions. What then if we try and represent opposed emotional behavior in terms of contradictory, but less paradigmatic, behavioral pairs? The inclination to smile and the inclination to refrain from smiling may perhaps establish ambivalence. At this level, however, the character of the ambivalence is altogether unclear. When we attribute to Peter—who in this version has met Sandra by chance—both an inclination to smile and an inclination to refrain from smiling, we have not yet distinguished his ambivalence regarding the meeting from an alternative in which his joy is unfortunately accompanied by an aching jaw. I have argued that to understand emotional ambivalence in terms of behavior cannot suggest understanding it through mutually exclusive behavioral pairs. We also saw in section 2 that the opposition of inclinations to fulfillment characterizes ambivalence of desire adequately only if it does not serve as its reduction. All the more, emotional ambivalence is not reduced to conflicting



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desires even when it involves them.25 On top of all this, the phrase “the typical behavior of an emotion” does not indicate a determinable set of behavioral forms expressive of an emotion, nor does the term deny that an emotion that will not be described as ambivalent may have expressions and even typical expressions that are themselves contrary. An admirer, for instance, sometimes will try hard to get close to his hero and sometimes will prefer to keep away. Moreover, the phrase does not suggest that the typical behavior necessarily instructs us about the emotion. Thus, pulling someone’s braid can express infatuation, or hate, or just boredom. Examples like these also allude to overdetermination as a way of dealing fruitfully with ambivalence.26 4. Ambivalence as a Behavioral Conflict As ambivalence links two attitudes toward the same object through their opposition, while mental attitudes involve—and, in an important sense, are—dispositions to behavior, ambivalence may be said to consist in opposed dispositions to behavior. Whereas this may appear to make of ambivalence a self-contradictory notion or to imply that the poles cannot be both significantly expressed, we have seen that this appearance derives from an illegitimate reduction of attitudes to determinate behavioral dispositions and of ambivalence to independent attitudes. In particular, emotional ambivalence does not make room for the notion of mutually exclusive behavior unless we presuppose that the dispositions that comprise the emotions exclude one another. Such supposition for its part would not only deny the existence of ambivalence, but also the character of emotions as dispositions, which are basically rational, and hence open to new interlinkages. Yet how can we abandon the analysis of an emotional conflict as a conflict of behavioral dispositions if attitudes are behavioral dispositions? Why call a case of dislike mixed with love ambivalent unless, in disliking a person, one shapes a route that one’s love for that person rejects? Well, why should we abandon the analysis of conflicts of love and hate or joy and sorrow as conflicts of behavioral dispositions? If one’s emotions direct one in contrary ways, then—at least analytically speaking—one might have been emotionally engaged with the object in a way proposed by either pole of the ambivalence. In other words, emotional ambivalence suggests two behavioral wholehearted inclinations. Putting the emphasis elsewhere, it refers to two opposed routes of conduct potentially taken by the person, were she to reshape her ambivalence in the form of clinging to one pole while repudiating and disregarding the other. In both versions, the ambivalent person is disposed to behave in contrary ways, which, by their mutual reference, account for what she does.

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notes 1. The examples are taken respectively from Koch 1987 and Greenspan 1980. 2. The attitudes must be opposed in a sense that involves that the ambivalent person holds them as mutually opposed. It is also important that ambivalence may complementarily be regarded as a single tension-fraught attitude. See Introduction, section 2. 3. The problem and the conceptions of ambivalence that form and shape it are also considered in chapter 2, sections 1 and 2.4. 4. Frankfurt 1992 and Stambaugh 1980 see ambivalence and its expressions as pure oppositionality, such that the conjoint and opposed attitudes are tantamount to confusion, dithering, stagnation, misery, or indifference. Carr 2009 and Marino 2011 construe ambivalent behavior in terms of a choice between the poles. 5. More properly, these formulations simplify certain modes of ambivalent behavior. 6. For the case of belief, an explicit division of the field between dispositional and other views may be found in Schwitzgebel 2011. I should add that I reject the received categorization, also adopted by Schwitzgebel, of Davidson as an interpretationalist. I propose to see Davidson as sensitive to the character of attitudes as dispositions that capture points of view. 7. See chapters 3 and 5. 8. See Introduction, section 3, for a general presentation of intentionality and attitudes and their relations with consciousness and behavior. 9. Engagements include attitudes, ordinary behavior, consciousness, and so on. They are the intentional aspects of a person’s life. 10. As mentioned above, I move from the opposed dispositions in a human life (when life includes phenomena of nonbehavioral consciousness) to opposed dispositions to behavior and contend that the latter are indispensable to ambivalence, while both the dispositions and their opposition must be understood in non-reductive terms. The move is partly justified by the fact that the behavioral disposition of an attitude is part of the attitudinal disposition. This, however, raises the following question: might not behavioral dispositions, at least in some cases, be absent, or might not the opposition lie elsewhere rather than between them? I think that our constitutively public life demands that an attitude involves a behavioral disposition that reveals the attitude or its outlook, and accordingly that ambivalence must be revealed in the opposition of the respective behavioral dispositions. This should not exclude cases in which one’s conduct hardly expresses one’s ambivalence, or one pole of it. For “hardly expressed” does not rule out, and indeed may entail, certain more subtle expressions and dispositions—for example, if we refrain from speech or action, we are effectively avoiding certain conversations. In any case, while there are cases of ambivalence in which it is useful to speak of someone as being divided between their (sincere) behavior and their “heart” or private thoughts, this is far from being the general rule. The move to behavioral dispositions is justified also because the non-reductive conflict of dispositions bound up with ambivalence is relevant to any way in which ambivalence implies conflicting dispositions. The problem with a reductionist reading of our



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having opposed attitudes is not that behavior does not exhaust the phenomenon of ambivalence; in particular, it would not be solved by introducing nonbehavioral phenomena of consciousness and leaving everything else unchanged. All the more, the problem of ambivalence as opposed dispositions in a human life cannot be solved by adding phenomena that apply to people only insofar as people comprise mere objects of inquiry—phenomena such as people’s having certain neural states. This is because such phenomena are irrelevant to the topics requiring explication, that is, to ambivalence, which belongs to our ordinary lives as they are lived in the first person, and as they are attributed in the third person as lived lives. 11. See Introduction, note 2 and 18. 12. Some desires are mere wishes that the person does not expect to be helping to fulfill, and “desire” hence stands for action-based desire or volition. 13. Davidson 1970. More accurately, the person is disposed to some action, but this action is other than the object of the “conflict.” Davidson transforms “rational” mental conflicts into pairs of harmonious theoretical and cognitive judgments concerning the reasons that support each of the opposed possible conclusions. This may allow that the “conflicted” person can be disposed to suitable deliberation. 14. See Introduction, 6–8. Davidson’s argument for rational mental holism concerns propositional attitudes and especially beliefs and desires and links them with action (Davison 1984). He assumes, however, that other engagements lead to beliefs and desires (1963) and are analogous to action (1985, 193). Moreover, Davidson focuses on propositional attitudes because he infers mental holism from the holism of meaning, but this move is redundant if, as suggested in what follows, mental holism explicates the unity of interlinkages that persons and their engagements require. Accordingly, mental holism goes beyond propositional attitudes. 15. While for some purposes we might wish to distinguish pairs of merely related engagements from pairs of engagements in which one is part of the other, this is not important for the point here, as the constitutive relation and the separateness of the connected engagements jointly characterize both sorts of cases. In the case where her friend wins the position for which she also applied, Sandra’s ambivalence does not “contain” her applying, but the ambivalence “contains” her relation to that past engagement. On the other hand, Sandra’s happiness for her friend partly consists in the warm congratulations she offers, but only because these are two engagements that could—in line with other mental connections—come apart. Note also that the proposal that rationally linked features could and can be held separately is not to be read as the physicalistic-causal counterpart of Davidson’s approach. The separateness aspect is part of the logic of the mental and cannot be isolated from the constitution aspect. 16. This formulation is still deliberately vague. When we emphasize the mutually exclusive routes, our focus can be on a notion of desires that we would have if they were not part of the ambivalence, as well as on a complete fulfillment of one desire, or alternatively of the other, under the ambivalence. 17. Ambivalence is usually thought of as facing an insoluble problem from behavior, where this problem is identified with a problem about the fulfillment of desires (or practical judgments). This induces some philosophers who acknowledge ambivalence

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to argue that ordinary or rational emotional and evaluative conflicts are not conflicts regarding what to do (Stark 2001, Stocker 1990, Chapter 4) or to argue that ambivalence can be virtuous and functional when the person fulfills the desire that should reasonably but not wholeheartedly be preferred, if she still expresses the other pole in her conduct (Nussbaum 1985). Another variant would be to allow for one pole of ambivalence to be acted on, that is, for one desire to be fulfilled, given that the other pole is repressed and expressed by symptoms. Again, it may be argued that both poles can be expressed together in deliberation. (Kristjánsson 2010. Others accept deliberative behavior under ambivalence while supposing that the deliberation must end either in solving the ambivalence or in a state of confusion (Baumann & Betzler 2004).) Arkonovich 2012 argues that a conflict of desire makes sense although such desires require conflicting actions because these desires express conflicting emotions. 18. Emotional ambivalence may be consciously felt at a single stroke. It may also happen that for some reason it only endures for a minute. Chapter 5 studies the relations of ambivalence, consciousness, and attitudes. 19. I propose not to postulate the existence of a desire in cases in which the desire would be supposed to be exhausted by the “desired” intentional action. Thus, it seems reasonable to think of smiling as an intentional action (both in broad and narrow terms, see Introduction, 21–22 and note 27), and many other nonpurposive emotional actions are clearly intentional, and, in particular, they are intentional expressions of the emotions—think of singing a song, or helping somebody in need, as manifestations of happiness. All the same, “He wants to smile (or help)” is redundant in describing ordinary cases of smiling (or helping) out of happiness, as it means nothing beyond the actual behavior. In particular, a tendency to smile when feeling happy about something does not suggest a general concern with smiling that the happy person realizes on different occasions. Joas 1996 and Finkelstein 2003 suggest insightful studies of behavior beyond the model of desire fulfillment. Jonas’s book may represent a wide (in particular, pragmatist) literature that understands attitudes in terms of the agents’ behavior. It may also represent the weakness of much of this literature, which lacks the resources to understand attitudes apart from the actual ongoing behavior, and so cannot even articulate ambivalence. Finkelstein’s Wittgenstein-influenced work also does not leave room for ambivalence. Döring 2003 argues that action expresses emotions in a way that is not mediated by desires. 20. In the corresponding case of conflict of desires, the move has the merit of emphasizing the connection between desire and action. Yet it conceals the possibilities of actual ambivalent behavior. 21. One thing that can happen is that potential emotional behavior will become an object of desire because of the ambivalence. One will want to smile. 22. It is also interesting that conflicting emotions can sometimes find expression in a conflict of desire, when the emotions do not both invite the respective desires by themselves. Let’s suppose that because Sandra is polite, she would tend to congratulate people even where she is wholeheartedly unhappy about their success. Yet because congratulations comprise an expression of the happiness that she ambivalently feels toward her friend’s success, she is deterred from it by her unhappiness.



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23. This concerns descriptions that avoid (as far as possible) any reference to the emotions. 24. At least when her sadness is neither ambivalent nor bound up with embarrassment, shock, and so on. 25. See more about this in Razinsky 2014a, 171–72. 26. The integrated character of emotional ambivalence and its expressions is investigated in chapter 3. See also chapters 6 and 9. Chapter 6 (sections 2 and 3), and chapter 9 (sections 2 and 4) also show that the ambivalent compromise can be creative, wise, and enriching.

Chapter 5

Conscious Ambivalence and Its Bearings on the Character of Consciousness

Singular as it may appear, the sufferer had now contracted a sort of affection for his tormentor, mingled, however, with the intensest loathing and horror. Nor were such discordant emotions incompatible. Each, on the contrary, imparted strength and poignancy to its opposite. Horrible love—horrible antipathy— embracing one another in his bosom, and both concentrating themselves upon a being that had crept into his vitals or had been engendered there and which was nourished with his food, and lived upon his life, and was as intimate with him as his own heart, and yet was the foulest of all created things! (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Egotism; Or, the Bosom Serpent)*

People are ambivalent. They want things that are repelling or frightening to them, hold beliefs that all the same they doubt, and are both happy and unhappy, be it about their lives, or the new baby, or the new government. Earlier chapters have shown that ambivalence is an ordinary human possibility. It is both possible and ordinary that a person maintains opposing mental attitudes, and thus it is not insignificant that ambivalence is often revealed in one’s long-term bearing—in the dynamic array of conscious and behavioral life. For example, ambivalence about one’s job can be manifest by a phlegmatic working style combined with sporadic checking for other job openings, or by making a habit of first enraging the boss and then apologizing. The ambivalent subject may, in fact, lack any ambivalent experiences. The person who quarrels with the boss perhaps vacillates in his actual feelings, and his equally ambivalent colleague may only feel, at least in a clear way, that he wishes to leave the job. In this chapter, we are asking anew whether ambivalence is possible. Although * Hawthorne 1881 (1843), Vol. II, 42–43. The protagonist’s conscious ambivalence also comprises ambivalence between second-order attitudes, toward an attitude of egotism that is felt as alien and thus may be understood as part of a first-order unconscious ambivalence.

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a person’s opposing attitudes do not have to be simultaneously conscious, there are important ways in which ambivalence can be conscious. Ambivalent consciousness will be our key to the investigation of ambivalence, and in the second part of this chapter, it will provide a key for the investigation of consciousness as well. We are thus focusing on conscious ambivalence, that is, on situations where one ambivalently desires, judges, or feels something in one stroke of consciousness or of conscious behavior. Sarah would typically be ambivalent and her ambivalence would typically be conscious if she continues to stand and watch television when she knows that she must leave the house immediately in order to arrive on time. Sam trusts his son, who has just learned how to cross the street, and yet continues to worry about him. This ambivalence becomes conscious at the moment when he, in fact, allows his son to go out by himself. Not only does our ordinary individual and collective life affirm that ambivalence exists, but the phenomena and language of ambivalence are not neutral to interpretation. It is central to such phenomena as those mentioned above that they involve an irreducible opposition of attitudes and that as such they assume both plurality and unity. On the one hand, ambivalence implies a plurality of contrary points of view toward a common object, but, on the other hand, ambivalence amounts to a unitary outlook, since two attitudes do not constitute an instance of ambivalence unless a single subject has both attitudes and holds each as opposed to the other: he must be ambivalent between them. We will not count attitudes as the poles of ambivalence when their opposition is merely from an external point of view. Thus, John is not ambivalent if he loves Jack, hates Mr. Jones, and only we know that Jack is Mr. Jones. Nor shall we describe John as ambivalent if he loves Jack, is afraid of him, and we agree that it is only in respect of some conception of love and fear in general that his particular attitudes may be said to be opposed. When we take someone to be ambivalent, we assume that each of his opposed attitudes is held by him as part of the ambivalence. This play of plurality and unity suggests that we speak of ambivalence both as two opposed attitudes toward the same object and as one ambivalent attitude. The explication of ambivalence in terms of two opposing attitudes is in certain ways different from its explication as a unitary tension-fraught attitude, and, in particular, specific cases of ambivalence would often fit one of the explications better than the other. Yet a case of contrary attitudes that cannot be fairly described as an ambivalent attitude does not consist in contrary attitudes in the sense that interests us here, nor would a person’s attitude be ambivalent in the relevant sense if we may not say that, in it, the person takes two opposing attitudes to the object. I shall hence use both forms interchangeably when such use is unproblematic.1



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If one denies the possibility of ambivalence, then the phenomena of ambivalence—that is, the phenomena to which the strict concept of ambivalence pertains—must also be denied. Wherever one’s attitudes appear to be opposed, such opposition must either be abandoned or lose its character as a contrast for the subject. Yet this chapter shows that such denials must at some point come to end: we cannot get rid of self-conflicting unity as long as we are interested in human existence. The argument focuses on the relations of ambivalence with consciousness: we shall see that conscious ambivalence can be especially recalcitrant to attempts to dismantle ambivalence, and that in such cases it grants us a key to understanding ambivalence in general. However, ambivalence in consciousness can establish that ambivalence is possible and clarify its nature only because consciousness anchors personhood, and conscious attitudes anchor mental attitudes. We thus have to identify a sense of “consciousness” that is crucial to personhood. In the next section, I will briefly outline three relevant features, together describing what can be called the “outgoing” character of consciousness (the term standing for a sense of intentionality combined with self-consciousness).2 The argument to follow makes use of these features, and the fact that it is able to make use of them confirms that these three features depict consciousness aptly. 1. Outgoing Consciousness “Consciousness” refers, in this book, to more or less momentary consciousness or to particular aspects of such moments.3 Into this, introduce whatever can be included in the framework of life in the first person, such as thoughts, bodily sensations and perceptions, and the first-person dimension in conscious behavior. In speaking of “outgoing consciousness,” I wish to depict a central dimension of consciousness, and more specifically of such “pieces” of consciousness in which it takes some character or other—the experiential aspects of the concrete conscious life. In brief, to say that such an aspect constitutes outgoing consciousness is to regard it as a conscious engagement.4 Our consciousness may go out as an actual worry about someone, some specific thinking to oneself regarding something, a particular (conscious) opening of a door, hearing a shrill sound, and so on. The notion of outgoing consciousness partially distinguishes this aspect of consciousness from its “phenomenal” character, that is, from an aspect of quality of feeling. The first feature of outgoing consciousness we should call to mind is, thus, “Husserlian”5: consciousness is outgoing in outgoing its phenomenal aspect. In other words, outgoing consciousness has some “feel,” but

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it feels its way to an object and to its concern with it. The idea is not that there is an independent phenomenal character to consciousness. Rather the contrary, the phenomenal character of consciousness is inseparable from its outgoing consciousness without being reduced to it. In particular, when language focuses on the phenomenal character of consciousness—as when the doctor asks you to describe your pain (“Is it enduring? Is it sharp?”)—we are merely dealing with these phenomena in a way that purifies them of (some of their) outgoing character. At the same time, the phenomenal dimension is essential to consciousness, depicting the particular “going out” as it actually or concretely happens and is thus implied in any outgoing consciousness. In other words, a “purely outgoing” consciousness would transform consciousness (and with it, due to the third feature, personhood) into a merely theoretical construct. Another feature we need was stressed by Sartre.6 Outgoing consciousness goes out toward an object, as well as toward, or qua, a certain engagement with this object. This constitutes any outgoing consciousness as self-consciousness. Its description as self-consciousness complements the non-solipsistic character of consciousness, whose typical object is in the world. How, then, is going out toward an object (Brentano-intentionality) related with going out toward the engagement with that object?7 The wrong way to answer this would be to model consciousness as a relation to an object (or to content) and claim that consciousness, in addition to its non-reflexive object, has a reflexive object as well. Instead, the second feature of outgoing consciousness implies that such a model is inadequate, since the inherently self-conscious character of outgoing consciousness cannot be formulated in it. The point is that consciousness of this or that must be conscious, that is, that the two different senses of the two italicized appearances of “conscious” must be learned together. Together they constitute consciousness as “going out toward.” Since we are heading to identify a kind of conscious attitude (conscious ambivalence), let me focus on consciousness that is going out as an attitude. When, for instance, a person feels suddenly happy about something, the feeling is given as outgoing. It is felt as her happiness about the object. When a person ecstatically quickens her steps toward a friend at the end of the street, this conscious behavior constitutes, one might say, a happy consciousness. When words run through somebody’s head as desire, one can say that this person senses himself as desiring. He can usually distinguish, with no need for reasoning, between such an event and an event in which the same words are thought or pronounced as judging or as guessing, for example. Whatever the instance of consciousness is, in describing it as having a certain outgoing character, we are in no way ascribing the person with some additional sensations that provide an interpretation for the “original” consciousness. After all, any additional feeling would be characterized by the same duality of the phenomenal and the outgoing aspects. Likewise, the consciousness that goes out as an attitude need not be reflexive or subject to



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introspection. It could be that the person is entirely unable to provide a report of his desire or happiness.8 Wittgenstein articulates the second feature in Philosophical Grammar §107, although there he speaks of consciously meaning something:9 We want to say: “When we mean something, there isn’t a dead picture (of any kind); it’s as if we went up to someone. We go up to what we mean.” But here we’re constructing a false contrast between experience and something else, as if experience consisted of sitting still and letting pictures pass in front of one. “When one means, it is oneself doing the meaning”; similarly, it is oneself that does the moving. One rushes forward oneself, and one can’t simultaneously observe the rushing. Of course not. Yes, meaning something is like going up to someone.

In this passage Wittgenstein uses the metaphor of “going up to” in order to present experience as directed toward the object, rather than as merely phenomenal. “[I]t isn’t any remarkable feature of the sensation which explains the directionality of meaning.” And for experience to be “actively” directed at an object, he tells us, is for the experience to be itself conscious, to go out as itself.10 The second feature entails that the “outward” into which a momentary consciousness goes includes this very consciousness, or the very engagement that it comprises. The third feature, connecting consciousness and engagements, shows that this “outward”—for instance, being happy to see one’s friend—goes beyond “momentary consciousness” and that to engage consciously with something is to demonstrate and constitute the engagement.11 According to this feature, outgoing consciousness is pervaded by the person’s life, as viewed from a third-person perspective, and also serves as an anchor to human life conceived from that perspective.12 Thus, the third feature connects consciousness with personhood. Personhood is understood in this book as implying that persons are accessible to a third-person perspective. This simply means that things can be attributed to one, things such as that one hopes for something, that one asked for help, or that one is depressed at the moment. Especially important are mental attitudes, in whose ascription we say “where” and how the person “stands” in relation to some object. If we ask what an attitude is, wishing to understand how people are taken to be engaged when they are thought to judge X or want Y or worry about Z, then attitudes can be described as dispositionsperspectives. The idea is that they comprise (conjointly with other attitudes) unordinary dispositions to behavior and to consciousness. Unlike the relation of phenomena to “ordinary” dispositions—for example, a particular orange on a tree manifests the disposition of this tree to grow oranges—phenomena

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of behavior and consciousness express the attitudes from the perspective of the subjects to whom they are attributed.13 One’s happiness about something is a perspective that calls for various thoughts and deeds. Thoughts and (conscious) deeds can consciously express the attitude and make concrete its being a perspective of the person. This couches the concept of an attitude in the concept of outgoing consciousness. We require that attitudes can in principle be conscious:14 when someone is understood as happy that something has happened, or as judging some event to be terrible, she is understood as being able, in principle, to thus be happy or thus to judge in the first person. In short, attitudes are couched in the possibility of their consciously going out toward their objects and themselves. At the same time, the consciousness that must in principle be possible for attitudes is a consciousness that already assumes a person with attitudes, which surpass any first-person existence.15 Comparing the triple conception of outgoing consciousness with the view in David Chalmers 1996 may serve as a recapitulation: Chalmers there presents independent concepts of phenomenal consciousness, on the one hand, and of mind and consciousness as “psychological,” that is, as explanatory of behavior, on the other. He also subscribes to a functionalist conception of the psychological dimension. As I see it, both the notion of psychological consciousness and the notion of phenomenal consciousness become pointless without outgoing consciousness. Chalmers asks how consciousness is related to intentionality (or to propositional attitudes), and answers that intentionality is reducible to the psychological dimension (and the “relational” dimension, that is, the mind as dependent on the environment referred to), perhaps with a phenomenal component as well. I hold that if the “psychological” dimension is allowed to encompass intentionality, it must admit the phenomenal dimension as well. If intentionality involves not only a relational structure but also an “intending” or a personal engagement with the related, it has to be anchored in the first-person existence, where intentionality has a phenomenal character. At the same time, the phenomenal aspect cannot be analyzed without its outgoing counterpart, and outgoing consciousness includes much of what the notion of the “psychological” is supposed to provide.16 2. Ambivalent Consciousness We have already met Sarah, who was watching the television in a consciously ambivalent way.17 And we have met Sam, who is generally, and at certain times consciously, ambivalent regarding his son crossing the street alone. Conscious ambivalence is ambivalence as it constitutes and expresses itself in consciousness as such; it is ambivalence experienced as such, ambivalence



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in its actual existence in the first person. One is conscious of the ambivalent attitude or of the opposed attitudes. These forms are interchangeable, even while some instances of consciousness may be more aptly described by one form than by the other. We may also distinguish between consciousness of the attitudes and consciousness of their opposition. In the first case, the particular character of each of the opposed attitudes is central, whereas in the second it is the fact that one’s attitudes stand in tension. It is not conscious ambivalence, however, if either its poles or their opposed character is completely absent. Conscious ambivalence is a form of ambivalence in consciousness. I coin this term to refer more broadly to ambivalence as manifested in a state of consciousness. The expression “ambivalent consciousness” will be employed both in regard to any ambivalence in consciousness and to conscious ambivalence: a momentary consciousness can be ambivalent in a strong sense corresponding to conscious ambivalence, in which case it comprises a state of consciousness that goes out to the ambivalence. In a broad or weak sense, it is the consciousness mentioned in “ambivalence in consciousness.” It is a state of consciousness in which ambivalence has some expression, not necessarily one toward which the consciousness goes out. The ambivalence in consciousness that we will find useful conforms to the stronger of the above senses; it is ambivalence in the first person, or firstperson expressions of ambivalence. To make the distinction clearer, however, we should note that ambivalent consciousness in the weak sense is also outgoing, only it does not go out toward the ambivalence. The general point is true of ambivalent and non-ambivalent attitudes alike. Our lives in the first person reveal mental attitudes and ambivalence. Such attitudes find expression in feelings, thoughts, conscious behavior, and so on, as well as in combined aspects of consciousness. A feeling, a thought, consciously doing something, noticing something—they are all outgoing, and typically they would be going out in various directions at once, including as conscious attitudes. It does not follow that they go out, or express in the first person, any attitude that they express. As an example that does not concern ambivalence, consider again Sarah, now on her way to work. Wishing to get to work, Sarah is walking to the metro, waiting for the train, and so on. However, we can expect that many of her moments of conscious walking or waiting for the train do not go out as wanting, or fulfilling the desire, to get to work. 3. The Subject’s Simple Unity and the Denial of Ambivalence Suppose that a certain person who said that he would come to a meeting did not arrive on time. We find his explanations for delay insufficient, since

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although what he says may be true, he mentions nothing that couldn’t have been prevented in advance. We conclude that he was ambivalent regarding the meeting. The question of the person’s consciousness does not arise directly. The conclusion that he was ambivalent is not necessarily based on assumptions regarding his consciousness. We refer to various events and to their significance for him, but not to his actual thoughts or feelings. His behavior is relevant to us, but not the question of whether he consciously took it to be ambivalent behavior. Even if the ambivalence had conscious aspects, we do not refer to them. Consciousness—both enduring and momentary—is often disregarded in the attribution of ambivalence. Furthermore, some theories of the human being, foremost psychoanalysis, allow that people who are not conscious of their ambivalence may yet be ambivalent. Regardless of whether unconscious ambivalence is possible, ambivalence is a matter of attitudes and as such neither the concept nor the instances of ambivalence can be reduced to the concept or instances of ambivalent consciousness.18 This is revealed in the fact that it is possible to disregard momentary consciousness in the attribution of ambivalence. Treating conscious ambivalence in the strict sense as distinct from, but related to, ambivalence, in general, is particularly important, since it is as ambivalent consciousness in the narrow sense that consciousness can establish ambivalence. Attributions of ambivalence can mention purified states of consciousness, be they conscious utterances, unspoken thoughts, or feelings of joy. However, consciousness has a special role in establishing ambivalence because it can go out as the engagements it is part of. In brief, conscious ambivalence is ambivalence that cannot be denied, because it goes out as ambivalence. (Although this formulation is not completely true. We will yet have to revise it.)19 If the phenomena of ambivalence could be generally interpreted as phenomena of pseudo-ambivalence, one could conceive of the subject as a simple unity (regardless of whether one believes that people are subjects or not). According to this conception, the subject may have multiple attitudes, but they hang together harmoniously and thus can all be seen as partial attitudes together making the attitude of the person as a whole. The assumption underlying such a conception is that harmony is a condition for the existence of the subject. Perhaps Hansel is not a subject, but if he is, then “Hansel likes Gretel” is supposed to deny Hansel’s dislike for Gretel in the same way that “the door is next to the window” denies the door’s being distant from the window. The simple unity view is widely held by philosophers. Yet if human life includes ambivalence, then this conception must be wrong. Ambivalence in the strict sense assumes a unity, even while it entails that this unity cannot be simple. Only a unitary Hansel would like Gretel and yet dislike her, or both



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want and not want them to go into the house in the forest, or believe they will find their way home and yet doubt this.20 Conversely, under a simple unity view, the unity of the ambivalent subject must be rejected, and there are various tactics for attempting such a negation of ambivalence. These can be divided into three directions, notwithstanding internal variegation and mixed forms. On the one hand, the person may be a unitary subject with harmonious attitudes, and the opposition between her attitudes could be a misconception. On the other hand, the unity of the subject might be dispensed with in favor of one of the following: ambivalence may imply that there is no subject even if there are (opposed) attitudes, or the opposed attitudes may belong to different subjects. 3.1 “Harmonizing” Ambivalence The interpretation of real and purported ambivalence as in fact harmonious is perhaps the most popular way—or variety of ways—to dissolve ambivalence. Harmonizing tactics can be deployed to explain away particular cases in which people appear ambivalent, as well as to interpret types of phenomena as only ostensibly ambivalent. Such interpretations very often retain the two-poles structure of ambivalence, but take the two attitudes to be in fact harmoniously connected: either the poles of the “ambivalence” do not really have the same object (or content) or they are not really attitudes of the same kind and thus do not compete, or they are not attitudes of the kind that would make them opposed ways of engaging with the object. Thus, ambivalence of desire or emotion is sometimes said to mean, in fact, that the person wants different aspects of the “desired object” or is happy and unhappy about different things.21 Again, instead of ambivalence of belief, deceiving oneself that P is sometimes analyzed as involving a belief that not-P combined with another attitude, for example an imagining, concerning the opposed proposition.22 And again, ambivalence of value judgment is often assimilated to cases in which one has not risen above consideration of the judgments. The “opposed judgments” that the person actually has when he holds both that it would be good to act in a certain way and that it would be bad to act this way are—to take up Davidson’s version—two prima facie value judgments, such that the person judges that something makes such an action prima facie good and he judges that something else makes it prima facie bad.23 These three sub-tactics of the harmony response to the existence of ambivalence are pursued in very different forms and contexts. Let us consider an example of the three sub-tactics that has a bearing on the question of ambivalence in consciousness in particular. It arises in the context of the perceptual account of emotion. The perceptual account of emotion emphasizes the special role of the conscious emotion, namely that in holding an

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emotion, and especially consciously, we “take in” the emotional object in a special way (e.g., by way of being sad about it).24 The perceptual account has a further motivation, however, namely to understand emotions as similar but not identical to value judgments. Certain emotions, such as fear, clearly have an evaluative dimension: to be afraid of something would as a rule imply that we take it to be dangerous (or frightening). Perceptual accounts of emotion are impressed by this evaluative dimension and generalize it to other emotions. They reject, however, the view that emotions are judgments or that they involve judgments centrally, and instead analyze emotions as quasi-perceptions. One reason to make this distinction is that we sometimes judge something not dangerous, or someone unenviable, and yet emotionally perceive them as dangerous and enviable. As I see it, some of these conflicts (in which one is afraid without judging the object frightening or dangerous, rather than having also a judgment that the object is not frightening or dangerous) are marginal cases of conflict (and of fear), but in other cases one is clearly ambivalent. The analogy with sense-perception suggests that judgments and emotions are related in a way that is similar to the way that judgments and sense-perceptions are, and this presumably makes conflicts between what one judges and what one feels similar to unbelieved visual illusions. It is thought that the ability of the perceptual account of emotion to explain conflicts between a judgment and an emotion in such terms is one of its main strengths (e.g., Goldie 2007, 935.) Now, the philosophical work on emotion is in general more sensitive to the existence and irreducibility of ambivalence than other philosophical discourses, and perceptualists are not an exception. Yet in using the analogy mentioned to interpret emotional ambivalence and ambivalence between a judgment and an emotion, they explain away ambivalence rather than analyze it. All three sub-tactics of reframing ambivalence as harmonious make their appearance. Sabine Döring analyzes the positions in the debate on how to perceptually understand conflicts between judgments and emotions in terms of the first and second tactics.25 Either the first tactic is adopted, and the content of emotion is taken to be different from that of judgment in a similar way to the difference between the arguably nonconceptual contents of senseperception and the conceptual contents of judgments or the second tactic is employed: if an emotional perception is not a judgment then perhaps they are attitudes of such different kinds that an emotion does not compete with the “opposed” judgment on how to take the object. While the person judges how the object is, the emotion is supposed, at least in cases of conflict, to show merely how the object seems to be. Furthermore, the perceptual analogy as complemented by modeling perception on unbelieved illusion also calls for employing the third tactic in order to harmonize ambivalence between two



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emotions. The third tactic suggests that the attitudes are of the same kind, but the “opposition” between such attitudes does not consist in treating the object in opposed ways; this is indeed what we get if emotional perception is like a subjective impression that is held by the person as mere impression. For emotional ambivalence might then be similar to subjectively seeing something in two alternating ways, as with a Gestalt shift picture. No genuine conflict would be entertained.26 3.2 Harmonious Persons, Plural Persons The general problem with the tactics of reinterpreting ambivalence—as harmonious attitudes of a subject or as a plurality without unity—is that they account only for certain features that have in fact been abstracted from a structured human (third-person and first-person) phenomenon. If the person is sometimes ambivalent in envying what he thinks unenviable, or in judging both that he ought to go to work and that he should rest at home and recover his health, then the explanans in such tactics does not capture the perspective of the ambivalent subject. The argument to follow is intended to dismiss the interpretation of ambivalence as harmonious by showing that the character of ambivalence, including the oppositional plurality of its attitudes, is sometimes clearly a part of the subject’s perspective. The focus on consciousness will allow us to identify such cases and through them establish ambivalence. This, however, requires the identification of conscious ambivalence, in which in particular the person clearly manifests a unitary subjectivity. Otherwise, one of the other tactics of understanding “ambivalence” under the view that a subject constitutes a simple harmonious unity might be attempted. Instead of getting rid of the substantial plurality of ambivalence, the unity in ambivalence can be denied by getting rid of the ambivalent subject. Ambivalence would then turn out to be a state of pure plurality, or the opposed attitudes would be the attitudes of two different quasi-subjects. In either case, the analysis might well push “ambivalence” to the margins of human life. The ambivalence would be a pathological condition in which the subject is either dissolved or split. Perhaps, however, states of pure plurality or of several subjects are not pathological. Instead of analyzing ambivalence as a liminal state of personhood, the subjectless and multiple-subjects directions can be taken more generally, such that ambivalence is abolished together with the subject as a whole. The person might be understood on a two-persons model, and ambivalence would be similar to disagreement of some sort.27 Alternatively, the person might be understood as a plurality without an aspect of unity. Taking this approach in his Treatise of Human Nature, Hume there also interprets ambivalence as one of the arrangements that characterize the bundle of sensations.28 One way or

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the other, no room would be left for being actually ambivalent between the opposed attitudes.29 4. Denials of Ambivalence Denied Keeping in mind these ways of rejecting ambivalence, we can now move toward identifying a phenomenon that demonstrates that ambivalence is possible. We will “trim off” various forms of ambivalence whose unity is prima facie deniable and sharpen our definitions, in order to identify a consciousness that clearly manifests unity and discordant plurality alike. We begin, however, by mentioning a tactic that cancels the oppositionality of the ambivalence rather than its unity: when the opposing attitudes that are attributed to the subject are expressed or manifested at different times, one can ascribe them to the fact that the subject has changed in the meantime. If the alternate expression of opposed attitudes is reducible to a change in time, then the unity of an ambivalent intentionality is disrupted even if the subject as a whole is taken to be unitary. 4.1 Ambivalently Alternating Consciousness In fact, as Greenspan (1980, 229) points out regarding vacillation, ambivalence whose attitudes are alternating is not reducible to a number of attitude changes. Indeed the ambivalent character of central forms of vacillation permits one to establish the possibility of ambivalence and base it on conscious life, without challenging the view that conscious moments are determinate. Strict conscious ambivalence undermines not only the simple unity view regarding personhood, but also the view that the subjective character of consciousness (the person’s feeling his left foot aching even if in fact he has lost that foot; the person’s feeling sad, whatever the relation is to his being sad) is objective in a sense that entails a univocal and exact truth. Ambivalence is thought to undermine this conception.30 The determinacy view is often held as part of taking consciousness as a concrete level of reality, and this is how consciousness is taken by philosophers who wish to (epistemically and/or ontologically) appeal to it in their accounts of other things. It is therefore hardly surprising that when ambivalence is acknowledged, and moored in consciousness, it is assumed that the opposed attitudes are felt alternately. Thus, Aaron Mishara writes in regard to what he calls “bodily human ambivalence”: “The ongoing shifting back and forth (and thus ‘hidden unity’ [von Weizsäcker 1940]) between ‘being’ a body (Leib) and ‘having’ a body (Körper) makes it possible to study the human ambiguous relationship to body in its own right” (2009, 134).



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The same difficulty invites some philosophers to mitigate it by appealing to the distinction between foreground and background consciousness. According to Koch 1987, while the opposed emotions can be simultaneously felt, in any such moment only one of them can be in the foreground, and ambivalent consciousness involves their respective shifting between foreground and background (267–68). Indeed, even Hume’s above-mentioned oppositions of passions combine the temporal peak of one passion with the waning of the opposed passion. Let us in any case ignore the fact that patterns of vacillation or of habitual changes typically constitute forms of ambivalence, and even allow for the split or dissolution of the subject in such cases. 4.2 Unconscious Ambivalence, and Ambivalence That Is Not Quite Conscious Our task is thus to validate ambivalence by pointing to cases that are not susceptible to the tactics of negating the unity of ambivalence. Ambivalence in consciousness occurs at a given time, a time in which one experiences the ambivalence itself, or experiences the opposing attitudes simultaneously. This makes any ambivalence in consciousness hard to dismiss, since it cannot be explained away by claiming that the seemingly ambivalent person actually changes over time. Ambivalence is easier to dismiss and to replace with pairs of “attitudes” that stand in opposition only from a third-person perspective inasmuch as ambivalence is foreign to the subject. As a prototype for ambivalence that is foreign to the subject, we can use the figure of the Wolf Man, a man who changes into a wolf at midnight. At least from the perspective of the man, his night behavior is automatic and unconscious. This behavior, let us further assume, stands in opposition to the subject’s conscious attitudes. Let us assume that A, who as a conscious subject is full only of love and the desire to make B happy, wakes up at night and mechanically commits acts that inflict harm on B. In such a case, ambivalence can be denied on the grounds that the harmful deeds do not realize a desire or will, or at least not the will of the conscious subject; if “someone” is responsible for them, it can hence be maintained, it is certainly not the same “one” as the conscious subject.31 It thus seems possible to interpret Wolf Man in terms of a plurality of subjects or of a subject who stands in contrast to acts that are not his. And if one seeks to deny ambivalence, one can try to view other cases of ambivalence in light of this model. Suppose that A who loves B acts in ways that are indeed conscious, although the hostile objectives that they serve are not. For example, A consciously speaks about B, but he is unaware that he intentionally harms B’s reputation in what he says. It can again seem easy to refuse

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to identify the loving subject with the hostile one. Moreover, one can try to apply the Wolf Man model even if we say that A feels love for B at the very moment that he harms him, unaware of the aims of his deeds. In this case as well, it is possible to try and distinguish the loving subject from the subject who acts with enmity. True, A’s ambivalence is now manifested in his consciousness, but this ambivalence is not entirely in the first person. Thus, the door is not closed for attempts to disconnect the deeds or their harmful nature from the loving subject. 4.3 Conscious Ambivalence Identified and Defined This situation changes, however, when the conscious instant is not merely the arena in which both poles of the ambivalence are expressed, but, rather, (1) the consciousness is going out as both poles and (2) there is no room left in this momentary consciousness for attempts to divide it. What we need to see is that such cases of ambivalent consciousness do indeed exist. The view that ambivalence can be conscious is not altogether absent from the literature. For one, Sartre argued that the momentary consciousness is consciousness of not being what it is. In thus analyzing consciousness in “Presence to Self” (1958, 2.1.1), Sartre does not say that we are always ambivalent, but rather that consciousness transcends itself in regard to any positive intentionality. Ambivalence is, however, a central way to consciously be as you are not, and Sartre indeed connects this structure with “bad faith,” which is a kind of ambivalence. Philosophical studies that center on ambivalence, and in which the unity in ambivalence is to some extent acknowledged, also allow in some cases for conscious ambivalence—including Baker 2010; Kristjánsson 2010, 497ff; Poltera 2010, especially 298; and Rorty 2010. Tappolet discusses the compatibility of ambivalence with a perceptual account of emotions, without shying away from an ambivalent momentary consciousness (2005, 230). May it not be, however, that any purported conscious ambivalence is as divisible as the cases discussed above? It is noteworthy that attempts at dividing the person between two subjects can be made even in regard to an instant of consciousness that goes out as two engagements—for example, when a person is both reading a paper and suffering from the cold. Jesse Prinz evokes a similar disunity: “[C]onsider cases of multitasking, as when we walk down the street while listening to music. To me, the phenomenological intuition



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that these concurrent experiences are unified is weak at best. When we tap to music, there is clear unity between sound and motion, but when we walk while listening, isn’t it possible that the conscious stream splits in two?” (Prinz 2013, 222). And if consciousness is disrupted, may not personhood split as well? In any case, a divided consciousness would not anchor a unitary mode of a unitary person as ambivalence is understood here to be. The reason that the case of reading and suffering from the cold allows for attempts to “divide” them is that they can be irrelevant to each other. As I analyze ambivalence, however, opposed attitudes are by definition relevant to each other, and in positing the question whether ambivalence exists at the level of consciousness I ask whether there are phenomena of conscious ambivalence in which this relevance is part of the consciousness. In fact, it is not easy to imagine a case in which a consciousness goes out as each of the poles of ambivalence and yet they are separate from each other, similar to certain cases of simultaneously reading and suffering from the cold. Perhaps A can both consciously hurt and consciously love B at the same moment and yet as if independently, in the case that some conjuncture of circumstances is alone responsible for the fact both attitudes emerge. For example, suppose that B is presently suffering and this incites in A a conscious loving concern for him. However, B also mocks A’s encouraging words, hence A feels hostility to him. It would still be strange that A’s hostility and concern are felt completely independently and that their oppositional character is not conscious, or perhaps the clarity of such a description of someone’s conscious simultaneous emotions would be doubtful. What we try to imagine in the former case is that although the love for B is felt and the enmity for B is felt, the love for B is not felt as opposed to the enmity for B or vice versa—there is no feeling, for example, of “Who am I trying to help here?! Someone who cannot in the least appreciate this!” If ambivalence is indeed the unity of having two attitudes in such a way that to hold one of them includes holding it as opposed to the other, then the separation of the conscious love from the conscious enmity means that this ambivalence is not conscious even if its poles are. The ambivalence in consciousness would not in such a case constitute a conscious ambivalence in the strict sense. By contrast, ambivalence may well be conscious if (3) is true of it. (3) The person’s consciousness goes out toward one of the ambivalence’s poles in its capacity as opposed to the other pole. “In its capacity” should be read as inclusive rather than exclusive, such as to regard the attitude as having various aspects, including being opposed to the other pole. When an attitude is conscious, various aspects about it can be said

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to be (more or less) conscious. (3) requires in particular that one pole of the ambivalence is consciously held as opposed to the other pole. (3) appears to entail (1) inasmuch as, according to (3), in going out as one pole one’s consciousness is (perhaps in an untypical way) also going out as the other pole. In this case (2) is given for free. However, (3) can be realized in ways in which it may be doubtful whether both poles would be conscious as required in (1). For instance, “Who am I trying to help here?!” may well realize (3) by going out as A’s hostility in its capacity as being opposed by A’s love. In this case, this thought goes out as the hostility—it expresses the hostility in the first person. It does not, however, necessarily express A’s loving concern in the first person. In any case, it does not by itself provide a clear case of the pole of conscious love. To be on the safe side, let us, hence, substitute (3) by (4). (4) The person’s consciousness goes out to each pole of the ambivalence in its capacity as opposed to the other pole. Perhaps, however, each of the poles is felt as part of the ambivalence, but in a way that does not take account of the conscious character of the other pole. Let us hence also substitute (4) by (5). (5) The person’s consciousness goes out to each of the ambivalence’s poles in its capacity as opposed to the other conscious pole. “The other conscious pole” will be a shorthand for “the other pole as it is consciously held (at the relevant time), and in particular as conscious.” (5) provides us with a definition of conscious ambivalence. The consciousness goes out in such cases to both poles, and it cannot be divided between them as the consciousness of the one pole is by the same token consciousness of its ambivalence with the other pole. Are there then cases that realize (5)? In fact, while the simultaneous but separate consciousness of the opposed poles is rare and hardly comprehensible, conscious ambivalence is an ordinary phenomenon, be it as dramatic as the ambivalence Hawthorne imparted to his protagonist (see epigraph to this chapter) or as mundane as Sarah’s or Sam’s (98). Consider the following example: consciously trying to hurt him, A might say cruel things to B during the course of an argument, while feeling at the same time an urge to apologize and hug him. Ambivalence of this sort is conscious, belonging to the subject in his or her actual existence. A’s consciousness goes out as wanting and not wanting to hurt B and the conscious aversion to hurt B is a conscious aversion to do that which you are deliberately and consciously doing (as is revealed in particular in the need to apologize).



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4.4 Ambivalence and Distorted Consciousness We are not done, however. Consciousness does not provide certainty, and the sort of immediacy that characterizes first-person phenomena does not exclude the possibility that the “ambivalent consciousness” is inapt and the person is not ambivalent. For instance, it might be that a person wholeheartedly hates his father, but as he cannot endure this fact, he is always trying hard to feel some love toward him, to the effect of actually feeling it, albeit mixed with hate. More ordinarily, we say of people that they are ambivalent but that the character of their ambivalent consciousness is misleading as regards the character of their ambivalence. Consciously, the person is only somewhat reserved in his hope for a certain event, but in fact he is as scared of it as he is hopeful. Consciously, the person’s opposed desires leave no room for action, but in fact they move her together in a new direction.32 Some interpretations of ambivalence indeed get rid of real oppositionality by exploiting the gap between consciousness and the attitudes that are consciously held. Thus, David Pugmire argues (2005) that one of the poles of ambivalence must consist in an attenuated engagement. An attenuated engagement would, on his account, be similar to being aghast at the imminent fate of a character in a book (compared with being aghast at the fate a real person). Again, it would be similar to remembering a past embarrassment and to imagining being embarrassed (both to be compared with actual embarrassment). Based on this view, it would be natural to suppose that according to Pugmire, conscious ambivalence includes at least one pole that is similar to merely imagining the emotion and that such ambivalence is thus always weak or marginal. In fact, however, Pugmire allows for momentary conscious ambivalence. He can do this because he sees that if ambivalence is essentially momentary and cannot endure (or can endure only on the attenuated engagement model), it is not really ambivalence.33 What is felt as opposed full-blown attitudes, he apparently holds, includes in fact an attenuated engagement that does not really compete with the other attitude. It thus follows from Pugmire’s account that conscious ambivalence is always distorted. But this view is untenable, if, as suggested below, the existence of cases of distorted conscious ambivalence implies that genuine ambivalence is part of our lives. Similarly, Joan Stambaugh (1980) interprets ambivalence as the expression of self-absorption. On her account, a person who feels that he both wants something and does not want it is not really ambivalent regarding the object concerned. It is not the object but himself that he is truly concerned with: he does not want to become involved in the world. Maintaining both opposed attitudes toward, the objects that call for his involvement is his way to avoid both attitudes. Thus, the ambivalent consciousness of Stambaugh’s agents is distorted. Yet ambivalence cannot be generally accounted in terms

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of self-absorption. The reason for this is that if the agents’ real attitude can appear as ambivalence, then ambivalence is possible, and indeed may be conscious. The possibility of a “conscious ambivalence” that is not the apt expression of ambivalence suggests a complication in our formulations. Depending on whether going out to the poles is understood as a matter of the subjective character of the engagement alone, we can say that conscious ambivalence as defined in (5) is not always ambivalence, or we can say that (5) defines apt conscious ambivalence, yet the aptness goes beyond the consciousness as such.34,35 There is no need to decide between these interpretations (or terminologies). The important thing is that phenomena of indivisible ambivalent consciousness refute the view that the human being is a simple unity, regardless of whether they are adequate. How can a person experience himself as wanting and not wanting something if “A person wants and doesn’t want X” is meaningless? Surely, an experience of ambivalence may be lacking in transparency, and if it is, it may be unclear or indeterminate whether such experience existed at all. On the other hand, the possibility of ambivalence can hardly be questioned when the person experiences a clear and distinct conscious ambivalence and can ascribe it to him or herself. One might as well question the fact that we desire things, sometimes in the first person, with sufficient transparency and with the possibility of self-ascription. As long as we deal with the human being of ordinary life and language, we lack the point of view that would allow us to disavow a rather transparent and self-ascribable experience of ambivalence, just as we lack such a point of view with the parallel experience of desire. Such a disavowal would be tantamount to a disavowal of the very concept of human life. Both types of experiences may present a distorted expression of the corresponding attitude. They would, all the same, express, in a distorted way, a hypothetical ambivalence or desire that could be conscious in the manner they suggest when their inadequacy is disregarded. In other words, ambivalence, like desire, is part of our lives. 5. The Unity of Consciousness When a person’s ambivalence is conscious, it goes out in two opposed directions at once, and yet is indivisibly unitary. The explication of this possibility puts us in a position to account for the unity in consciousness in general. Consciousness can be taken to be unitary in various respects. For example, the unity between plural conscious engagements may consist in their engaging a single person; in their being available together for the exercise of a process, ability, or engagement of some type (e.g., to inference or purposeful action);



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in their engaging with a unitary object or fact (as when it is seen and heard that a chair is creaking), or in engaging with different objects that belong to a unitary space. Such unities are important, but they do not characterize consciousness as the first-person perspective. Yet does not any conscious engagement imply, as part of its self-conscious character, a whole consciousness of which it is an aspect, including various particular conscious engagements? Is it not inherent to any concrete aspect of a person’s consciousness—to the experience itself—that it is not isolated, but is part of the rest of the consciousness? Philosophers who are interested in the non-isolated character of particular feelings, sensations, perceivings, and thoughts and who attempt to clarify the relevant notion of unity and examine whether consciousness is unitary in that sense often use the term “phenomenal unity” or speak of the unity of phenomenal consciousness. It is such unity that Michael Tye and Tim Bayne are concerned with in their recent books about the unity of consciousness. Considering their very different accounts together will allow me to argue in the present section that the unity of consciousness has to be accounted in terms of conscious interlinkages and the outgoing character of consciousness.36 Tye and Bayne agree that at least in ordinary cases a person’s simultaneous experience is unitary. (According to Bayne, momentary consciousness is apparently always unitary. According to Tye, diachronic consciousness is unitary.) While Tye argues that a stream of consciousness constitutes a single unitary experience and its unity consists in various objective qualities being co-represented there, Bayne, focusing on momentary consciousness, argues that we have multiple simultaneous experiences and they are unified in the sense that for any two simultaneous experiences there is an experience that encompasses them. He further holds that any experience can be divided into “maximally specific” intentional experiences (25). I will not enter into the dispute over whether the unit of experience is synchronic or also diachronic. In what follows, I propose an account of the unity of consciousness at a time. The account presupposes that the mind is unitary over time, and, although other interpretations may be possible, also that momentary consciousness itself takes time, and that such momentary consciousness is for most of our day a part of an ongoing consciousness. I will also not ask whether we ought to speak of every outgoing aspect of a momentary consciousness as a particular experience. For our purposes, it is sufficient that intentional experiences and intentional aspects of experience would be conscious engagements or aspects of a consciousness differentiated as to how the consciousness goes out.37 In their different explications, Tye and Bayne are to a large extent interested in the same thing. They maintain that it is part of being phenomenally conscious that consciousness is given as unitary38 and it is this unity that they

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want to analyze (and determine the scope of). It is important to both authors that irrelated engagements—as reading and suffering from cold can be—are unified in the sense concerned. This suggests that it is not positive ways in which certain experiences are unitary (e.g., the conscious representation of an event together) that they have in mind in describing ordinary moments of consciousness as unitary, but rather the contrast between how it is for a person to be engaged simultaneously in various ways and the lack of unity between the simultaneous engagements of different people. The problem is that once we focus on irrelated engagements, we lose track of this contrast. Furthermore, insofar as phenomenal consciousness is abstracted from its outgoing character, and is conceived as pure “subjective feel” (Tye, 7), all “engagements” are irrelated. We need not conclude, however, that this contrast cannot be articulated. There is an important sense that consciousness in the ordinary sense—consciousness that is interdependently phenomenal and outgoing, as outlined in section 1—is, to a large extent, unitary;39 and once the aspects of phenomenal and outgoing consciousness are not divorced from each other, our investigation of a particular form of conscious unity, that is, of conscious ambivalence, puts us in a position to formulate that sense. We can say that a single person’s consciousness is unitary in always falling back on consciously interrelated engagements. This explication has two aspects, neither of which is more primitive than the other: (1) To identify a conscious unity between two engagements of a person is to identify how in going out toward one engagement, the person’s consciousness appeals to the other engagement. (2) Such conscious relations are central to consciousness. To be consciously engaged implies that unities of all sorts (falling under (1)) with other engagements are as a rule available. In other words, consciousness is unitary in the sense that any simultaneous conscious engagements could be consciously unitary, when such actual conscious unity is explicated by (1). Note further that (1) is not independent of (2) because any outgoing consciousness, in any respect, including that of unity, is understood as part of a unitary consciousness that transcends it. With this explication in mind, it is easy to see why reading a paper, for example, is a part of a unitary consciousness. The reading of the paper is perhaps also going out at the particular moment as the reading of a certain proposition, as the reading of a certain syntactical construct, and as an audiovisual consciousness.40 The momentary reading is also going out as bound up with other engagements of perceiving the environment. Not only does the person reading also see the passing cars, but the reading can be felt as reading



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in front of the passing cars. Not only does she feel her partner is bored, but her reading may be disheartened in view of this. Again the reading can be bound up with possible conscious reading movements of the face and eyes, and with various thoughts, emotions, and so on. Similarly, the reading would go out as simultaneous with feeling the cold or sensing the partner’s boredom, if the person introspected on this connection. Finally, if, alternatively, the cold gradually became so annoying that the person stopped reading, this would in a sense expose the unity present in the earlier minutes. While the example focuses on perceptions and the like, a person reading can also consciously maintain attitudes, recall things, have new ideas regarding plans, and have all sort of other engagements that would be interlinked with the reading, and, moreover, it would be part of their conscious character, as well as of the reading, that they do. I defend in this book the understanding of personhood in terms of the actual connections between the person’s engagements as well as their openness to ongoing reconnection. In stating that consciousness is unitary in the sense defined, I take the general availability of mental interlinkages to include availability of forms of conscious interlinkage, that is, of connection, which is an inseparable aspect of the conscious engagements concerned.41,42 The proceeding sections remark on certain notions in the philosophical research on consciousness in order to explain further what is involved in the notion of the unity of consciousness as here developed. 5.1 Enactivism The account of unity in terms of articles (1) and (2) is in certain respects close to enactivist views of consciousness (Susan Hurley 1998, Alva Noë and J. K. O’Regan 2001, Noë 2004). Such approaches suggest something similar to (1) in rejecting the understanding of perceivings as isolated entities and as merely phenomenal, endorsing instead the view of persons as engaged creatures whose perceptions are bound up with conscious intentions and actions, such that particular experiences and actions are constituted by actually (and potentially) interacting with various other such engagements with the environment. This enactivist position is undermined, however, to the extent that the interaction, in fact, characterizes functionally defined entities (as in Noë and O’Regan 2001 and Noë 2004). In this case the interrelated “engagements” comprise a purely third-personal notion, and such it remains even if some purely phenomenal consciousness emerged, in which these interrelations were somehow attested. The above interpretation of enactivism is also undermined if persons are ascribed there with interdependent personal-level perceptions and intentions while the interdependency only means that they are different functions of a single functionalist subpersonal system (Hurley 1998).43

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Enactivist views are also reminiscent of (2): in their account of perceptual experience Noë and O’Regan reject the view that we are constantly aware of everything before our eyes. Instead “the visual world is immediately accessible to our exploration” (2001, 97), that is, to our engaging with it in ways that are connected in new directions to our actual involvement (to where we are and how we are occupied). Reference not merely to actual related activities but also to potential interlinkages is constitutive of our conscious engagements: “seeing something consists in the fact that you know you can, by the appropriate eye, body, or object movement, cause changes that provide information about that thing” (ibid.).44 5.2 Co-Consciousness In thinking of the unity of consciousness, we may stress that the unit of consciousness is the person’s ongoing conscious life and the plural conscious engagements are aspects thereof. Complementarily we begin by observing the multiple directions in which a person’s consciousness goes out both over time and at a time, and then the question of the unity of consciousness becomes the question of the unity between plural experiences or experiential aspects of consciousness. From the second point of view, the question of unity is closely related to that of co-consciousness. When a person has two simultaneous experiences, they are co-conscious if it is part of the character of each that it is conscious together with the other.45 Under the understanding of consciousness and of its unity in the present chapter, the notion of coconsciousness becomes clear: conscious engagements that are interrelated as in article (1) of the account of phenomenal unity are co-conscious. If, finally sitting on the airplane that is taking you to your new life, you feel at once happy and sad, your conflicting emotions are co-conscious.46 Similarly, your sadness may consciously trouble you with the thought you might never go back, and thus the sadness would be co-conscious with the thought.47 At the same time, your happiness at the new life coming might show in your perceiving how huge the sky is and how changeable and multifarious are the clouds. The happiness would then be co-conscious with these perceptions.48 We see that co-consciousness is abundant but also that it is not true by definition of any pair of simultaneous conscious engagements of a person that they are co-conscious, and that whenever co-consciousness does hold, this relation transcends the minimal definition given above. I refer to these qualifications in turn. Co-consciousness is sometimes thought to clearly exist between any two experiential aspects of any ordinary momentary consciousness of a single person; accordingly, it is then thought to explicate what phenomenal synchronic unity consists of (William James 1920/2010, esp. 268, Barry Dainton



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2000, 3.7, and Hurley 1994).49 If, however, it does not have to be in any clear sense an aspect of my momentary reading that I am now also feeling the cold, we must acknowledge a more complex relation between the unity of consciousness and actual co-consciousness. As we have seen, this is part of what article (2) of the present account does. It is only a part though, and this brings us to the second qualification, for article (2) does not merely suggest an availability of conscious engagements to co-consciousness, but an availability to conscious interrelations of various kinds. Ought this be changed? Article (1) explicates the unity between two engagements in terms of specific ways that in going out toward one engagement, the person’s consciousness appeals to the other engagement. Ought we substitute (1) for something like, “To identify a conscious unity between two engagements of a person is to identify that they are co-conscious?” Such a substitution is not quite wrong because any way in which, in going out as one engagement, the person’s consciousness appeals to the other conscious engagement and vice versa, is a way that these engagements are co-conscious. Yet we cannot account for the unity of consciousness in terms of actual and potential co-consciousness. The problem is that the account of co-consciousness is part of what we need to explicate this unity. First, if co-consciousness is supposed to be understood in terms of a purely phenomenal dimension of consciousness, the notion becomes meaningless. To understand an experience as co-conscious with another is already to take this experience as going out in some direction, namely one involving reference to that other item. In taking co-consciousness to hold in some case, we thus maintain that the consciousness is going out in a way that appeals to another direction in which it simultaneously goes out and vice versa. This, however, still doesn’t grant us with a substitute for article (1), for such claims require further specification in order to be understood. In what sense is it part of the engagement that the consciousness goes out in that other direction? How does it appeal to it? The two simultaneous engagements may surely be co-conscious, but this would be an abstraction of their particular conscious interlinkages, even if it may be taken as (sometimes?) itself experiential. 5.3 Representational Unity The concern with co-consciousness as the crux of the unity of consciousness is foiled by taking co-consciousness as a kind of phenomenal experience, which does not require explication. However, philosophers sometimes replace or merge that concern with another regarding the joining of two or more simultaneous conscious engagements in the awareness of a unitary content, object, event, fact, a part or the whole of space, a part or the whole of the

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world, and so on. This complex of concerns is relevant to us insofar as they have to do with suggesting some character to the phenomenal unity between conscious engagements. We may speak of these various concerns together as “representational unity” (Bayne 2010), “synthetic unity” (Andrew Brook 2000), or again integrative or content-related unity.50 In such cases, the person’s consciousness goes out in several directions each involving her with a different part or aspect of something, and, by the same token, she engages with the object or content unitarily. For example, standing at the window, one sees the yard and sees especially a child playing there, or one hears and sees an airplane flying, or one is thinking of an idea and of an argument supporting it. Representational unity pertains already to James’s account. James equates the co-consciousness of experiences with their being members of a worldexperience, which as such are known together (1920/2010, 221) and he argues for co-consciousness by rejecting as highly strange the view that instances of consciousness that clearly have related contents may be discontinuous (2010, 205–206).51 Dainton holds that the co-consciousness between experiences often consists in their being spatially interrelated (2000, chapter 3).52 Hurley (1994) takes co-consciousness between a person’s simultaneous conscious beliefs to imply the agglomeration of content, such that co-consciously thinking that P and thinking that Q co-consciously implies thinking that P-and-Q. Finally, Brook replaces co-consciousness with a unity between multiple aspects of a synchronic consciousness, which consists in their forming together a consciousness of their unified content. The consciousness’s different aspects are distinguished in terms of their objects, and to be conscious of an object “is also to be conscious of other objects and/or representations as connected to it/them and of the group together” (2000, 67). In these conceptions, the authors are interested for the most part in the synthetic unity between plural directions in which a momentary consciousness goes out. In any case, the consciousness is not supposed to be unitary merely in the sense of having a unitary object or content. Suppose also that the unity does not consist merely in the object being consciously held as having different aspects. (For although a typical seeing of a big table in front of one may be taken as an instance of representational unity of consciousness in another sense, it is not an instance of co-consciousness. The object’s function, size, and spatial relation to ourselves would not constitute different directions in which our consciousness goes out.) Representational unity thus understood, let me propose that specific kinds of representational unity comprise types, or aspects of types, of conscious interlinkages in the sense provided by article (1) of our account of unity. If you see and hear the airplane flying, then you see it as the airplane also heard by you. If you see the child playing, you see her playing at the yard as it is



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experienced at the background of your thought. Similarly, two simultaneous beliefs would often be interlinked as beliefs that describe the world together,53 and in the act of developing an argument supporting some idea, you might at times be consciously establishing this idea (which would mean you are also consciously entertaining the idea). This is not to say, however, that phenomenal unity is representational. Bayne emphasizes that phenomenal unity does not imply representational unity (esp. chapter 3). Tye makes clear that consciousness of a unitary object or a part of space is not the point of phenomenal unity, as consciousness may have spatially separated objects (19). I agree that the objects and contents of simultaneous conscious engagements—even when it is helpful to speak of the engagements as having them—do not have to be conscious as interrelated objects or contents, just as the simultaneous conscious engagements do not have to be actually connected in any other way. I argued that the sense in which a momentary consciousness has phenomenal unity, although it is going out in consciously unconnected directions, may not be explicated in terms of a special phenomenal unity, but rather that a person’s consciousness is unitary in the sense that interlinkages between the directions a consciousness goes out are always available. Such availability characterizes synthetic interlinkages as well. Phenomenal unity is also not tantamount to any kind of representational unity when we consider consciously interlinked engagements. Perhaps it could be granted that any conscious interlinkage implies representational unities. For example, when one consciously loves yet hates someone, the attitudes are jointly directed to their common object, and it can also be said that under the ambivalence the person is regarded in a way formed by the joining of attitudes. However, the unity in such interlinkages as in others does not consist merely in the engagements joining into a consciousness of a unitary object or content. 5.4 The Outgoing Unity of Phenomenal Consciousness: Back to Tie and to Bayne The unity of conscious ambivalence does not challenge the unity of consciousness, but rather helps to explicate this unity and the outgoing character of consciousness it presupposes. Interestingly, both Bayne and Tye insist that unitary consciousness can involve “inconsistent” engagements, be they sensations that simultaneously suggest diverse bodily states and locations (Tye, 77–78, 118–19), perceptions that propose contradictory situations (Tye, 37–39 and Bayne, 56–57) or unbelieved illusions (Bayne, 57–58). I do not suggest that these are all cases of ambivalence. In whatever sense any relevant instance is inconsistent, what we need to notice is that to identify it as a clear

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case of an actually unitary consciousness (falling under article (1) of the proposed account of the unity of consciousness), its inconsistent parts must be described as internally related. Moreover, they must be described as going out toward their mutual inconsistency, otherwise we could abstract from them presumably disconnected engagements. A person may be consciously engaged, simultaneously but separately, in mutually inconsistent ways. Such engagements may be non-consciously interlinked, as in ambivalence in consciousness that does not constitute a conscious ambivalence. In this chapter, it was allowed, for the sake of the argument, that such ambivalence can be understood in terms of a mental split, but in fact ambivalence is a form of mental interlinkage. In other cases, the fact that consciousness involves momentary or brief engagements allows for pairs of inconsistent engagements that are neither consciously nor nonconsciously connected. As a person in a bar moves away from her friend, wishing not to stand in her way as she flirts with somebody, her eyes may fall on her friend’s addressee, and she might, unthinkingly, exchange intimate glances with him, missing, from this perspective, the fact that her friend is talking with him. We cannot dwell here on the various forms in which an ordinary momentary consciousness may involve separate inconsistent engagements, but, one way or the other, they would partake in the consciousness’s unity, that is, relevant conscious interlinkages would be available. Such interlinkages may be inhibited in accordance with the person’s further engagements (due to psychoanalytic repression, because one is half asleep, etc.). Other than that, a small actual or counterfactual change would connect the inconsistent engagements or replace them with consciously connected engagements, either in a way that would cancel the inconsistency, or by forming conscious ambivalence, or by forming some other engagement in which the inconsistency plays a part. Bayne and Tye think of phenomenal unity as actual and their phenomena of inconsistent perceptions, inconsistent perceptual beliefs, and inconsistencies between beliefs and perceptions indeed involve actual unity. Despite the fact that in acknowledging inconsistencies, they emphasize that the unity of consciousness surpasses consistent connections, and would not even consider the possibility that inconsistent engagements may be connected, the detailed examples characterize actually interlinked engagements. In one case, Tye explicitly infers the “experienced unity” of the inconsistent aspects in such phenomena precisely from the fact they are liable to be consciously related as inconsistent: “To be sure, your overall experience is likely to seem incredible to you. . . . Even so, it seems to me, one reaction you may well have to your situation is that of asking yourself: How could I be experiencing both these things? How could I possibly be experiencing these things together?” (77–78).54



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Leaving ambivalence and inconsistency aside, if consciousness is unitary since it is going out in interrelated directions and can always fall back on such conscious connections, then the unity pertains to outgoing consciousness. Thus, the phenomenal unity of consciousness is incompatible with the view that consciousness may be purely phenomenal, and neither is it true that the unity itself is in some sense purely phenomenal nor again that the unity is an aspect of some purely phenomenal dimension of consciousness, rather than an aspect of its outgoing character. Even while such phenomenalistic views are not alien to Tye’s and Bayne’s accounts, their emphasis on phenomenal consciousness primarily distinguishes such consciousness and unity from notions or aspects of consciousness or of its unity which are not experiential. If consciousness, qua our experiential or first-personal involvement in the world, is inherently unitary, this would not be explicated in terms of aspects of the consciousness in regard to which its phenomenal character may be ignored. Outgoing consciousness is of course a completely different matter. Given that consciousness and its unity require outgoing consciousness, we could perhaps expect Tye’s and Bayne’s to appeal to it in their accounts. This they do in complementary ways. Tye argues for the unity of consciousness by considering different kinds of outgoing consciousness. For example, visual perceptions are unified, emotions are unified with other engagements, and so on. In each case, the unity is explicated differently. So indeed must it be if actual unity consists in consciousness that goes out as related to another way it goes out. After all, a conscious engagement has a particular outgoing character, and this includes its reference in some way to the other engagement. While Tye’s procedure thus implicitly anchors the unity of consciousness in its outgoing character, Bayne’s scope for phenomenal consciousness is closer to explicitly admitting its outgoing character. Thomas Nagel has famously described consciousness as raising the question of what is like to be conscious in some way. While philosophers speak of this question as a way to capture the phenomenal character of consciousness, a concern with what something is like goes by definition beyond any unspeakable feel. The “feel” dimension cannot be abstracted from that of the outgoing character of consciousness or vice versa (see the first feature of outgoing consciousness in section 1, 3–4), but often, moreover, “what it is like” aims primarily at the outgoing character of the consciousness, and all the more so when the question is what type of engagement some experience is like. Finally, and here we are back with Bayne, this question clearly appears to depict consciousness as going out in various directions, when the types of engagements referred to include such that can hardly be thought to have a distinctive “feel”: “There is, I submit, something distinctive that it is like to judge that an argument is invalid, hope that the trains are running on time, and wonder what might have happened

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had early humans not left Africa, just as surely as there is something it is like to smell coffee, see a Ferris wheel turn, or hear the rain fall on a tin roof.”55 There is a second pair of ways in which Tye and Bayne undermine the merely phenomenal character of phenomenal consciousness, so destructive for the notion of a unity of consciousness. Both authors, once again in complementary ways, bring the subject (or person, or self) into the particular moments and streams of consciousness. In section 1, I presented outgoing consciousness in terms of three aspects. The first aspect has been that consciousness outgoes its phenomenal consciousness. The second aspect describes consciousness as self-consciousness in the sense that when one is consciously engaged, one’s consciousness does not merely go out toward its object, but rather it goes out toward itself as this engagement with that object. According to the third aspect, consciousness stands in a relation of mutual constitution with the subject, conceived as a person with various changeable and intertwined attitudes and other engagements. In identifying an indispensably unitary conscious ambivalence, these requirements were exploited and supported: we found what we needed—a strictly conscious ambivalence— and we found that what we needed was such consciousness that goes out as some engagement, and that in thus going out, appeals to how this engagement is related to another way the person is consciously engaged. Bayne argues that “psychological” elements are irrelevant to the subject who is the single owner of his unified experiences, and thus rejects the third aspect of outgoing consciousness. At the same time, he explicates the conscious engagement as a self-conscious perspective, and hence partly endorses the second aspect of outgoing consciousness: “I am currently aware that I instantiate the phenomenal property distinctive of tasting coffee, and in being aware of this fact I am also aware of the corresponding experience,” (33).56 Conversely, Tye holds that our experiences themselves are not something we are conscious of (22–25). On the other hand, he maintains that consciousness requires a subject while the subject or person is necessarily associated with a “psychological framework” composed of his beliefs, desires, memories, and streams of consciousness (6.4). We can see that despite the explicit contrasts with the analysis in this chapter, the development of the notion of phenomenal unity leads Tye and Bayne toward the unitary outgoing consciousness of ambivalent and otherwise engaged subjects. The chapter has shown that conscious ambivalence comprises a way in which consciousness is substantially unitary. The view that persons are either unitary or plural calls for explaining away ambivalence by tactics of harmonizing, splitting, or annulling the unitary subject. We have found in this chapter that no combination of such tactics can generally dispense with ambivalence, since they cannot be applied to ordinary moments of



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explicit and clear conscious ambivalence. In such cases, consciousness goes out as the opposed attitudes, and these attitudes are consciously held in it as mutually opposed. Whereas a conscious engagement can be distorted, and thus the person can be “consciously ambivalent” without being ambivalent, moments of conscious ambivalence reveal ambivalence as an attitude that is part of human life. In this argument, we have employed three features of consciousness that together capture its outgoing character. Having analyzed conscious ambivalence, we could then further explore consciousness, its relations to the mind, and its unity. Drawing on the outgoing character of consciousness and on the accounts of Bayne and Tye, section 5 generalizes from the unity of ambivalent consciousness a notion of substantial conscious unity. Just as conscious ambivalence consists in two consciously conflicting attitudes, so conscious engagements can go out as standing in various other relations to each other. And given that it is central to the notions of consciousness and of particular experience that such possibilities are available, we are provided with an explication of the sense in which a person’s short-term consciousness is unitary. notes 1. For more about the relations between the two patterns, see chapter 3. In what follows, I ignore patterns of ambivalence that do not conform to that of holding opposed attitudes toward the same object (and its complementary one-attitude pattern). 2. For my use of “intentionality,” see Introduction, 21–22. 3. In what follows, “momentary” stands for “more or less momentary,” or what is called “the specious present.” 4. Engagements are intentional aspects of a person’s life, such as mental attitudes, actions, thoughts, and feelings. The term “mind” is used in this book to refer to the person’s engagements taken together. See Introduction, section 3. 5. Husserl emphasizes the intentional aspect of consciousness, while relating it to some idea of phenomenal consciousness, which can be rather massive (Ideas) or only a shadow (in the later Cartesian Meditations). 6. The following presentation reconstructs Sartre’s analysis of pre-reflective, nonthetic consciousness as self-consciousness (1958, “Introduction”) in accordance with the first and third features of outgoing consciousness. 7. The feature can be reformulated to allow for outgoing consciousness without an object in such cases as “general feelings” (for instance, feeling relaxed) and conscious “intransitive” actions. The formulation would appeal to the relations of objectless feelings and actions with other engagements that are object-directed. Alternatively, we may in such cases stipulate suitable objects, for example, the world or the person herself.

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8. The remarks above reject the analysis of the self-conscious character essential to consciousness in terms of some special sensations or reflection, and thus reject, in particular, the conception of consciousness as self-consciousness that is included in higher-order thought and perception theories (HOT, HOP). I also disagree with Gennaro who proposes (2002) that the HOT theory captures Sartre’s view of consciousness. Zahavi 2004 discusses Sartre in order to show that an intentional engagement with an object is not conscious unless it constitutes self-consciousness and that the relevant sense of self-consciousness captures the first-person perspective of a Brentanointentionality, rather than adds a second intentional object. However, Zahavi explicates self-consciousness in terms of the phenomenal aspect of experience (“subjective feel”) and the feature of mineness (esp. 78). 9. I thank Ayal Donenfeld for referring me to this passage. Wittgenstein usually emphasizes that to mean something is, in general, not itself an engagement, and the passages relevant to §107 in Philosophical Investigations (§455–§457) refer to meaning and omit the connections to experience and intentionality. 10. It is clear from the preceding lines of §107 that the topic is self-consciousness and not only the consciousness of the object: “It is almost as if one said: we can’t see ourselves going hither and thither, because it is we who are doing the going (and so we can’t stand still and watch). But here, as so very often, we are suffering from an inadequate form of expression . . . For . . . one does indeed have a particular visual experience if one is doing the going oneself.” Wittgenstein rejects, however, the explication of going up as itself to something in terms of a further sensation. 11. Conscious attitudes clearly surpass the momentary consciousness, but conscious running, or seeing of a tree, also go out as engagements that transcend the conscious moment. (The moment of running has a past and a future and is held as interlinked with specified and unspecified actual and possible engagements.) 12. Although focusing on human persons, the chapter exhibits the relations of personhood (or subjectivity) as such with consciousness and ambivalence. 13. Chapters 3 and 4 defend the understanding of mental attitudes as basically rational interlinked dispositions. As debates on the nature of attitudes are often motivated by questions about the relations of mind and brain, let me note here that whatever one’s position regarding these issues, it ought not to hinder one from thinking of attitudes as dispositions-perspectives, toward which consciousness can go out. 14. The mooring in consciousness should not exclude the psychoanalyst’s unconscious attitudes, but would exclude the view that sunflowers like the sun insofar as they incline toward it. 15. See Searle 2002 for a position that emphasizes the dependency of mental states, or at least intentional mental states, on (mostly intentional) consciousness. 16. For conceptions of consciousness that are somewhat closer to the view here proposed in regard to the outgoing and the phenomenal dimensions, and in regard to consciousness going out as the person’s engagement, see Chalmers 2004 and Crane 2009. See also Moran’s 1997 and 2001 discussions of self-knowledge for a conception of consciousness similar in several ways to the one here presented. However, Moran divorces the third-person and first-person perspectives.



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17. This is to say that her ambivalence was conscious. “Conscious” and “consciously” are not used in this chapter in the colloquial sense; and, in particular, in describing a person as consciously engaged, I do not suggest that she is very conscious of (something about) herself as a potential object of attention by others. 18. Which is not to say that ambivalence is never maintained for a brief moment. 19. Koch 1987 also studies conscious ambivalence, or “coexisting conflicting emotions,” because they make the ambivalence hard to deny. 20. I analyze mental unity as unity in plurality and compare it with simple unity in chapters 3 and 6. 21. Jackson 1985 is a rather rare example of actually attempting an argument in this line. 22. Self-deception is interpreted this way in Gendler 2007. 23. See Davidson 1970. 24. For a perceptual account that emphasizes this motivation, see Mark Johnston 2001. Johnston exemplifies: “Hearing Ma’s tone as ravishing requires a refinement of sensing that naturally and standardly involves being in a certain way affectively taken with virtues of tone” (200). 25. Döring 2009. Döring herself maintains that the two perceptualist accounts of the conflicts are complementary, and both true. She also aims at preserving genuine ambivalence. 26. My own view is that emotional ambivalence is sometimes appropriately described as ambivalence between emotional perceptions, that such perceptions (as well as sense-perceptions) can be genuinely ambivalent, and that the perceptions in such conflicts are objectivity-directed. Such ambivalence can also be strictly conscious. See Razinsky In review. 27. Freud is often read this way (mistakenly I believe). Rovane 2004 argues that human beings are often divided internally between different persons and that internal conflicts fall under such divisions. 28. See Razinsky 2016, the section “Phenomenalist Ambivalence?” 29. The harmony response to the existence of ambivalence, as well as the various forms of the multiplicity response, is also considered in chapter 2. The view that ambivalence is a sort of mental split is examined in chapter 7, section 4. 30. Rightly, I believe. In particular, although we shall identify clear and concrete momentary consciousness of ambivalence, this is not intended to deny that the same conscious ambivalence is indeterminate in other ways. 31. I do not allude to Freud here, but rather to some received views on him. I argue in chapter 6, section 3, that Freud develops a conception of a unitary and ambivalent person. 32. The question as to whether there is a gap between how a person’s consciousness goes out and how that person is in the relevant matters would often be itself indeterminate (all the more so when the gap is taken to be intentional, for one can subtly feel intentional gaps). Consider, however, also that in a sense there is necessarily a gap between an engagement and how it goes out, as well as that the character of any engagement and of any outgoing consciousness is necessarily indeterminate.

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33. Pugmire holds that (real) emotion must have depth (consisting in connections with other attitudes) but allows our conscious feelings to be shallow. See, especially, sections i and v. 34. Consciousness is as a rule somewhat different when the conscious ambivalence is inapt as opposed to when it is apt. Inadequate consciousness involves further interlinkages in addition to those suggested by (5), and it can be expected that some of these additional interlinkages would be conscious. Consciousness may even go out as inadequate—in particular, as self-deceiving. Yet aptness is never completely given to momentary consciousness, nor to some special engagement of the person (such as an appropriate reflection), or to some third-person examination. This is because it is inherently possible to rethink any identification of engagements and interlinkages. 35. Under the second approach, we can speak of unnecessarily adequate conscious ambivalence as consciousness in which (6) and (7) in any case hold, when according to (6) the person’s consciousness is going out as an engagement/engagements in which the person takes herself to hold each of two opposed attitudes to an object, and according to (7), the engagement(s) in (6) consciously appeal to each of the attitudes in (6) in their capacity as opposed to the other attitude. 36. The page numbers below refer to these books (Tye 2003 and Bayne 2010). There are other accounts of phenomenal unity. James 1920/2010 [originally 1909] is an early example (in addition to studying the individual’s consciousness, James takes religious experience to indicate that feelings of different people take part together in larger unitary consciousnesses). In the growing debate on the analysis of phenomenal unity, let me further mention Brook 2000 and Dainton 2000. 37. I disagree, however, with the assumption that consciousness fundamentally consists in maximally specific engagements. Two problematic presuppositions appear to be included here. First, the character of such engagements is supposed to be independent of other maximally specific engagements, and, second, it is taken to be part of the notion of “maximally specific” that such engagements are determinate, and with them momentary experience in general. 38. Or that this unity is given in introspection. This is Bayne’s view, but he also reinterprets introspection such that it “fills” ordinary consciousness (90–91). 39. The view above leaves open (dependent on empirical and conceptual considerations) such questions as whether brain-split persons’ consciousness is unitary (generally or ever), whether people with advanced Alzheimer have a unitary consciousness, or again whether a dream consciousness is unitary and whether it is part of the larger unity of consciousness. 40. I refer here and below to such cases in which the aspects concerned are in some way conscious. 41. We can also say about the interlinkages of engagements what has been said about engagements in describing the third feature of outgoing consciousness (section 1), namely that interlinkages can in principle be conscious: engagements can in principle go out as interlinked in any way they are interlinked, and they can in principle go out as interlinked with other conscious engagements, conceived as conscious. The qualification “in principle” is just as important. That is, it may well be part of the way the person presently is—part of her engagements and their interlinkages—that



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some conscious interlinkages are, as things stand, not available to consciousness. See also note 14. 42. Conversely, the analysis of personhood as requiring interlinking engagement may draw support from the character of conscious ambivalence (Razinsky 2016, the section “Phenomenalist Ambivalence?”). 43. Hurley’s subpersonal level consists in a dynamic feedback system that is realized not merely in the brain but also in, and between, the body and the environment. 44. In noting the affinities between the enactivist analysis and my own, I am not proposing to conceive of any part of a conscious engagement, for example, any slight turning of the eyes to the left, as itself conscious. This is to say that the minimal adaptations with which enactivists are often concerned constitute the forming of conscious interlinkages in some, but not all, occasions. It follows that if (as I maintain) these minimal adaptations characterize us as persons, rather than biological robots, this must be elucidated in somewhat different terms. My proposal is that it is inherent to consciousness and basic rationality that minimal adaptation can always lose its automatic character, such that its interlinked parts would comprise instances of outgoing consciousness whose interlinkages are basically rational and conscious. 45. “Co-consciousness” is also used in regard to temporal continuity between “contiguous” experiences. 46. They are co-conscious, given that this is the ordinary case in which the emotions consciously go out as conflicting, and the ambivalence is strictly conscious. 47. Suppose that the thought of never returning exhausts your conscious sadness at the moment. Are we to speak here of consciousness going out in two consciously interlinked ways or of a single direction of the consciousness (a direction that constitutes, however, a consciousness-transcending mental interlinkage between two engagements)? We can choose as we like. 48. Perhaps, the thought that you might never return sharpens your happiness as well as your sadness. This is not necessary, however, nor does it seem necessary that that thought is consciously interlinked to the happiness in any other way. In particular, although the conscious interlinkage with the conflicting sadness can involve the thought that is expressive of the sadness, it does not have to involve that thought. Similarly the impression given by the clouds does not have to be consciously connected to the sadness. This suggests that co-consciousness is not a transitive relation. However, it is to some extent up to us to presuppose transitivity and infer co-consciousness in such cases as the above. There is no level in which the momentary consciousness is completely independent of engagements that transcend consciousness. Since the sadness and the impression are interlinked in basically rational ways, and since a small change would make them clearly co-consciously interrelated, we may see them as in any case co-conscious. 49. According to Hurley, co-consciousness implies consistency, and such coconsciousness is the subjective condition the unity of consciousness. 50. We do not need to commit ourselves to representationalism or accept that synthetic unity must imply that the synthetically co-conscious engagements together form the object, content, or space. 51. According to James, co-consciousness transcends single persons.

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52. The space in point is phenomenal space. Dainton identifies consciousness with its contents, thus equating the unity of consciousness with the spatial unity of the contents whenever the phenomenal unity is spatial. James’s cited unitary object of knowledge also appears to be identical to the conscious whole. 53. It does not follow that contradictory beliefs are consciously (or more generally) unconnected. Sometimes they are unconnected. In other cases, they form ambivalence of belief. In the case of ambivalence, the beliefs are connected as beliefs which cast doubt on each other, rather than forming together a belief in a contradiction. It is central to the character of ambivalence of belief that it can be conscious. See chapter 7, section 5.2. 54. In this case, the inconsistent engagements call for a third engagement that goes out toward both in their inconsistent capacity. In Tye (38), the attitudes directly go out as inconsistent: “what touch told him led him not to trust his sight.” 55. Yet Bayne must be aiming, at another level of his account, at the phenomenal dimension of such engagements. This emerges when he considers the relation of the intentional and phenomenal states. Bayne explicates a conscious engagement as the instantiation of a phenomenal quality, where such qualities are the function of the pair {(kind of) attitude, (kind of) content} into which the engagement can be analyzed (70). 56. See also Bayne’s analysis of the roles of the self (12.1) as well of the de se structure of consciousness (12.5). The de se structure consists in the fact that engagements comprise or include first-person thoughts that appeal to a single subject who is the owner of all the experiences included in this consciousness. Bayne analyzes self-consciousness as adding objects (the self, and maybe the experiences) to the other objects of consciousness, although his less formal formulations suggest a view closer to the one proposed here. However, he takes the subject to be nothing but the fictional object that captures the de se structure.

Chapter 6

Pursuits of Harmony, Integration, and Freud’s Person

Some time ago, I saw a little girl who wanted—ambivalently—to caress a dog. Crying out, both in exultation and in fear, “Mommy, I will stroke it!” she dared to touch the dog, then withdrew her hand, accompanying the withdrawal with a huge laugh, at once elated and fearful, which a moment later became a half-scream. She then approached the dog two more times, again with cries and laughs. Her mother explained that the child had had a traumatic experience with another dog, but that “this one is so cute that she wants to fondle it anyway.” I have argued in earlier chapters that ambivalence, in which a person maintains two opposed attitudes toward a single object,1 is an ordinary mode of human existence, and also that ambivalence is irreducibly plural and thus reveals the irreducible plurality of persons. Even if you agree with this, you might still remain unhappy about the account in two ways. First, I have argued that ambivalence also manifests mental unity and that this is possible because the person’s plural engagements (attitudes, instances of behavior and of consciousness, and any other intentional aspects of the person’s life) constitute and appeal to the person’s unity by their mutual interlinkages and by their openness to new connections: a mind2 is a unity in plurality and ambivalent opposition is a form of interlinkage between two attitudes. Yet perhaps you remain unconvinced, taking it that unity is inherently bound up with harmony; if you also take unity to be essential to personhood, then you may be more inclined to discard the apparent contradiction with the existence of ambivalence in another way and maintain that people are plural creatures who try to achieve harmonious unity. Second, taking ambivalence to be inherently detrimental and hateful, you might grant that we are in fact often ambivalent but hold that ambivalence must be something that we endeavor to solve—we must be preoccupied with the pursuit of harmony. 131

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It is these two worries and approaches that I address in this chapter. I argue that the pursuit of harmonious unity itself manifests mental unity and that even integration—the pursuit and achievement of substantial unity—can be ambivalent. Both points also inform Freud’s account of persons as ambivalent creatures who seek for harmony, to which I turn in section 3. Let us begin, however, with a brief discussion of the purported discrepancies between ambivalence and mental unity and the problem with their purported solution. Why does ambivalence constitute a special challenge for the unity of persons? This ensues from a view of mental unity that equates a single person with a single perspective. Ambivalence includes antithetical perspectives and it thus implies that our attitudes are irreducibly plural. By contrast, a harmonious plurality may at some level be conceived of as reducible to the unity of a single perspective. If the person’s mental attitudes were harmonious, we could try to take them as forming a unitary attitude. Perhaps the harmonious desires of a person can be thought of as partial aspects of an encompassing desire that the world be such and such, but this possibility is excluded if some of the desires are mutually opposed. Perhaps desires, beliefs, emotions, and mental attitudes of any character can be conceived as together forming the person’s single attitude toward the world. However, if she is ambivalent in some regard, then two of her attitudes challenge each other, and the dream of a single encompassing attitude dissipates. Ambivalence thus poses a problem for mental unity as generally conceived; yet, this book argues, we are undeniably unitary. To be sure, the view that people or their minds are plural, rather than unitary, is popular enough. Some, as we shall see in section 3, take a human being to consist in a number of unitary quasi-persons.3 Others hold that minds are mere bundles of mental states. This second view arises for reasons other than ambivalence.4 They should perhaps be rethought, the difficulty being that we lose track of people under such accounts. The basic problem appears when the implications of the analysis of minds as bundles are considered in particular cases: a sentence like “John wants that P and this is irrelated to anything else he wants, believes, feels, thinks, and does” is sheer nonsense.5 For others, such as Derrida (1997), the plural engagements of persons are not independent of each other, nor are they connected together in any more interesting way than they may be connected with other aspects of our plural world. And here again persons may well be lost together with their unity. However, while personal unity cannot be discarded, it seems to stand in contradiction with the ordinary and plural character of ambivalence. If we are unitary creatures whose attitudes are understood together, then surely, one would think, it is meaningless to say that the way we are involved with things can take the form of a pair of opposed attitudes. By contrast, if ambivalence did not exist, then perhaps the plurality of a person’s attitudes would be



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reducible to unity; if ambivalence were not an ordinary mode of existence—if it did not involve us as unitary persons—perhaps it would constitute a marginal state of personhood that served only to affirm that personhood implies unity. Given that ambivalence is an ordinary engagement that involves two opposed attitudes and that mental unity is central to personhood, how can the apparent contradiction be avoided? Supposing that mental unity is tantamount to harmony, a seemingly attractive suggestion is that the role of unity has been misplaced and “a psyche is an intrinsically plural thing, whose unities are achievements” (Philip Koch 1987, 266). In addition to perhaps dissolving the ontological problem, this reply also affirms the intuition that ambivalence is an ethical or psychological problem: perhaps we often are ambivalent, but this is a miserable state of failure. “Purity of heart is to will one thing” says Kierkegaard (1956) and describes “the double-minded” as sick and suffering,6 while according to Frankfurt (1992, 14) “[i]t is a necessary truth about us, then, that we wholeheartedly desire to be wholehearted.” Mental unity cannot be discarded in favor of an account of the person as a plural creature who strives to be unitary and fails in case of ambivalence; the first problem such an account faces is the character of ambivalence itself. As we shall again see in this chapter, although now from a new perspective, ambivalence is a unitary engagement, rather than a combination of two attitudes that are only opposed from some external perspective. This can be seen in a concise manner by comparing ambivalence (of belief, emotion, or whatever) with cases of entanglement in contradiction. People often inadvertently hold contradictory beliefs, and in such cases, although the person is unitary, she holds these beliefs separately in the sense that they are not connected for her. However, suppose that you believe that you will survive a heart operation, and at the same time you are dubious about this belief, indeed believing that you may well die there. Now you are ambivalent, and the key to your mental state consists precisely in the unity between your opposed attitudes: they do not merely presuppose a unitary subject, but each of them is held by you as opposed to your other attitude.7 I argue in what follows that the unity of the mind cannot be transferred to the normative plane—people cannot be adequately described as plural creatures that have a norm of unity. Persons are unitary subjects whose attitudes and further engagements are plural; furthermore, the plurality and the unity are interdependent. Understood as a unity in plurality, the unity of the mind is not at all threatened by the phenomenon of ambivalence, but rather ambivalence clearly manifests this unity. Yet are we not at least engaged in pursuing harmony between our attitudes? At times, of course, we are, but there is no general principle of harmony that guides or regulates the way we live. Rather than showing this, however, the

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chapter investigates the relations between ambivalence and the pursuit of harmony. It will be argued that conceptions of personhood as a normative unity, according to which we are plural persons who entertain a fundamental norm or aim of harmonious unity, cannot be understood as alternatives to the view that a person is a unity in plurality; rather, they constitute versions of it. The question, however, is how ambivalence is related to such unity. Is ambivalence—or in fact some external opposition between attitudes—merely the point of departure or the failure of our pursuits of harmony? More generally, is the view—which seems at first sight so self-evident—that integration is the contrary of ambivalence, actually true? In section 2, these questions are addressed and answered in the negative. Does this, however, imply that the notion of normative unity is selfcontradictory? If it did, then similarly—and absurdly—the fact that we pursue harmonious unity in various cases might be incomprehensible. Indeed, even though we are not normative unities, persons can be accounted for in ways that contribute to the understanding of actual pursuits of harmony. It is in this respect in particular that Freud comes to our aid. In his writings Freud develops an account of persons as normative unities who are in any case unitary and are ordinarily and importantly ambivalent. According to Freud, the particular ways that we are ambivalent are regulated by a basic ideal of harmony. The third section of this chapter is an interpretation of Freud in these terms.8

1. Unity in Plurality, Normative Unity, Simple Unity The present section develops the unity in plurality view of the mind. This conception of mental unity is compared with those of simple and normative unity. Section 1.1 proceeds to examine the unity of ambivalence, showing in particular that the forming of connections, which is central to mental unity, may not be understood in terms of harmonization. We shall see in section 2 that harmonization cannot even determine the notion of more substantial unity or integration, as well as that harmonization itself becomes incomprehensible unless the unity of ambivalence is taken seriously. Mental Unity as Unity in Plurality. Ambivalence Is Not Excluded Before comparing our constitutive mental unity with the view that persons pursue harmonious unity, let us first ponder a little as to the sense in which people must in any case be unitary subjects. I argue in this book that a person constitutes a unity in plurality, the idea being (i) that a person is engaged in many ways and (ii) that in attributing anybody with any engagement, we must see it as connected and connectible, from her point of view, with others of



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her attitudes, acts, thoughts, and so on. Furthermore, the kind of unity that appears to be necessary for persons is the unity that pertains to us as subjects, that is, as creatures for whom the first person is applicable. The first person is applicable, however, to wanting X, believing Y, or doing Z, and so on, rather than to any abstract “subject.” In other words, persons are primarily subjects in the sense that they have engagements. Thus, if unity is implied in the notion of a subject, this unity cannot refer to an entity that is prior to the person’s actually (and potentially) engaging with things. This already undermines the understanding of the unity of the person as simple, insofar as for an entity to be one in a simple unambiguous way requires that nothing specific can be said about it, and similarly it undermines the view of the subject of engagements as a mere body.9,10 However, mental unity might consist in the person’s having a unitary engagement, while to take the human being or the mind for a simple unity in this way is again tantamount to denying ambivalence. As mentioned above, it is often taken for granted that unity and plurality must comprise mutually exclusive understandings of subjectivity, and this induces a philosophical move from simple to quasi-simple unity: since, strictly speaking, simple unity by definition excludes any plurality, the plural character of the mind (i.e., the plurality of our attitudes) calls for a refinement in applying the concept of a simple unity to the mind. Philosophers who accept that people are unitary subjects generally attribute to the person a quasi-simple unity that consists in consistency or harmony between the plural attitudes; for harmony between the attitudes in a certain sense cancels the plurality, as every attitude can be seen as a partial form of the attitude of the person. In arguing that a person is a unity in plurality, I reject the thought that the unity between different engagements can be captured by saying that they belong to a single subject. This approach, unless the subject is complementarily understood in terms of attitudes or engagements, is not explicative—what would that subject be?—but, moreover, it is blind to the robust character of mental unity, namely to the fact that in attributing a person with wanting this or being happy about that, we, by the same token, take her desire or happiness to be connected and connectible with other attitudes. In emphasizing this, the notion of unity in plurality here developed comprises a reconstruction of Donald Davidson’s notions of mental holism and basic rationality. Yet Davidson’s account insists on a condition of harmony: the person’s attitudes must be “consistent” and ambivalence is a sort of split (see chapter 7). Other philosophers who analyze the person’s unity as a unity in plurality acknowledge ambivalence, but also deport it to the margins of human rationality. Thus David Velleman appears to leave ambivalence outside the narrative unity of the self: on his account, the self-narrating person narrates himself—and acts—as wholehearted.11 Martha Nussbaum

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(1985, 1990) argues that ambivalence is possible, need not be paralyzing, and is at times virtuous. Yet her analysis of the virtuous personal unity marginalizes ambivalence, which she takes to consist in two foreign unitary points of view, between which the person selects if possible.12 In fact, ambivalence cannot be understood unless as a form of participation in the person’s unity in plurality, and it does not pose any difficulty for this concept. When a person is ambivalent, her attitudes are opposed from her point of view, that is, they are interlinked by their opposition. If, for example, we take Leon to both want and be afraid to become a lion trainer, we take him to be afraid to acquire a desired occupation and to want something that all the same he is afraid of. A Notion of Simple Unity Cannot Account for Mental Unity Ambivalence shows that a quasi-simple unity is incompatible with the phenomena of human life—the plural and ordinary character of ambivalence shows this even if the unity of ambivalence is ignored; but even apart from this, we cannot understand mental unity in terms of the notion of quasi-simple unity. The further problem is that a quasi-simple unity per se is not even a unity, for it would leave the mind eclectic through and through. Of course, a person’s concerns are, in any case, importantly eclectic, that is, we have diverse and irrelated concerns. For example, one may love pasta and reading. This eclectic character does not interfere with a harmonic unity—there is no tension between the love of pasta and of reading. However, the question of whether they stand in tension arises only if the attitudes belong to a unitary human being. A quasi-simple unity in itself does not make room either for tension or for harmony. Nor, for that matter, does it make room for any other connection that would reveal the person’s unity. If the love of reading is merely a member of a consistent set of attitudes, then it is foreign to more than the love for pasta.13 It is also foreign to spending an hour of spare time reading a book, or to the joy of receiving a book as a present. As a claim for harmony is not a claim for total eclecticness, we may conclude that it must presuppose a concept of unity, prior to that of simple unity. Normative Unity versus Unity in Plurality A quasi-simple unity (when unity in plurality is not presupposed) is nothing but a set of unrelated attitudes, hence it is not a unity.14 An aim at a (quasi-) simple unity,15 by contrast, constitutes a form of unity in plurality. Such an aim connects the different attitudes as attitudes that one has to reconcile and to change into a harmonic system. The aim at unity ties the person to herself also in more concrete ways: the practices of unification weave the attitudes together in a multitude of ways.



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Koch argues for a normative unity: he understands personhood around a nexus of an aim at simple unity. In fact, the Kochian human being aims, besides harmony, at a unity that consists in substantial mental interlinkage. For the person acts, Koch tells us, in order to integrate varied relations to an object into points of view. These points of view are on his account by definition non-ambivalent (they can be a part of an ambivalence combined with a second point of view). To form them is to overcome eclecticness by its organization. This book analyzes unity in plurality as a conceptual unity, and not as a norm. Referring to a fundamental sense of “concept,”16 the concept of a person captures how we live as people among people, and the unity in plurality of persons is implied by the concept of a person. Conceptual unity is different not only from normative unity, but also from the actual unity that the normative unity aspires to. First, the conceptual unity in plurality does not have to be a simple unity: instead, people can be ambivalent. In addition, the actual or potential linkings in the conceptual unity in plurality should be distinguished from the actual linkings to which the normative unity aspires. The point is not merely that the integrative aim or norm is for more (harmonious or organizational) unity than actually exists. Potentiality has a status of its own for the unity in plurality: it enables the actual existence to be the existence of engaged person or subject. To use a temporal formulation, one can, in principle, connect an attitude anew to behavioral expressions, further attitudes, and so on and thus restructure one’s engagements, including the abandonment of certain engagements and the formation of new ones. The general point is that in presupposing unity in plurality and contributing to it, actual interlinkages are vague, open to recharacterization, and changeable. The interplay of actuality and potentiality can be further illuminated by distinguishing mental ties from conceptual ties. Connections between engagements do not define features of mental concepts, but rather the person’s engagements themselves consist in their actual and potential linking. Such interlinkages presuppose conceptual relations and also undermine them, but at any rate are not exhausted by them. Consider the following attribution: “it is important to Anna not to offend Alex—after all, she is fond of him.” The mental tie that is ascribed to Anna is part of her unity in plurality, and not just of what “being fond” means. If this was not so, the attribution would provide information neither about Anna nor about her particular attitudes. In accordance with this, if the relations between the importance she places on not offending Alex and the fact that she likes him were exhausted by a conceptual relation, then the concern with offending Alex and the fondness would not constitute two attitudes, and the relation between them would not be a tying of the plurality.

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Relatedly, engagements confer basic rationality17 on each other because they are, on the one hand, constituted by their interlinkages, and on the other hand they refer to the unitary mind as a whole and so can accordingly reconnect. As basically rational, interlinkages are not logical—the engagements are not defined by any definite array of connections—but they are not contingent either. For example, it is not merely a fact of nature (in that sense of “nature” from which persons are excluded) that Anna both wants something and acts to achieve it.18 1.1 Unity in Linking, Ambivalence, and Aiming at Harmonic Unity Far from being incompatible with unity in plurality, cases of ambivalence are ordinary cases of rationally interlinked engagements. If by contrast rational interlinkages had to be harmonious, it could be thought that persons can be ambivalent, but that they harmonize their engagements by the same token that they connect them. Although the reconciliation and coordination of aims is a central form of mental interlinkage,19 it does not follow that all mental connections promote the achievement of harmonious unity. Thus, consider the kind of connection that is involved in attitudes about other attitudes (“Anna hates the fact that she still misses her ex-partner.”). High-order attitudes have a special status in the constitution of personhood. It can be said that if they were impossible, then the person’s lower-order “attitudes” would be an unmeaning plurality. The terminology of high-order attitudes and the recognition that such attitudes are central to personhood go back to Harry Frankfurt’s work. Not so, however, with the next move: if it is essential to personal unity that the person can take an attitude toward her attitude, it is primarily the negative and undermining attitudes that are important here. Positive highorder attitudes would also do the job, but only if they are full-blown attitudes, rather than empty confirmations implied by the first-order attitudes—and, indeed, nonredundant ascriptions of positive high-order attitudes presuppose some negating context.20 In any case, although higher-order attitudes presuppose the person’s unity in plurality and also contribute to it, they frequently pose an obstacle for the furthering of a simple harmonic unity. The assumption that mental interlinkages aim at simple unity or constitute efforts to have fewer points of view is further undermined when it is noted that the relation of interlinkages with such an aim can be vague. For example, as Davidson (1984) has shown, beliefs and desires constitute and condition one another. Interlinkages between attitudes of belief and of desire are clear examples of mental unity, while they make very dubious examples of pursuing an aim of a simple unity. A person is inherently unitary in his believing and desiring, which implies that to say of a person that he believes such and such (for instance, that it is going to rain) means (under the context of the



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attribution, which may include, for instance, that the person is carrying an umbrella) that the person also has a certain suitable desire (such as not to get wet) and to say that he wants such and such also means that he has some suitable beliefs. At the same time, it is hard to give meaning to the statement that the interlinkages of beliefs and desires narrow the number of points of view. If any such explanation may be appropriate from some perspective, perhaps another perspective would be served by its denial (or even by seeing such interlinkages as increasing the number of points of view). In any case, it could hardly be said that in taking beliefs and desire to form mental unity we think of them in terms of harmonization. According to Koch, ambivalence is a failure of normative unity. This is not all wrong, as ambivalence means by definition that a simple unity was not achieved. Moreover, the concept of ambivalence entails that an ambivalent attitude is not particularly stable: each pole constitutes the other as a problem. However, while this character suggests that ambivalence would at times be dissolved, resolved, or changed, such instability is not based on an aim to be unitary and thus get rid of one’s ambivalence. What the unity of the person denies is not ambivalence but eclecticness. To be more precise, an expression like “total eclecticness in a human life” makes no sense. When we attribute a great deal of improper21 eclecticness to a person, we attribute to him either a liminal state of subjectivity, or, more likely, an illusionary eclecticness. Illusionary eclecticness may be the most basic mode of self-deception—the person avoids seeing the connection between his attitudes and connects them further precisely by this avoidance. For instance, he takes care not to connect different attitudes that together indicate that he may soon find himself fired from his job. A claim for eclecticness can never be accepted at face value when it concerns opposed attitudes. If there is no opportunity for their connection, they are also not connected by their opposition.22 2. Ambivalence, Integration, and Choice I have argued that a concept of a normative unity depicts the person as a unity in plurality of a particular form, but I was not asking whether ambivalence would be part of the interlinkages involved in such a life; it seems that for persons to pursue harmony in their engagements, the possibility that they connect to themselves by way of ambivalence must be excluded. In this spirit, Koch claims that the normal adult is at any given time occupied with the workings of integration of two kinds. First, he is preoccupied with the integration of multiple relations to a (non-ambivalent) point of view. Second, he proceeds from contrary viewpoints to “the most choice-worthy point of

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view” (267). He may, however, be left ambivalent, as this second phase often fails.23 On the face of it, ambivalence on this view is an accidental result of non-ambivalent interlinkages. In fact, as we see further below, this two-staged account of integration is inconsistent, since it presupposes a genuine ambivalence in which the opposition between the attitudes is part of their character, but lacks the resources to describe it. As the analysis of Freud in section 3 shows, accounts of the person as a normative unity can accommodate the ordinary, plural, and unitary character of ambivalence. All the same, subjectivity does not require a norm of wholeheartedness. Such a norm implements a concept of unity in plurality that is not dependent on it. On an empirical level, the person does not always desire integration or wholeheartedness and does not always suffer from their absence. In addition, ambivalence without integration can be more rational than its resolution. However, and this is where we are aiming, ambivalence typically involves integrative and integrated dimensions and may be integrated and integrative in central respects. Even if ambivalence could be admitted as an ordinary form of unity in plurality, it would seem that ambivalence must lack integration in the sense of some more substantial unity. Yet it is not true that the forming of ambivalence always works against the growth of unity. Thus, in the last section we considered the structure of hierarchic ambivalence, in which one’s attitude toward something is itself the object of a negative attitude of the person: the person holds the lower-order attitude, and yet she despises herself for this, or wants to get rid of the attitude, or thinks of it badly, and so on.24 We saw that hierarchic ambivalence obviates the achievement of simple unity precisely by realizing the person’s conceptual unity in plurality. In fact, such ambivalence may also be considered integrated: if integration is a minimization and coherentization of the person’s points of view, the higher-order attitude harms integration. However, on another perspective, hierarchic ambivalence can be found to be significantly integrated. Thus, consider a person who loves humanity but doesn’t love her family. If these two traits are sufficiently distant from each other, it might be appropriate not to call her ambivalent, but we can surely make a claim for deficient integration on her part. By contrast, the integration as well as the ambivalence would strengthen if her love for human beings, in addition to any further expression it may have, came to take the form of self-reproach regarding her attitude toward her relatives. The point lies in a tension inherent to the concepts of point of view and of integration. Both notions presuppose coherence or an attempt to achieve it, but this coherence can be understood in a weaker or stronger sense. Note first that unity in plurality is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a point of view as well as for integration. Proceeding from here, let us focus on the notion of a point of view.25 Certain segments of the intra-connected plurality



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are taken as points of view. How do we understand such segments when we identify them as such? It seems uncontentious to say that for a segment to constitute a point of view is also for it to be coherent, and at the same time that coherence is related to harmony. Yet it is not the harmony that makes coherence an important characteristic of a point of view. Rather, coherency suggests more substantial connectivity than that which is manifested in any case by any aspect of a person’s unity in plurality. A coherent array of mental elements comprises a common reason active in the person’s life. For example, love comprises a point of view and thus it is coherent: “love for Anna” names the particular rationality of the acts, worries, thoughts, and so on that are bound up with Alex’s love for Anna. Such a coherent array comprises a direction in the life of the individual. Thus, the acts, worries, and so on depict a route in Alex’s life. They constitute the way that he loves Anna.26 In the same way, connectivity can proceed in a non-harmonious direction. At most, harmony adds that the direction is not undermined by also being, at the same time, the expression of two opposed directions. The notion of integration can be analyzed in a like manner. In describing a portion of someone’s life as integrated, we identify in it certain connections, structures of connection, and connections that suggest themselves, and we assess these as substantial or significant. Conversely, we see a portion of life as lacking in integration in the absence of an aspect of connectivity that is taken to be required if the connectivity is to be substantial. Although ambivalence can be integrative, and although there is no reason to expect that we aim at harmony irrespective of how we are engaged, we do sometimes aim at harmonious integration, as when ambivalence arises in the context of trying to decide whether to take a certain action. I suppose that this is the kind of case that inspires philosophers to marginalize ambivalence at the same time as they acknowledge it, and see it as the intermediary state of a two-staged process of integration. Nussbaum’s account of the virtuous life constitutes such a two-phase account, while it adds a certain complication to the two-stage account as already met in Koch’s. On the one hand, similar to Koch’s version, on Nussbaum’s view the virtuous unity of the person is acquired in two stages. First, the person reflects on the situation that calls for her response and achieves a rich emotional and evaluative perception in which various considerations are closely and connectedly taken account of. This perception is by definition non-ambivalent. The case may be, however, that the person acquires two such opposed perceptions. In this case, a second stage is required in which she chooses between them. While selecting can fail, for Nussbaum this is not the end of the story, because she maintains that in some cases there is no virtuous choice, and one should continue to appreciate, feel, and express in words and deeds both of the opposed points of view. In this case, however, the two-staged notion of integration is reenacted in regard

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to the action that is respectively required and rejected by the opposed poles. Here again, the person has to focus on each of the perceptions in order to select between them. Such a selection may at times be easy; in others, such as some tragic conflicts, very hard; and in others yet, quite impossible. One way or another the person is supposed to somehow form and express her opposed perceptions separately, as well as to try to select between them although she only appreciates them apart.27 Presupposing that ambivalence is unintegrated, Nussbaum underestimates the possibility of behaving in ways that connect the opposed attitudes together. The person’s attitudes are supposed to lead to action independently of each other. Under a simple two-staged view, which does not allow for disintegrated ambivalence to be combined with one-sided behavior, this would entail that ambivalent persons cannot significantly act. Instead the person tries to act, separately, both on the one pole and on the other (or else she fails to try), which only leaves her paralyzed, vacillating, or blocked.28 Ambivalence, however, is not tantamount to blockage, and Nussbaum’s improved two-stage view adds to ambivalent paralysis a form of ambivalence that allows a person to act on one pole rather than the other. Similarly, Kristján Kristjánsson presents a form of ambivalence in which both emotions are felt, but only one of them is felt and acted on in a more substantial sense. Ambivalence can be paralyzing, and ambivalent persons can act on one pole and avoid acting on the other, but these and other modes of “disintegrated” ambivalence are possible only because there, as elsewhere, the poles of ambivalence are not separate. In particular, if ambivalence is unitary and the opposed attitudes form an indivisible array of interlinkages, accounts of integration ought not to appeal to a separation thesis. The tension between the concern with the unity of ambivalence and an assumption of separation is particularly acute in Kristjánsson’s analysis. Kristjánsson says that the resources in Aristotle’s ethics enable us to acknowledge ambivalent emotions and, moreover, to allow them to “share in reason.” He argues that the ambivalent emotions share in reason as a phase in a two-staged view: after first entertaining two opposed emotions, suggested by different (moral) virtues, the virtue of phronesis (practical wisdom) “comes to the rescue . . . It does not suppress the non-optimal emotion in such cases . . . but it allows the non-optimal emotion to be compared with the optimal emotion . . . so that the agent realizes what is the proper way to feel—and becomes motivated to feel that way” (2010, 508). Thus, Kristjánsson’s notion of a rational unity in ambivalence in fact appeals to the rationality of choosing one pole without stopping altogether to be ambivalent. However, since the unity and rationality of the emotional ambivalence are not exhausted in deriving a choice—as the very phenomenon concerned demonstrates insofar as it is different from the ending of ambivalence by choice—this particular phenomenon cannot



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explicate ambivalent sharing in reason. Why expect it to be the only way for ambivalence not to fall into confused paralysis? 2.1 A Path to Decision-Making To see that integration is not necessarily or even typically two-staged and that for ambivalence to be present does not mean that a person first unites each of two pluralities into viewpoints and then sets them up against each other, let us consider precisely such a context in which the two-staged structure seems especially appropriate: that of deliberation intended to reach a decision. For example, the person, call her Hannah, asks herself whether she should accept a job offer. At the first stage, let us further assume, Hannah has neither a pro nor a con attitude. In cases of trying to reach a decision, the person is of course concerned with integration, even without a general Kochian norm. According to the two-staged view, Hannah must first solidify her reasons for accepting the offer, such that they amount to a desire to accept it. Correspondingly, the considerations against the offer should first constitute an opposed desire. Only then would the contrary desires comprise a basis for a choice between them, and, thus, for a decision. The first problem with this description is that this is not the ordinary phenomenology of decision-making. While some difficulty in deciding often arises, and is bound up with the forming of contrary attitudes, reasoning usually does not isolate such attitudes from each other. Suppose, for instance, that a better salary constitutes a reason for Hannah to take the new job, while spare time plays in favor of remaining in her present job. These two reasons contribute to attitudes in opposed directions, but are also directly considered together. Hannah might be asking herself such questions as whether the raise will compensate her for the long hours and whether her children’s needs require that she make the sacrifice and go for the money. She might further wonder if it really will be a sacrifice, on what side her children’s needs align, as well as how central a part they should have in what she wants or does. Such questions would not be considered theoretically, but rather participate in forming her opposed attitudes, characterize their mutual challenging and shaping, and be raised as part of the ongoing ambivalent deliberation.29 Her decision would thus be the product of an array of attitudes, thoughts, and so on, that is both polarized and conjointly shaped. We learn from this that even when ambivalent decision-making is to some extent two-staged, the division into two stages is misleading since the opposed viewpoints are constituted together. There is no stage in which each of two multiplicities of relations is independently intrawoven, such that two opposed desires are separately formed: there is no stage in which the ambivalence itself has no role.

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The description is misleading, moreover, because the decision how to act is not an independent stage. The attempt to reach a decision takes into account the various reasons30 as they are entwined into one another. If they entwine into one another to form opposed attitudes, this fact plays a part in the decision. This pair of features—that reaching the decision concerns the totality of reasons and that one by the same token hesitates between the opposed attitudes—dispenses with the view of the phase of decision as one of pure choice and brings into the decision the opposed attitudes and their interlinkage in terms of the interwoven reasons. Relatedly, this pair of features does not characterize only the last stage of reaching a decision: as said above, the opposed attitudes relate to one another, and they are formed as part of the subject’s attempt to reach a decision. A further problem with the two-staged view has to do with the character of decision under ambivalence. An attempt to attain a decision is integrative by definition, as the person tries to form an attitude that would determine the action. This does not mean, however, that if this person is ambivalent then she will either act on one pole or fail to act. If she makes her mind that she should do X and acts accordingly, her judgment that she should do X does not have to be one of the two attitudes between which she is ambivalent. Thus, Hannah does not have to either reject or accept the job offer. Even a decision that can be described as favoring precisely one pole of the ambivalence may in fact not really comprise such a dichotomous choice, other than in a merely formal sense. For instance, it might be that Hannah decides not to accept the present offer and starts looking for something new. Hannah’s decision need not, however, fit either horn of her dilemma even formally. For example, she may set conditions for accepting the offer.31 Harmonization cannot be seen as a move from disunity or disintegration to unity. But can, perhaps, at least the converse be said? Namely that when our interlinked opposed attitudes are relatively separate, engaging in processes of integration implies that the ambivalence changes to harmony? Koch emphasizes the difference between ambivalence and a single emotion that is a result of fusing together two opposed emotions. He says that a person with conflicting emotions retains the distinct elements of the two emotions. For example, Peter’s emotional ambivalence toward Sandra includes his entertainment of the judgments “she’s innocent!” and “she’s guilty!” which are respectively involved in his positive and negative emotions regarding her. By contrast, says Koch, if these emotions come to be blended together, then they generate a new emotion with its own elements. I agree that ambivalence can change into a fused wholehearted emotion. This possibility, however, already undermines Koch’s view. For doesn’t the emergence of a fused emotion out of the ambivalence constitute a form of integration between viewpoints, and isn’t this form different than that of weighting and choice? And if we allow this,



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why not take a step further and allow that fused emotions (or other attitudes) can sometimes be ambivalent? The question of ambivalent emotions was dealt with in chapter 3; although ambivalence without harmonization is as ordinary an example of a unitary engagement as could be, here we shall keep our focus on the pursuits of harmony. We have seen that such pursuits cannot be understood on a model of plural creatures aiming at unity. This is not to say, however, that the notion of a normative unity is useless, but rather that for it to be useful it should capture those aspects of our unity in plurality in which the ambivalent life is shaped by harmonization. It is in such a way that normative unity, unity in plurality, and ambivalence are married together in the work of Freud. His notion of a normative unity is not two-phased, nor does it suggest that we necessarily try to resolve our ambivalence. 3. The Freudian Concept of Unity As you set out for Ithaka hope the voyage is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. C. P. Cavafi, Ithaka

In a sentence: Ithaka is harmony, and our ambivalent lives comprise the voyage thereto. At the same time, to live ambivalently is also to live unitarily. This triad, in any case, will be the view we will discover in Freud. Despite received interpretations, according to which Freud’s analysis reduces the person to a plurality of independent parts, Freud’s human being is substantially unitary. Freud challenges the view that personal unity excludes ambivalence: personhood for him entails ambivalence, and in such ambivalence the person’s unity is revealed. Although his account involves a principle of a normative unity, ambivalence does not serve therein as the mere point of departure or as a failure of the processes of harmonization. On the contrary, the Freudian person is ambivalent in neurosis and in health.32 In his ongoing ambivalent life, the person manifests and shapes his normative unity, which is clearly a mode of unity in plurality. The modes in which he ambivalently connects to himself manifest certain practices of mitigating an unwelcome ambivalence. 3.1 Ambivalence Rather Than Sub-Persons Sartre accused Freud of dividing the person into sub-persons.33 Other philosophers, such as Davidson (1982) and Pears (1984), have made similar

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interpretations, while adopting Freud’s purported view as their model for the understanding of internal conflicts. Sartre, like Freud, was a student of Nietzsche, and both follow him in breaking away from the dichotomy between a unitary and a plural mind. Nietzsche, however, was less explicit about this break than about others. His rejection of the inference to an I from the fact of thinking,34 for example, has prompted readers to ascribe him the view that a person can be reduced to a bundle of thoughts. Yet these passages allow, and the bulk of his work indeed requires, that he does not reduce personhood to mere plurality, but rather rejects the Wholehearted Subject for the sake of ambivalent unity in plurality.35 Davidson, on the other hand, shares—and is unusually explicit in voicing—the predominant view, according to which the subject is unitary in the sense that he is wholehearted, and when the person is plural, he is a subject no more.36 The predominant identification of the unity of the mind with harmony makes it easy to read Freud as a divisionist. In acknowledging ambivalence, he presumably acknowledges that the mind is plural (or becomes plural in internal conflicts) and that this plurality might moreover consist in multiple quasi-subjects. Such an interpretation is further aided by Freud’s recurrent use of the terminology and the metaphors of “split.” Yet, as we shall see, Freud uses them in fact in order to refer to aspects of relative separation between intertwined attitudes, acts, and thoughts. Let us call the “sub-persons view of personhood” the view that a person has parts that separately have or contain attitudes and that an attitude of a person is an attitude of one of these parts. Relatedly, on such a view, any aspect of the person’s life can be exhaustively divided between the engagements of the different sub-persons.37 In the philosophical literature, sub-persons’ interpretations of Freud tend to give the role of sub-persons to consciousness and the unconscious.38 It would thus be useful, before turning to the positive relation of ambivalence and mental unity in Freud’s thought, to undermine the sub-persons interpretation by examining how consciousness and the unconscious are related in his writings.39,40 In fact, Freud depicts the unconscious as essentially related to the person’s consciousness in a way that does not allow us to regard them as sub-persons. An unconscious engagement cannot be understood unless as interlinked for the person with conscious engagements and vice versa. This is already implied in the notion of the unconscious. The unconscious consists, according to a main line of thought in Freud, in what a person cannot bear to hold consciously. Thus, an unconscious engagement is by definition understood in terms of the possibility of consciousness, and thus in terms of a person which transcends the unconscious. For example, supposing that the ambivalence of a child about his father is divided between the unconscious and consciousness, then the child’s hatred of his father is unconscious, precisely because the love for him makes it unbearable.



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Of course it should be shown that this “because” is part of the child’s unity in linking, rather than a mere cause,41 and this conclusion will be supported by the discussion to follow. However, Freud also binds consciousness with the unconscious in more concrete ways: first, the unconscious leaves tracks in consciousness. A slip of the tongue that in a sense comes directly from the unconscious is all the same a conscious event. Second, Freud gives an important role to compromise formation (Kompromissbildung). In a compromise formation, the same behavior or thought jointly satisfies the conscious desire and the repressed and unconscious desire. Third, in reaction formation (Reaktionsbildung) the conscious attitude becomes especially powerful, and the unconscious is thus negatively expressed. For example, the person unconsciously wishes harm on his friend, while consciously he wants her well-being. His desire that she be well finds expression in an exaggerated concern for her safety. The concern expresses recognition of the danger of the misfortune that he would inflict upon his friend, as well as the desire to nullify, deny, and compensate for his hostile desire. Fourth, Freud’s notion of therapy entails the mutual constitution of conscious and unconscious life, since therapy consists in the gradual “pulling” of threads from the unconscious. The attitudes become conscious by degrees (in the beginning, in the form of resistances) and are, by the same token, reconnected in new ways. Indeed, the gradual nature of the therapeutic process already denies that the unconscious is independent of consciousness or vice versa. Understanding the patient’s dynamic therapeutic interaction, we identify how his attitudes gradually change both in becoming conscious and in their particular character. What then would “the attitudes of the unconscious” be, were the unconscious conceived as a quasi-person? Not only are we clueless as to why they gradually lose their constitutive interlinkages, but in the interim they become so arbitrarily constructed as to be incomprehensible. Similarly, “the conscious quasi-person” would be supposed to develop attitudes, which would yet be nothing we can ascribe a person or quasi-person with. Finally, the relations between the pair consciousness-unconscious and that of id and ego (ignoring the further complication provided by the superego) show that consciousness and the unconscious are not sub-persons. The unconscious cannot be a quasi-person because it is partially id—in German es, it, the impersonal—and the it clearly doesn’t have the form of a person, while consciousness cannot be a quasi-person since it always reengages with the it’s wishes. In addition, the unconscious and consciousness cannot constitute different quasi-persons because the ego, the core of the person’s unity, is both in consciousness, which Freud describes as the surface of the ego, and in the unconscious.42

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David Finkelstein analyzes “the distinction of conscious and unconscious states” in a somewhat similar way.43 Finkelstein emphasizes the unity between the conscious and unconscious attitudes and understands the unity of the mind in terms of internal relations between different attitudes, and between attitudes and action. At the same time, Finkelstein maintains that there are no internal relations between opposed attitudes.44 Yet the above discussion undermines precisely this claim. Although our concern there is with any internal relations between consciousness and the unconscious, we, in fact, encounter relations between opposed attitudes and relations between opposed attitudes and their joint expression. In particular, as we shall further see below, compromise formation and reaction formation both comprise unitary and ambivalent ways of living. However, even if consciousness and the unconscious do not split the ambivalent person between them, it may appear that a certain more moderate claim ought to be accepted—namely that the distinction between consciousness and the unconscious serves Freud (as it serves Finkelstein) in order to divide the opposed attitudes of ambivalence between them, such that they are not both conscious. The above discussion shows that in Freud’s work the conscious and unconscious attitudes would constitute ambivalence, that is, they are internally related, and thus it is only roughly and in an undermined manner that they divide the ambivalence between a conscious and an unconscious pole. But we may yet ask: roughly or smoothly, does Freud assume that ambivalence requires that one of the opposed attitudes be unconscious? Freudian lives always involve interplay between consciousness and the unconscious, and they also always manifest ambivalence and thus interweave ambivalence with that interplay. Such interweaving does not, however, imply that ambivalence consists in a conscious pole versus an unconscious pole; Freud’s account does not suggest that such is, in fact, the character of ambivalence. Thus, for example, a therapeutic success does not in general cancel one’s ambivalence, but rather lets the opposed attitudes reconnect in a better way. In particular, they become accessible to consciousness, that is, successful therapy makes ambivalence conscious. However, even in engagements in which the distinction between consciousness and the unconscious plays an important role, the ambivalent poles do not as a rule consist in one (mainly) conscious and another (mainly) unconscious attitude. The discussion below includes various examples of this. Here is one concerning Freud’s account of the superego: A superego attitude constitutes the high-order pole of a hierarchic ambivalence. The person condemns, finds it reprehensible to express or realize, feels guilt, and hates himself for emotions and desires that he nonetheless has. The superego attitudes may be conscious or unconscious and may be aimed at conscious and at unconscious attitudes. Such ambivalence thus does not



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always primarily consist in a conscious versus an unconscious pole. In fact, even when it does, the division is spoilt because there is a conscious aspect to the high-order and the low-order poles, and because both poles contain attitudes from the id. There is, however, a further difficulty in supposing that consciousness and the unconscious divide nicely between the superego attitude and the low-order attitude. For Freud depicts the high-order attitude as itself ambivalent. He tells us that when a little boy rejects his desire to sleep with his mother by adopting his father’s prescription “you may not be like . . . the father,” the child, by the same token, accepts that he ought to be like his father, and accordingly he endorses as his own the father’s prohibition and also adopts his father’s role of prescribing and prohibiting him.45 3.2 The Freudian Concept of Unity: Ambivalence as Living by an Ideal of Coherence The Freudian person is ordinarily ambivalent, and emotional ambivalence— in particular, the love and hate toward one person—is one of the more explicit examples of ambivalence in Freud’s writings. This is, however, only the beginning, and Freud grants ambivalence a position more central than is implied by his use of the term.46 Thus, repression is a mode in which a person rejects his own attitude. The structure of pleasure implies concerns with the relief of charges as well as the valuation of the charged and not relieved state. Eros and Thanatos—love/life and destruction/death—depict human life as ambivalent in several ways. Both of them thoroughly pervade one’s life, and thus they invite cases of ambivalence such as love and hate toward one person; but, moreover, by always mixing together, they tinge almost every attitude with ambivalence. Furthermore, Freud does not depict our having both drives toward life (connections) and toward death (letting loose, destruction of internal connections and of connections with others) as a contingent matter. Rather, each of the two drives implies the other, and the very structure of actual living—that is, of engagements—involves ambivalence between eros and the death wish.47 Again, culture cannot be distinguished from its discontents, and Freud depicts it in terms of ambivalence at the same time that he presents human life as cultural through and through. Relatedly, he conceives of engagements of various forms, from marriage to sublimation, as indirect or changed lovings and hostilities. Freud views such changes as hardly ever complete. Instead, they leave the person both satisfied and frustrated.48 Ambivalence is always there for Freud, but how should it be understood? We have seen that Freud’s phenomena of ambivalence do not divide the person between sub-persons. Instead, the person’s engagements are constituted by their mutual interlinkages, and, in particular, ambivalence consists in the

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interlinking of opposed attitudes, and their interlinkage with further engagements. In other words, ambivalence is a mode of unity in plurality. This in part echoes Velleman’s claim in Identification and Identity (Velleman 2006a) that repression is a form of ambivalence, rather than the combination of an attitude of the person and an alien attitude, and that ambivalence can take different and more domesticated forms if the opposed attitudes are allowed to be interwoven.49 Note, however, that if cases of repression are cases of ambivalence, this is because, there, just like in ambivalence without repression, the person’s opposed attitudes are constituted by their connection as opposed attitudes. Although repression separates the person’s attitudes, it only separates them in a secondary sense of the term: engagements can be connected for us in that we hold them apart, and repression is a case in point. For Freud, rather than being the absence of interlinkages, separation, and, in particular, the separation by repression, characterizes certain aspects of the interlinkages between the poles of suitable cases of ambivalence. Moreover, attitudes can in one respect be separate in this relative sense, while connected in interesting ways in other respects, and this is more or less Freud’s story of repression. In fact, Velleman might agree that the ambivalence between a repressed attitude and a repressing attitude is a mode of unity in linking, since he writes that “[m]ost of the Rat Man’s thoughts and feelings, both loving and hostile, were available to his consciousness; he simply disconnected them and reconnected them in such a way as to conceal their true significance” (2006a, 343). Freudian ambivalence is a mode of unity in plurality rather than a subpersons view. However, to defend this further, we should pay attention to the particular form admitted by unity in plurality in Freud’s writings. Freud’s main concept of unity is a concept of normative unity. In analyzing it, I diverge in yet another way from the sub-persons view by understanding his notion of the ego as concerning the person as a whole. It can be said that persons are beings who live in the first person—who can in principle say “I.” Freud, as I read him, shares the understanding of persons as “I”s (the term that is translated in English into “ego” is originally “das Ich”—“the I”). Indeed, the principles in regard to which Freud speaks of “the I” target the constitutive aspects of personhood, and not merely the first-person perspective (consciousness). Passing over exegetical points, let me move straight to our point of concern: the role of the I by virtue of which personhood/“being an I” is possible is the reconciliation of the person’s/the I’s different aims.50 In understanding personhood in terms of a principle of reconciliation, Freud entertains a concept of normative unity and posits a norm of harmonious unity at the heart of actual human life. This does not give the ideal of reconciliation the same kind of role that the norm of harmonious unity plays in Koch’s concept of unity, discussed above. Freudian persons are not plural creatures who



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proceed toward organized wholeheartedness, and ambivalence is not a state of mere plurality that precedes the exercise of the normative aim or results from it by accident. Indeed, how could this be so in view of the constant recurrence in Freud’s work of ordinary and functional ambivalence? On Freud’s conceptualization, ambivalence is a failure only in principle: harmonic unity has not been achieved, but neither Freud nor the I expects to achieve it. Rather, the harmonic unity comprises a regulative ideal in virtue of which the various modes of living with ambivalence take shape. Usually the I does not try to actually satisfy this ideal. In fact, an attempt to insist upon achieving the synthetic ideal may end in disaster, even to the point of “a complete devastation or fragmentation of the ego.”51 Rather, the I tries to draw near to the ideal. The I does that by bringing the attitudes close together, or precisely by setting them apart, or by weakening the opposition. The I brings the attitudes together by expressing them together and forming compromise attitudes that connect with the original opposed attitudes rather than replace them. The idea of a compromise—not in the sense of a compromise solution but of a portion of the person’s life that expresses both poles of ambivalence together—is central to Freud. To the extent that this notion is understood broadly, it becomes identical with the unity in plurality of ambivalence and encompasses the two further forms of drawing near the ideal of harmony. Instead of wondering whether and how an ambivalent person may act, Freud recognizes the actual relations between action, consciousness and larger portions of life, and the attitudes they express. In order to understand an action, for instance, one must comprehend an array of attitudes that are bound together and which may conflict.52 Freud regards life as imbued with compromises in a broad sense, as well as with acts, thoughts, dreams, and attitudes that directly express both poles of ambivalence. His compromises are also often successful. In taking a compromise as successful, we appeal to such criteria that evaluate the compromise’s success in adequately expressing or fulfilling the attitudes. Success in this sense is also constitutive of the notion of compromise, since a complete failure would undermine the understanding of the act or attitude as a compromise. Other criteria of a successful compromise are external to its character as a compromise. Thus, Freud assesses human existence in terms of functionality (work and love) as well as of the prevention of suffering or anxiety. He also understands compromises as approaching more or less successfully—but not entirely successfully if they express ambivalence rather than ending it— the ideal of the harmonic unity of the mind. An ambivalent compromise can consist in a conjunction of separate expressions of each of the opposed attitudes, as when a person’s dreams express the wishes that are rejected in her daily life. Alternatively, a compromise can express the opposed attitudes together, but in a way that does not reveal much

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more than their oppositional co-presence (as when the ambivalence paralyzes the person). Both sorts of cases, however, are less interesting than others as regards the notion of compromise, insofar as they may appear to only accidentally pick up the expressions of both of the opposed attitudes, rather than form a new interlinkage that goes beyond the attitudes as independently conceived. In other cases, the expressions of the attitudes may clearly tie them together, without however significantly reshaping the opposed attitudes, or again without integrating the opposed attitudes into a unitary and perhaps externally successful direction in one’s life. It is hence also noteworthy that Freud’s work shows us a variety of compromises that go beyond the opposed attitudes as conceived without them and constitute something substantially new in all the above respects. Examples begin with repression: repression presupposes and constitutes ambivalence. It forms a compromise that gives preference to one attitude of the ambivalence. It also lends the poles of ambivalence a particular character by connecting them in a special way: the repressed pole is positively expressed in unusual ways (such as in a symptom) and is negatively expressed in the person’s acts and attitudes in avoiding it. As for the repressing pole, although it would often partially comprise a first-order attitude, such as the love or hate of someone, the desire for something (antithetically undesired), the fear of consequences of potential action and so on, and although in some cases the desire or love and so on can be partially presented in a way that disregards the antithetical pole, the repressive attitude comprises in particular a second-order attitude of a special kind toward that other pole. It is a concern with the repression of its antithetical counterpart, and thus is radically unlike what it would be were it held alone. “Compromise formation,” in particular, appears in Freud primarily in regard to repression, and in two senses: that of the distorted emergence of a repressed content—the distorted character of the content expresses the repressive attitude—and that of compromises that positively reveal both the repressed wish and the repressing wish. Freud also speaks of compromises beyond the context of repression. His reading of the story of the Crucifixion provides an interesting example of such a positive and direct compromise. Freud interprets the crucifixion of Christ as a guilt sacrifice for a “primal patricide.” The son is now sacrificed to God as an act of remorse and compensation. On the other hand, he himself is transformed into God, that is, the son is now the father. Thus, the hostile feelings toward the father/God find their expression in the very act of remorse: the father is murdered again.53 Freud’s compromises can express and transcend the poles of ambivalence and be successful even in regard to the core expression of wishes or desires, namely their fulfillment. Thus (sexual) sadism as well as masochism allows the person, according to Freud, to fulfill both erotic and aggressive attitudes toward the same person.54



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In addition to expressing opposed attitudes jointly, the Freudian person can orient himself toward the ideal of wholeheartedness by lessening his ambivalence: the opposed attitudes become weaker, or the relevant inclinations partially turn to unopposed channels. In Freud’s accounts, lessened ambivalence exploits the flexibility of the instincts regarding such questions as: Whom do you love? Do you love or hate? Are your desires realistically directed to objects that can be easily and safely achieved? However, such flexibility is not complete in regard to important attitudes, and one’s rechanneled conduct would still be the unhappy expression of opposed attitudes. To understand a rechanneled conduct as expressive of the original opposed attitudes is to expect different phenomena than when ambivalence is solved. If the softened forms of the attitudes do not change them for good but rather are connected to them, this must show in further interlinkages. For example, the person may be dissatisfied with the softened attitudes, or such attitudes may be repeatedly replaced by new ones. Lessened ambivalence can also be stable, as was the case (in Freud’s times) with heterosexual and monogamous sexual relations (marriage). Freud depicts marital sex as fulfilling at once the sexual drive and the realistic need to restrain it. The married person is not, however, harmonically settled on wanting less, but rather such attempts to control our instinctual life go hand in hand with “the attraction . . . of forbidden things.”55 Marriage also demonstrates that enfeebled opposition might be interwoven with joint expression of the opposed attitudes. More often than not, these ways of drawing near the ideal of harmony are also interwoven with the third way of drawing near it, that of setting the opposed attitudes apart. This way consists in preventing as far as possible the opportunities for friction between the poles of ambivalence. Thus, although the attitudes are held as opposed— in particular, the practices of friction avoidance reveal the attitudes and their opposition—the attitudes are in various ways less concretely opposed. This form of drawing near the ideal is, in particular, the raison d’être of repression, namely the prevention of the expression of certain wishes.56 To the extent that the repression is successful, the direct tensions between the repressed wishes and the opposed attitudes are nullified. Sometimes the repressed returns, and its return then occurs in a way that simultaneously brings the attitudes together and also sets them apart. Thus, the opposed attitudes are jointly expressed in the symptom, and yet this happens in a way that spares at least some of their potential interlinkage, and thus creates a distance between them. 3.3 Unity in Plurality beyond Normative Unity Our investigation has presented us with Freud’s central concept of unity: the mind is a normative unity in the sense that it must always aim to minimize its oppositions. No matter how a person lives, he is preoccupied with

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constituting himself as a unitary person. He always engages in processes— more or less far-reaching, more or less successful—of unification in a sense of achieving harmony. Normative unity, as this notion is elaborated by Freud, clearly constitutes a unity in plurality—as we have seen, Freud depicts the mental processes as repeatedly tying the human being to himself. In fact, there is also a kernel to Freud’s thought in which the person is understood as a unity in plurality independently of the framework of normative unity, that is, beyond and beside the harmony-aiming character of linkages. Thus, the I is primarily distinguished from the it (id) in terms of mutual connections of psychical features, rather than of harmonic coherence or the pursuit of it: when Freud turns from the it to describe the I, he turns to the organization of psychical elements. While he identifies organization with the pursuit of harmony, the comparison with the it suggests a different lesson, as the it’s attitudes were not really described as disharmonious or incoherent: rather, the question of coherence could not arise, since contrary impulses exist there side by side.57 Another context in which Freud is concerned with a non-synthetic plurality in linking is that of processes of developing new concerns (displacement, sublimation). Such “expansive”58 engagements can be part of reconciliation processes, but in expanding one’s concerns, they do not promote a simple unity even if they do not impair it. At the same time, new concerns are not developed on Freud’s account out of the blue, but rather the new engagements develop from earlier and enduring concerns and remain interrelated with them. Thus, as a person displaces an object of love, he chooses the new beloved according to the old one and continues to seek his earlier object of love in the new one. The new point of view aims at the satisfaction of the old point of view, which does not disappear.59 Displacement is a way to take reality into account, which is a major aspect of personhood (and of the I) for Freud, and the reality principle again includes a grain of unity in plurality without an aim of harmony. Under the reality principle, substantial concerns connect with the recognition of the dangers and obstacles posed by reality, such that new concerns are generated. Thus the reality principle manifests expansive interlinkages. Furthermore, to take reality into account is in particular to add oppositional interlinkages to one’s life. If one’s love is rejected, one may suffer but need not be ambivalent; whereas by implementing the reality principle into his concerns, the person judges his loves, hates, and desires to be problematic for him. 3.4 Normative Unity in Plurality in Freud’s Words We may conclude that Freud describes the person as a unity in plurality in concrete ways, as well as ascribing to the person a norm of harmonious



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unity that consists in regulating how he connects with himself. In his central introduction of the notion of the I, Freud also explicitly presents actual life as organizing: We have formed the idea that in each individual there is a coherent organization of mental processes; and we call this his ego.60

What is the idea of the I that “we have formed”? Consider first that “organization” functions here as a gerund, and means self-organizing and getting organized rather than the product of organization. Second, let me suggest that the phrase “coherent organization” ought to be understood as an abbreviation for “organization aimed at achieving coherence.”61 This would follow from Freud’s analysis of personhood (as here described), but it is also required if organization is a gerund. Getting organized can appeal to a norm of coherence, but what would it mean to describe a dynamics as actually coherent? However, is “organization” indeed to be read as a gerund? Why not read the quotation as presenting the I as a coherent organized entity? Well, this would mean attributing to Freud a conception of the ego as an actually harmonious unity, a position that has no basis whatsoever in his writings. Freud’s I is organization by virtue of a norm of coherence, and as such the I gets organized in ambivalent modes. In entertaining any specific aspect of the person’s life—an engagement, or the mental processes it is part of—the person is also organizing himself, that is, connecting his engagements together; and whatever arrays of connections we might consider, the I organizes himself as an ambivalent person, that is, he is forming and reshaping ambivalent attitudes. In so doing, he is guided by a regulative ideal of harmony. We have thus seen that normative unity does not have to relegate ambivalence to the status of a mere starting point or a failure of achieving unity. Unlike Koch, Nussbaum, and Kristjánsson, Freud does not conceive of ambivalence as a basis for making a full or partial decision between the poles. Instead, the praxis of the coherence principle consists in a life with ambivalence. The multiple sources for ambivalence in our lives make ambivalence central for Freud in the sense that one indeed always has to deal with ambivalence. He also gives ambivalence a central position in the characterization of the person’s normative unity in plurality, since, on his account, living by a reconciliation principle means coping with and granting a tolerable form to ambivalence.

notes 1. The definition of ambivalence as the holding of opposed attitudes to an object is intended to explicate without replacing a concept of internal tension that is part of

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our life and language and has to be complemented by other partial definitions (see Introduction, section 2). In particular, ambivalence can always be taken as a unitary (tension-fraught) attitude. Ambivalence can also be hierarchic (consisting in a firstorder attitude and a negative attitude toward it), and in this chapter we shall also appeal freely to such phenomena. I will describe as harmonious a set of attitudes none of which are opposed, and as wholehearted those attitudes that are not ambivalent and are not a pole of ambivalence. A person is wholehearted (in having some attitude) if and only if she is not ambivalent (in having this attitude). 2. The term “mind” is used in this book to refer to the aggregate of the person’s attitudes (or, to the same effect, to the aggregate of the person’s engagements). See Introduction, section 3. 3. Related views are rejected in chapter 9, section 3, and chapter 7, section 4. 4. Contemporary naturalists rarely even allow for disharmonious phenomena. See chapter 7 in regard to contradictory beliefs. 5. Of course you can say—as Hume does—that such sentences are not implied by bundle theory, because “John wants that P” does not ascribe a mental state (but only the summary of other states). However, even if such a view can fit other concerns of conceptions of mental states, it cannot be relevant to us here, as here we are concerned with the ordinary human lives of people who want things and meet others who want things too, just as they maintain ambivalence and encounter it in others. 6. See, however, chapter 2, note 6. 7. Ambivalence of belief is sometimes regarded as especially suspect. I argue against this in chapter 7. 8. Freud 1953. 9. The prior subject way of thinking has been derived (erroneously I believe) from Descartes’s thinking subject, and while the pure subject is hardly ever accepted as such, the pure and the merely physical subjects appear in contemporary debates intermingled with the harmoniously engaged subject view. 10. The point above does not exclude the explication of the unitary subject as an abstract dimension of a human being or her various engagements, which is not itself an entity. Some of Wittgenstein’s notions in the Tractatus are related to two versions of such a view. According to one version, the notion of the subject would mark the possibility of being engaged, which is implied in a person’s engagements. According to the other version, the subject comprises a pole in the polar structure of engagements, and this pole is empty, that is, it is nothing but the subject-pole of the (person’s) engagements. I believe that the possibility of engaging must be understood against the background of actual engagements and that the subject-pole of an engagement cannot be empty, but in any case such subject-conceptions have nothing to do with harmony or ambivalence, nor are they sufficient for the notion of mental unity that our lives require. 11. “The Self as Narrator” in Velleman 2006, 203–223. Yet as we shall see in section 3, Velleman recognizes and analyzes ambivalence in Velleman 2006a. 12. More about Nussbaum’s account in section 2. See also Razinsky 2015a. Goldie argues for the narrative unity of the mind in a way that excludes genuine ambivalence. See chapter 3. Schramme (2014) argues that although ambivalence is disintegrated, it can be unified within a diachronic narrative.



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13. In fact, such character dispositions as the love of reading or of pasta do not always constitute mental attitudes (an attitude being a central form of intentionality), but this can be ignored since character dispositions are in any case bound up with an array of interlinked attitudes. 14. Nor is it appropriate to speak of a set of attitudes here, if to attribute an attitude is to see it as linked to other engagements of the person. 15. I omit the “quasi” below and speak of a simple unity in order to refer to harmony. 16. In speaking of a concept as part of our life with language (drawing on the later Wittgenstein and on Davidson), I take that concept not to be reducible to any determinate definition or extension. It would not be a concept, however, unless it constituted an idea or notion in a less formal sense, and as such captured a thread in human life (see Introduction, 15). 17. “Basic rationality” refers in this book to rationality, which is constitutive of our engagements. It should not be taken to suggest anything that amounts to less than full-blown rationality. 18. In particular, nature can be lawful or causal, but the relations between engagements are not tantamount to such relations. 19. It is central even at the level on which these aims are not so much full-blown attitudes (intentional dispositions-viewpoints) as they are the background of one’s attitudes. For example, our desires always assimilate social conventions. Thus, the desire is shaped in a way that settles different aims in advance. 20. It seems that Frankfurt emphasizes high-order attitudes because they articulate the dual interlocking dimensions of a human being—a contingent and concrete being, who is free and sovereign. Sharing this understanding of human life, I take it as recommending two important shifts. One is that the person is a subject all through. Due to the possibility of higher-order attitudes, she is already a subject in her first-order attitudes. The other shift concerns ambivalence. If first-order attitudes are genuine attitudes, then there is no reason to exclude ambivalence between first-order attitudes of the name, and if despising your fear, for example, connects with the fear as part of your unity in plurality, then negative high-order attitudes cannot be seen as attitudes toward alien mental states. Moreover, if ambivalence is an ordinary mode of interlinkage, it is not, in general, a liminal state of personhood, as Frankfurt argues in regard to ambivalence between second-order attitudes. Subjectivity, high-order attitudes and alien low-order states are recurrent themes in Frankfurt’s work. See Frankfurt 1998, 1999. 21. Eclecticness is proper as long as nothing appears that makes the engagements relevant and the eclecticness strange. It is properly eclectic for a person to like reading and pasta (when the cooking and literature classes are not scheduled for the same hour). 22. If the attitudes are not opposed in the sense employed in this book, that is, as attitudes in someone’s life, but rather are opposed only from some external perspective, they can constitute eclectic aspects of one’s mind. Thus, we can entertain contradictory beliefs unknowingly, and so without ambivalence. 23. Complementarily with the processes of integration, the person is immersed, according to Koch, in “a dynamic of expansion” (ibid.), which also means the

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undermining of whatever has been achieved. As I see it, expansions presuppose unity in plurality, and, in particular, new engagements are constituted through connections with other engagements. Moreover, to identify human lives as expansive is to identify an essential aspect of the unity in plurality of the person, namely the aspect of openness to reconnecting (with a second emphasis on living in a dynamic world, and thus on the centrality of perception to subjectivity). 24. See also the Introduction, 17–18. Frankfurt emphasizes hierarchic ambivalence but maintains that the person is not ambivalent in such cases. His model for such conflicts is the addict who has a desire for the drug but is alienated from this desire (see chapter 2, 41). Christoph Jäger and Anne Bartsch discuss “ambivalent emotions” in regard to a notion of meta-emotion. While meta-emotion is a high-order attitude, ambivalence consists for Jäger and Bartsch in unsuitable valences (con and pro) of the emotion and meta-emotion. Thus, a person who hates someone and is happy to hate him would be ambivalent on their approach. However, this person does not entertain hierarchic ambivalence in the sense here proposed, and as I see it, his happy hate does not have to constitute any internal tension on his part. 25. The thought of ambivalence as a unitary point of view is related to seeing ambivalence as integrated or integrative, but each may go without the other. 26. The relations between a point of view and coherence are circular. They stress different and mutually dependent aspects: coherence (when the word refers to a particular point of view of the person) is the sort of connectivity that makes for a point of view. 27. For the integration into a non-ambivalent perception and the selection between the opposed perceptions, see Nussbaum 1990. The action according to one pole of the ambivalence is discussed in Nussbaum 1985. 28. The ambivalent agent is blocked in her action according to Frankfurt 1992, Koch 1987, and Stambaugh 1980, among others. 29. For the non-theoretical character of deliberation that proceeds through the person’s ambivalent attitudes see chapter 8, section 2. 30. In fact, deliberation is also not always a matter of taking reasons into account. Even the description above in terms of questions is somewhat misleading. As our object of inquiry in this section is a deliberative process of becoming ambivalent and choosing, question-asking is central to it, yet the opposed attitudes must, as they develop as part of the deliberation, form various mental interlinkages that exceed the addressing of questions, and it is with the character given to them by their various interlinkages that they enhance the deliberation further. 31. When someone ambivalently wants to do A, she may do something that realizes, to an extent, both her desire to do A and her desire not to do it. In such a case, the special circumstances, as well as pragmatic metaconsiderations, may decide if she should be described as doing A or as realizing A by doing B. Acceptance under conditions may be both acceptance and rejection, instead of neither. See chapter 9. 32. It is intriguing that psychosis, according to one, admittedly ambivalent, suggestion of Freud (1953e), implies an end to ambivalence of belief. 33. Sartre 1958a, section I. 34. Nietzsche 1966, “On the Prejudices of Philosophers,” sections 16–17.



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35. Nietzsche’s understanding of the person as ambivalent unity in plurality is shown in his equation of life with expressions of will to power, since he depicts will to power as by definition unitarily ambivalent: “Wherever I found the living, there I found the will to power . . . And this secret life itself spoke to me: ‘Behold,’ it said, ‘I am that which must always overcome itself’” (Nietzsche 2006, “Self-overcoming,” 89). The ambivalent will to power is not exhausted in the actual desires adopted. It is essential to it that every desire is undermined, at least in principle, since to will power implies discontent with what you are. Nietzschean personhood is further revealed as ambivalent unity in his discussions of different modes of human (and beyondhuman) lives. Nietzsche presents us there with different forms of praiseworthy or blameworthy ambivalence; these modes, moreover, do not lend themselves to interpretation in terms of a plural view of personhood, since with all their variety, they always comprise primary ambivalence, that is, a clearly unitary ambivalence, in which the opposed attitudes are conceptually secondary to the ambivalence itself. Thus, for the “last human being” every desire is ambivalent in a particular way, namely that everything he does curbs the very goal or value that it fulfills (2006, “Zarathustra’s Prologue,” section 5, 9–10). The “blond beasts,” by contrast, were not very ambivalent—they might have been plural—but, by the same token, they were not very human, acting by instincts (Nietzsche 1989, On the Genealogy of Morals, “First Essay,” section 11, 40–42). Conversely, a purely Schopenhauerian human being negates life and thus is no longer ambivalent. However, Schopenhauer himself, as well as the pessimist and nihilist in real life, is by the same token negative and ambivalent, where their not wanting is precisely a way to want. (On Schopenhauer and nihilism, respectively, see, On the Genealogy, “Third Essay,” section 7, 106; section 14, 122–23, section 24, 149–150. On pessimism, see, e.g., Nietzsche 2001, “Book Five,” sections 346 and 370, 204 and 235–36). Finally, ambivalence—and its unity—does not end when humanity is transformed: the beyondhuman (Übermensch) says yes to life despite everything, and the promise of a future consists in a new specification of ambivalence, rather than in its renunciation. First, as the beyondhuman desires without restraint and desires many things, ambivalence is often called for; and second, his encompassing desire, a desire of life, is the desire to live his own undesirable life. It is a mode of self-overcoming and more generally of ambivalence: the beyondhuman wants precisely that which he does not want. (The beyondhuman is presented in Thus spoke Zarathustra. For the second point in particular see 2006, “On the Vision and the Riddle,” 123–27.) 36. “The paradox of irrationality springs from what is involved in our most basic ways of describing, understanding, and explaining psychological states and events . . . The sort of irrationality that makes conceptual trouble is not the failure of someone else to believe or feel or do what we deem reasonable, but rather the failure, within a single person, of coherence or consistency in the pattern of beliefs, attitudes, emotions, intentions, and actions” (1982, 169–170). 37. It would still be a sub-persons view under this definition if, as in Davidson, an attitude might belong (in its entirety) to both sub-persons, either because they are only distinguished in certain contexts or because both hold it. 38. I use “consciousness” here both in regard to actual consciousness and to the preconscious, or that which “is only latent, and thus easily becomes conscious” (“The

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Dissection of the Psychical Personality.” In Freud 1953f, 71), in short, mental aspects that become conscious when the circumstances call for it. 39. In accordance with the definition of sub-persons given above, the question of mental modularity, as in Fodor, is not our direct concern. However, modularity is sometimes thought to explain ambivalence, whose poles supposedly flow from independent processes. This is of course misconceived if ambivalence is unity in plurality. It is also not Freud’s view, according to which it is impossible to analyze human engagements into alien conscious and unconscious aspects, as shown in the main text. 40. Gardner 1993 analyzes the psychoanalytic unconscious as an extension of the person’s unity and criticizes the sub-persons interpretation of Freud. Heil 1989 argues that functional isolation must cut across the distinction between conscious and unconscious elements, as well as that in any case it is inappropriate and perhaps incoherent to apply the split model to ordinary persons. 41. Sartre in fact bases his argument against Freud’s presumed sub-persons view on the basically rational interlinkages between the unconscious and consciousness. However, he takes these connections to stand in contrast with Freud’s intentions to provide a sub-persons view. Whereas I cannot agree that Freud has such intentions, chapter 7 makes a similar claim as regards Davidson, namely that he proposes a subpersons view and undermines it at the same time. 42. Regarding the reaction formation and the superego, as well as the ego’s and the id’s relations to the unconscious, see Freud 1953h. The example regarding the reaction formation is taken from Freud 1953g, 190ff. Regarding the compromise formation see Freud 1953c, 301. Freud discusses slips of the tongue and similar phenomena in Freud 1953i, and therapy all through. 43. Finkelstein 1999. 44. Finkelstein’s analysis is not intended as an interpretation of Freud. 45. Freud 1953h, 34. 46. On the other hand, Freud’s use of the word “ambivalence” does not always fit with the concept of ambivalence that is investigated in this chapter. He also gathers under the term “ambivalence” certain “opposites,” namely activity-passivity, sadismmasochism, and heterosexuality-homosexuality. 47. Yet Freud dispels death from human life (Razinsky, L. 2012. See Introduction, note 35). The notions of Eros and Thanatos are developed in Freud 1953a, b, and h. 48. Freud 1953b deals with culture, including marriage (104–105) and sublimation (79–80, 97, 105). 49. Velleman apparently holds that in ambivalence that does not involve alienation, the attitudes necessarily weaken each other and that ambivalence that involves alienation is necessarily acute and destructive. I disagree with these positions. 50. See, for example: “what the whole endeavour of the ego is aiming at—a reconciliation between its various dependent relationships” (Freud 1953e, 152). 51. In Freud 1953d, 77–78, Freud presents the neurosis at a mature age as an attempt to reconcile parts of ego that split apart as a result of trauma with the rest of the ego. This is an attempt that often ends as quoted above. 52. If, as I maintain, our ambivalent lives are lives of compromise, why not agree with Freud that we are guided by a principle of harmony? Because in connecting our lives dynamically we form and strengthen ambivalent attitudes inasmuch as we reduce them.



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53. Freud 1953d, 84–90, 101, 131, and 135. 54. Freud 1953f, “Anxiety and Instinctual Life,” 103–104. I discuss compromise behavior in chapter 9. 55. Freud 1953b is preoccupied with rechanneling and its limits. Monogamy is discussed in 104–105; the quotation is from 79. 56. The prevention of expression is the immediate raison d’être of repression, or the one that pertains to the definition of a repressive practice. The repressive attitude would typically be against having the repressed attitude and not merely its expression. See also Velleman 2006a, 345. 57. “The Dissection of the Psychical Personality.” In Freud 1953f, 72–73. How should the notion of the it be understood? Two directions of interpreting it won’t do. First, the it cannot contain non-intentional or content-less energy (or impulses). Rather, it consists in attitudes such as emotions, beliefs, and wishes. Second, the it cannot be conceived as a receptacle of pre-personal attitudes. Although ontogenetic interests make this view (as well as the pure impulses view) palatable to Freud, he is wary of describing the baby as an “it.” His descriptions regard infanthood as a marginal state of personhood, that is, as a state that cannot be thought without appeal to personhood (rather than to something more primitive that is, in a way, similar to personhood). Indeed, the it cannot consist in pre-personal attitudes if attitudes are constituted by their mental interlinkages. This raises the difficult issue of marginal personhood. More important in this context, the question is not merely whether some pre-personal attitudes are possible: for the it’s attitudes are not animal or wanton desires. At the same time that the it is “the impersonal,” it is also the core of the person. The it’s attitudes are the person’s central attitudes, that is, fundamental loves and hates, beliefs, wishes and fears, to which the person perpetually goes back. Any engagement connects in particular with some of these attitudes, themselves reshaped by these continually forming interlinkages. The notion of the it is thus primarily intended to capture that to which a person returns. Thinking of the it in isolation from the person’s ongoing selflinking life emphasizes the person-constituting structure of a constant return to a core. However, personhood consists in actual and possible living and self-linking, and thus to consider the core of the person for itself leaves us with an impersonal it. Finally, insofar as we try to speak of the it’s attitudes as if they are isolated from the rest of one’s life, they are also not connected with each other. Indeed, when conceived independently of the person, if the it’s attitudes are sufficiently meaningful to be opposed, this is only because they are taken to be abstractions from the person’s mind. 58. Koch 1987 contrasts unifying and expansive mental processes. 59. The original context of “displacement” in Freud’s thought is neuroses and dreams, in which an unimportant idea or object displaces a more important one at the conscious level. 60. Freud 1953h, 17. 61. The original text talks about “einer zusammenhängenden Organisation” (Freud 1923, 14). The word “zusammenhängend” can be translated additionally as “connected” (as in “it raises connected issues” and also in mathematics). However, a description of the mind as a “connected organization” would be redundant if not meaningless, while “coherency” accords better with Freud’s general approach, which at the explicit level presupposes an aim at harmonious unity, notwithstanding the former remarks.

Part III

Structures of Ambivalence

Some readers of Part II of this book might accept that ambivalence is a central possibility of conscious and active subjects but find the emphasis on emotional ambivalence to be revealing in a particular way: perhaps emotions and ambivalence go hand in hand, they might suggest, but the rationality— or even the possibility—of ambivalence seems to lose its hold in regard to attitudes in which we aspire to judge how things are, or in which we want to change them. Part III responds to this challenge by investigating how basic rationality is related to particular patterns of theoretical and practical rationality (the general question is dealt with in chapter 7) and by analyzing ambivalence of factual belief (chapter 7), ambivalence of value judgment (chapter 8), and action under ambivalence of desire (chapter 9). Chapters 7 and 8 argue that the view that objectivity-directed (objectivist) attitudes are incompatible with ambivalence is unwarranted and that the objectivist logic of belief and judgment rather implies that ambivalence of belief and ambivalence of value judgment are possible in which a belief is opposed by doubt, or the person both maintains and doubts two conflicting beliefs. Analyzing self-deception as a mode of ambivalence of belief, chapter 7 shows that ambivalence of belief is basically rational even when it takes the character of self-deception. The logic of value connects ambivalence and the objectivist concern even more closely, and chapter 8 shows that ambivalence of value judgment is sometimes the cognitively meaningful and appropriate way to judge on an issue, wherein a person’s two opposing judgments together apply a tension-fraught value to the object. This is done by drawing attention to the relations between cognitive and noncognitive dimensions of judgments and by studying the relations of ambivalence of value judgment with deliberation. 163

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The view that we cannot act on ambivalence is also radically misconceived if, as chapter 9 argues, it is inherent to the relations of desire with action that we can sometimes, strictly and quite successfully, act to get and evade that which we want and yet do not want. The close relations of ambivalence with the unitary expression of both poles in an ambivalent compromise thus extend to strict compromise action, just as they are part of our ambivalent believing and judgment (including when we deliberate). While the differences between types of attitude and between types of ambivalence are important, our attitudes usually transcend attitudes of any specific kind, our ambivalence may well transcend ambivalence of any specific form (such as the first-order holding of two conflicting desires), and ambivalent compromises interweave action and other behavior with perception, feelings, thought, attitudes, and so on. To remember this in what follows, let us consider an ambivalent compromise that is highly integrated and in various ways successful, albeit not praiseworthy. Ella Shohat investigates the experiences early cinema provided for white Americans and Europeans in a puritanical society that made them ambivalent in regard to sex: The dance scenes, fixated upon in Hollywood’s ethnography, displayed dark bodies moving in a trance to a hypnotic drumbeat and drew the spectator into an ambivalent experience of delight in the native ecstasy together with repugnance at such mass hysteria. The films combined enchantment at native unrestraint with repulsion at this hypersexuality. (109–110)1

Conflicted between sexual desire or an interest in sex, on the one hand, and the judgment that sex is a bad thing, on the other, the intended audiences manifested their ambivalence in their attitudes toward cinema, and Shohat shows us how by appealing also to their racism, the film industry enabled them to express and satisfy their ambivalent attitudes through the display of indecent sexuality among those to whom sexual behavior would be natural—the nonwhites. Since the sex is initiated by nonwhites, the symbols of everything bad in the eyes of the intended spectators, it is by definition indecent or bad, while many of the movies add an edge of further violence and “inappropriateness” by depicting black men raping white women. In neither case does Hollywood regard the sexual ambivalence of the white filmgoers as an obstacle. Far from resolving or obscuring their ambivalence, it makes sure that they enjoy themselves and return for the next movie by lending the ambivalence a concrete shape, serving a twofold pleasure: they are to enjoy the rape as well as the punishing of the rapists, the sexual dance as well as the fact that the natives once again demonstrate their barbarism. We thus have here an optimal way of dealing with ambivalence, although not so optimal as to cancel the ambivalence of the spectators either in general



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or insofar as sex at the cinema is concerned. This is because implicit in the puritanical judgment against sex is a second-order judgment against sexual interest or desire. Watching these films comprised an ambivalent compromise for the audience, giving ambivalent pleasure. In particular, the puritanical spectator may thus express, but hardly fulfill, the desire not to take interest in sex, and one might surmise that he would engage in quite a bit of selfdeception over this issue. Note 1. Shohat 2001 (Heb). My translation. The Hebrew essay is a version of Shohat 1991, although the quoted passage does not appear there.

Chapter 7

Self-Deception, Ambivalence of Belief, and Basic Rationality

Doris Lessing’s “Eldorado” tells the story of Alec, who had come to colonial South Africa to be a farmer. Having destroyed the family farm, Alec becomes obsessed with the idea of finding gold on their land, inventing silly theories about how to do this and putting them into practice, throwing away much money in the process. All this, so far, to no avail. Now that his son needs money for his studies, he becomes more obsessed than ever with a new scheme. [Alec] would come home . . . his eyes hot and glittering, and eat unconsciously, throwing out remarks like: . . . I’ll soon know for sure. In spite of themselves, [his son, Paul and his wife, Maggie] were affected by his certainty. Each was thinking secretly: Suppose he’s right? After all, the great inventors are always laughed at to begin with. There was a day when he came triumphantly in, loaded with pieces of rock. “Look at this,” he said, confidently.

Celebrating the presumed breakthrough, Alec tells Paul to join him back in the shaft. Paul joins “in his rather sullen way. He did not want to show that he half-believed his father.” Upon his return, son and mother have a talk: “[Paul] said, reluctantly: ‘It seems quite promising, mother.’ He was appealing to her to come and look.” Maggie acquiesces. Then, watching the rock samples, she “looked with listless irony over at Paul, but he nodded seriously. She accepted it from him.” The conversation between wife, husband, and son goes on. “Hope flickered in her”; Paul responds with “an odd, humorous grimace, which meant: Don’t get excited about it yet.” Yet he himself is excited. “They did not want to admit to each other that they were aroused to a half-belief, so they felt awkward. If this madness turned out to be no madness at all, how foolish they would feel!” 167

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Having learned from Alec that he is going to spend a lot of money in sending the samples for assaying, they leave the room to talk privately: Paul said, with that grudging enthusiasm, “You know, mother, if it’s true . . .” “If . . .” she scoffed. “But he says that if this works it means . . . Governments will be sending for him . . .” “But Paul,” she said, wearily, “they can find coalfields and minerals with scientific instruments . . .” . . . “Can they?” he asked, doubtfully. He didn’t want to believe it, because it sounded so dull to him . . .  Alec sends the rocks for assaying. After that, “they were restless and eager, even Maggie, who tried not to show it.” (Lessing 1973, 278–280; Lessing 1981, 329–31)

Alec lives a life of self-deception, Maggie ambivalently believes it possible, for a few minutes or days, that Alec has, after all, found gold on the farm, while Paul is deceiving himself that Alec’s quest may well have proved successful. Ordinary lives are pervaded by ambivalence of belief, in which we doubt what we believe and doubt our doubts. Yet, even if subjectivity is compatible with ambivalence, our philosophical notions suggest that we cannot be ambivalent in our objectivity-directed attitudes. In the case of factual belief, the view that we cannot ambivalently maintain two opposed beliefs is so entrenched in the literature that such ambivalence is rarely mentioned. One important exception to this would be cases of ambivalence of belief in which the person is irrationally deceiving himself; yet, self-deception is not understood as ambivalence. I shall argue in this chapter that the irrationality of self-deception is a mode of basic rationality, rather than a breakdown of it. The chapter reconstructs Donald Davidson’s conception of mental unity and basic rationality by taking seriously the distinction between basic rationality and the patterns that it may exercise. This perspective allows us to analyze the aspects of self-deception (thereby reconstructing central elements of Jean-Paul Sartre’s account of bad faith), and in particular, ambivalence of belief, and intentional believing and self-deceiving. 1. Self-Deception and Philosophy of Mind For several decades, self-deception has been a locus of philosophical disputes regarding subjectivity, rationality, and intentionality. The discourse has to a large extent developed as a dispute between two loose approaches, a “rationalist,” “intentionalist” and divisionist approach (Davidson) versus a naturalist, anti-intentionalist, and deflationist one (Alfred Mele). The first approach



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understands ordinary mental and behavioral states, in particular mental attitudes and actions, as intentional, in a sense that indicates direction and meaning and moors them in the person’s consciousness (“broad intentionality” in what follows).1 And by the same token, this approach understands our intentional “states”—engagements, below—as constitutively, or basically, rational, the idea being that to ascribe an engagement is inherently to ascribe it as something that makes sense for the engaged subject.2 The other approach attempts to deny rationality and broad intentionality or to eliminate them from some or all human engagements. Self-deception challenges both approaches by violating fundamental requirements of rationality. On the one hand, it puts in question the understanding of engagements as basically rational. The intentionalist approach confronts the challenge and retains rationality, by presenting self-deception as a breakpoint of rationality, modeling self-deception on a two-person relationship. Self-deception would in some sense divide the subject into two separate parts, in one of which she rationally maintains a justified belief and is engaged in deceiving the other part, and in the other, she rationally maintains a false or unwarranted belief. Aspects of self-deception on this approach thus borrow some rationality from the two-person model, while self-deception is not itself an engagement, and its parts are not rationally connected. Naturalists, on their part, tend to conceive of some requirements of rationality as a matter of the fundamental and unchangeable nature of minds, or, alternatively, as pure logic. One way or the other, the violation of such requirements is excluded. What then if the phenomena violate them all the same? Self-deception (also called “bad faith” in what follows)3 is bound up with a number of genuine and apparent paradoxes. The adherents of division accounts conceive of these paradoxes as partially rooted in the nature of the phenomena, while for the anti-intentionalists they only reflect philosophical prejudices. Thus, partition accounts are supposed to retain in some sense the “strange” features of self-deception. In some sense, a person who deceives herself would typically hold contrary beliefs, hold her own belief as unjustified, believe things in a narrowly intentional (motivated) way, and recognizing something as true or plausible, she would be motivated by this to believe the contrary. The deflationist camp prefers to explain away these paradoxical features entirely. Self-deception is said to have nothing to do with any tension in one’s belief. It is also claimed to be devoid of intention to deceive oneself or believe the illegitimate belief, and thus the anti-intentionalism of this camp is directed to narrow intentionality as well. The two approaches outlined do not exhaust the range of positions. Some philosophers work to deflate self-deception, divesting it of its paradoxical features without harming its intentionality. In particular, according to Gendler (2007) self-deception does not include contradictory beliefs, but rather

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the agent believes that P and only imagines that not-P. More ambiguously, Bach (1981) and Talbott (1995) also propose an intentionalist and deflationist account of self-deception. According to Bach, to deceive oneself that P means that one only thinks that P (or does not think that not-P) rather than believes it,4 while according to Talbott, self-deception that P does not include a belief that not-P. Both argue that the agent intentionally biases himself, but also undermine this view. According to Bach, the agent’s conduct is not intentional under its description as self-deception (368), while Talbott conceives of intentionality in terms of instances of a purpose-directed mechanism (48). Whereas Gendler, in any case, argues that self-deception is intentional and that it does not include what I shall call ambivalence of belief, motivated belief, and dodging truth, this chapter acknowledges these aspects of selfdeception and explicates them in intentional terms. Understanding subjectivity in terms of basically rational engagements, I will argue that self-deception, including its ill-reputed characteristics, is part of the basically rational life. Self-deception involves ambivalence of belief (or of an epistemic attitude), a potential tension with justification, a narrowly intentional bringing oneself to believe, and fleeing from one’s acknowledgment of what is true, possible, or knowable. At the same time, I will argue, the partition approach is misconceived. For self-deception is not a break in rationality, but rather an important example of basic rationality and of broad and narrow intentionality.5 Self-deception is a unitary engagement, and interpersonal and division models deny or obscure its unity.6 This chapter has a twofold goal: first, to establish and describe the basically rational unity of self-deception, or, what comes to the same thing, its intentional unity. We shall analyze self-deception as a kind of ambivalence of belief. Such ambivalence, and in particular the ambivalent holding of contradictory beliefs, is thought by philosophers to be impossible, or an irrational state of confusion, even if other forms of ambivalence are admitted. The thought is that ambivalence of belief threatens not only the unity of the subject but also the concern of belief with objectivity. I hope to show both that this is a misconception and that we can deceive ourselves to believe something we all the same disbelieve. Second, given that it sets out to investigate ambivalence, this book also develops an account of basic rationality, and this chapter has the further goal of deepening this account by allowing that irrationality and the paradoxes bound up with self-deception shed light on how basic rationality, in general, should be understood. The strategy will be to examine Davidson’s account of self-deception, and David Pears’s reconstruction of it, and reveal the illuminating ways in which they fail. These accounts fail, but constructively so: the basic rationality of self-deception and its particular features peep out from every corner. A positive analysis of self-deception thus enabled, in the later parts of the chapter we will be in a



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position to turn to paradoxes of self-deception and formulate what is right and what is wrong in them. 2. A Rationality Befitting the Constitution of Engagements This book endorses the rationalist standpoint according to which for a person to do, want, judge, feel, and so on, entails that her engagement is rational from her own point of view. Such rationality is often or perhaps necessarily7 a matter of patterns of rationality, or in any case is thus in the kind of cases that will interest us in this chapter.8 The question, however, is how basic rationality is related to its patterns. Now, rationality is often identified with particular rational patterns, such as that of acting in accordance with a desire that P and a belief that the action will promote P, and that of believing that P when believing that the belief that P is justified. Similarly, intentional believing, contradictory beliefs, and dodging truth all infringe basically rational patterns. Hence, given that self-deception involves them it would not be basically rational under the reduction of rationality to a (finite or infinite) list of particular patterns. However, the basically rational character of engagements cannot be reduced to their being in accordance with, or to their not violating, a pattern in some list of patterns.9 To see this, remember that we are concerned with rationality in the sense that any engagement of a subject—planning to go to bed, hearing someone knocking, opening the door, feeling dismay at the sight of the person knocking whom one thought dead— exhibits intentionality and reason. The point is that we are subjects living our linguistic life, not that the concepts that our engagements demonstrate adhere to certain preconceived ideas of rationality. Surely such ideas of practical and theoretical rationality constitute certain sense-nuclei of central mental terms like “action” and “belief.” Yet why should the theoretical notions of rationality, which emphasize or endorse these nuclei, be exhaustive of the sense, which engagements have in our lives? As Davidson has argued, to describe an act or an attitude is to show how it is rational, that is, how that act or attitude is to be understood in terms of its connections to other engagements of the person, and thus how it has sense from the person’s perspective. We will come back to it. This does not imply that people are in fact engaged only in certain ways, namely, according to one of a number of admitted patterns, or that every engagement must be interpreted in terms of such admitted patterns. Instead, if engagements consist in rational interlinking, this directs us in the analysis of any engagement or type of engagement, into exposing the structures of rationality involved in it.

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As I see it, much work in the “naturalist camp” is in fact a revision in such terms, rather than an abandonment of rationalism. Thus, Ariela Lazar’s analysis of self-deception (1999) challenges the prevailing understanding of rationality in terms of action following from a desire and belief and of believing in accordance with the evidence: Lazar criticizes the application to self-deception of (a certain conception of) narrow intentionality and brings out less canonical ways that a person’s belief can be connected with her other engagements and as such make sense: beliefs, she says, express emotions and desires, and are adopted through fantasy and daydreaming. We should thus extricate basic rationality from life.10 However, Lazar’s particular points about beliefs do not solve the problems of self-deception. First, the holding of two opposed or inconsistent beliefs presents a problem, even if there are other engagements of the person to lend sense to each of the beliefs, for the question remains how the opposed beliefs make sense together. Second, it is in fact a particular model of narrow intentionality—the model according to which action constitutes the fulfillment of a desire for some states of affairs—that Lazar shows to be irrelevant to self-deception. This chapter also rejects the view that the inappropriate believing involved in self-deception comprises the fulfillment of a desire to have the belief. Yet Lazar assumes that as an expression (which is not the fulfillment) of wishes or desires, self-deception is not at all a narrowly intentional activity. If, however, it is an aspect of the phenomena of self-deception that one intentionally dodges one’s better belief and maintains a contrary belief, then the structure of the narrow intentionality involved thereby must be understood, whatever further interlinkages of engagements may be included in self-deception. Self-deception rightly serves as a focus of the philosophical reflection on rationality and intentionality. For it emphasizes how rationality extends beyond a few patterns, and this in two senses. One sense, presented above, is that rationality is as rich as life. A second and related sense is that no list (not even a complete one) of rational patterns can amount to rationality. This is where we must go beyond the naturalist approach insofar as it wishes to deflate basic rationality. Consider first that deflationist interpretations of self-deception tend to hesitate between two directions. On the one hand, they deflate self-deception, that is, deny the particular broad and narrow intentionality involved in self-deception, but, on the other hand, they deflate intentionality and basic rationality as such. Thus, Mele (1987, 2001) takes up the first direction by analyzing self-deception in terms of a misguided belief that one indeliberately adopts. On his account, self-deception as a whole comprises a non-intentional structure, which a chain of engagements accidentally forms. Even though these engagements do not constitute a joint engagement, they are—so far as Mele’s actual description is concerned—connected in basically rational



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ways: for example, in one kind of chain, the person often recalls such things that he enjoys remembering, forming interlinkages between such likings, and the actual remembering, and second the memories thus evoked support the belief that the person is in this way deceived into adopting. At the same time, Mele would not agree that such connections are basically rational (rather than merely causal), since he also wishes—and this is the second deflationist direction, to deflate subjectivity itself. On a different naturalist account of self-deception, Mark Johnston (1988) emphatically seeks to deflate subjectivity. If rationality was its patterns, Johnston could be right in saying: “The existence of a causal process connecting mental states that conform to a rational pattern can itself constitute rational and intentional belief change” (87). However, the notion of basic or constitutive rationality is essential precisely in order to capture sensible life, rather than either mere nature or logic, where by “sensible life” more must be meant than life that makes sense for those who encounter it in others. Objects such as chairs and electrons also make sense for us. The “logic” of engagements, by contrast, is such that the sense of their ascription appeals to their sense in the subject’s life, namely to their connections with other engagements of the person.11 Yet if rationality is its patterns, then interlinkages between “engagements” in accordance with a “rational” pattern do not constitute them as engagements, which make sense for those thus “engaged.” We are left instead with the reduction of rationality to a list of patterns, with two ways to understand rational relations, such as that between a person’s judgment that P is justified, and her belief that P. Either these are two independent aspects of the person, and they are related in the sense that they are naturally connected in a way that is called (for whatever reason) “rational”; or, if the patterns provide necessary conceptual constraints, then they do not make the person rational in “following” them, for in this case the patterns’ instances merely bring out (together with other patterns’ instances) what the items in the instances mean. A little reflection on why an engagement makes sense for the subject by its relations with further engagements would be helpful here. The point is that in understanding an engagement we cannot be content with a mere third-person understanding of the item, but are inherently concerned with what it means for the person to be thus engaged. And the further point is that this already leads to the interlinkages between attitudes, for what could we ever be asking thereby unless it is how the engagement is connected for the person with how she lives, that is, with other engagements? However, such an account presupposes that the person’s engagements are not simply defined by their connections according to the patterns of rationality, for in this case the (logical or natural) connections do not show how anybody is engaged, and only form a third-person analysis. If rationality was its patterns then the meaning or sense of the items interrelated by instances of the patterns might be defined in terms

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of a set of such instances, but these items would not be basically rational engagements. Basic rationality consists in engagements which lend sense to each other, agreeing with patterns they can disagree with. The subject’s engagements affirm patterns of rationality which may also be circumvented, and rejected, in accordance with further rational patterns.12 I will show, first, that self-deception is a constitutively rational engagement, which cannot be deflated in either of the ways mentioned above; second, that self-deception involves the infringement of patterns of rationality in various basically rational ways; and third that such violations belong to, and determine, the unity of self-deception. Bad faith is in the first place a form of ambivalence of judgment.13 There are similarities but also important differences between ambivalence of value judgment and ambivalence of factual judgment (belief). I will focus in this chapter on the latter. Thus, our concern will be with cases in which a person deceives herself about the facts.14 As I see it, Sartre’s analysis of bad faith (1958a, section III) constitutes an appropriate analysis both of the structure of ambivalence of belief and of the second element of self-deception, that is, narrowly intentional bad faith. My positive explication of self-deception is, to a large extent, a reconstruction of his analysis.15 3. Self-Deception and the Rationality of Mind In order to explicate the phenomena of our individual and collective life, we must remember them. I would like to remind us that self-deception is a form of ambivalent belief, first at all by reference to an example. Let us, however, begin with a case of wholehearted belief. When Abraham deported Hagar and Ismail to the desert, Hagar who was weak and tired (I have changed the story) asked her healthy fourteen-year-old son to go on by himself. Then, in latter years, she could believe, rather wholeheartedly, that he was alive and safe. People survive, and she knew that her son was unusually strong and clever. Her belief consisted in her appreciation of the evidence, in her hopes to see him again, etc.16 In this book, I defend the view that a person is a unitary and basically rational subject: a person has various mental attitudes, but each of them is understood as actually and potentially connected to other attitudes and engagements. In being connected, they grant rationality to each other and to the subject’s behavior. At the same time, the unity of the subject—or of the mind— consists in the fact that her plural attitudes are connected and connectible.



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These themes may be termed “Davidsonian.”17 Davidson assumes, however, that basic rationality implies consistency, that is, that the attitudes must be connected harmoniously.18 Yet, as earlier chapters have shown, ordinary mental attributions include attributions of ambivalence, namely attitudes that are opposed for the subject; and, once consistency between the attitudes is not taken as a precondition on basic rationality, it can be recognized that we ordinarily ascribe persons with opposing attitudes, such that part of the character of the attitudes is their mutual opposition. For example, we do not merely say of John both that he is happy to leave home and that he is unhappy about it, but rather we understand his sadness as conflicting for him with his happiness. In the case of emotions or desires, it is not easy to construct an example that the happiness and sadness are opposed and yet it is not part of the person’s happiness that it is spoiled by and responds to his sadness. We do, however, frequently ascribe people with inadvertently contradictory beliefs, and then the beliefs are not understood in terms of rational connections between them. Yet, in many other cases, we take persons to be ambivalent between their beliefs. In such cases, entertaining the belief is bound up with the person’s taking it to stand in contrast with the opposed belief. Ambivalence of belief is supposed to be a problem even if other forms of ambivalence are not. The person who believes something takes it that she has got a hold of the truth, but what would that truth be if she also—and jointly!—disbelieves it or believes the contrary? We will have to explicate the ambivalent interlinkage between cognitive attitudes and see how this is possible, but we must first see that the phenomena of ambivalence of belief are part of our lives and that the opposed beliefs (and further engagements involved) are understood there jointly, similar to the way that the person’s engagements are generally understood interconnectedly. While some calculations render Ismail as fourteen, the story itself can point to a small child. It is an infant that Hagar has left, saying “Let me not see the death of the child.”19 Let’s change the story again: Hagar runs back to her child, but he is not there anymore. We can assume she now has an ambivalent belief regarding his fate. Did a wild animal eat him? This is the most plausible possibility. And yet, as she can see no blood, perhaps some person passed there and rescued the child. The belief he may well be alive is moored in the fallibility of the belief to the contrary and vice versa. Hagar goes on with her life, never mourning Ismail, ever looking closely at nomadic children passing around. When another baby is born to her, she calls him Ismail, after her dead father who had the name “Ismail,” if not after the child’s brother.20 Ascriptions of ambivalence of belief, such as the second version of the Hagar example above, characterize it as a basically rational engagement in which the agent believes something only in light of a contrary attitude,

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and one’s behavior and additional attitudes are understood in terms of the opposed beliefs and their opposition.21 Davidson on his part is emphatic about the exclusion of ambivalence, which he regards as “inconsistency,” referring not to propositions but rather to propositional attitudes. First, Davidson identifies irrationality and ambivalence. Second, he construes irrationality as a rupture in basic rationality. Third, he reduces ambivalence to a division of the unitary subject. In a third version, Hagar never goes back to the spot in which she left Ismail. “Let me not see the death of the child” already betrays an ambivalence of belief about the infant’s chances. On the one hand, she does not want to see that which she is quite certain will happen. If she didn’t believe that he would surely die, she would not abandon her baby instead of doing her best to save him. Yet it may well be that it is not only the seeing but the certainty of a corpse that she avoids. If this is so then her belief that Ismail is perhaps alive is in bad faith, and so would be the belief that Hagar, in this version, keeps holding to through the years. Ismail is apparently dead, she cannot deny, and yet, as she says to herself, “this is not necessarily so.” Some person might have passed near the spot, she fancies. In fact, even an animal might have fed the human cub for a few days, since she was not there to frighten the animal away. Hagar goes on with her life. She does not mourn her child. She feels close to Cain, the lonely murderer of his own brother (it is the fact that he may be alive that makes her a murderer if he is dead). She looks for her son’s features in every nomadic child’s face, almost afraid of an uncanny positive result. She does not call her new born baby Ismail, and never mentions his brother to him. 4. Rationality and Division, Davidson Considered Davidson and Pears argue that some forms of irrationality, and in particular self-deception, involve a quasi-split of the subject. The subsystems approach, as I will term it after Pears,22 allows for cases in which a person holds contrary beliefs. However, it interprets these cases such that each of the beliefs belongs to, or is held by, a separate part of the person. At the same time, they seek to avoid a complete abolition of the unity of the subject through a notion of a local split. The idea is that self-deception constitutes a partition of one’s mind or attitudes to two parts, which are to some extent like two subjects. Many attitudes can be in both sides, and in this sense the split is of a limited nature.23 Speaking of self-deception, what does the split consist in? Here is one of Davidson’s general descriptions of self-deception: “A has evidence on the basis of which he believes that p is more apt to be true than its negation; the



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thought that p, or the thought that he ought rationally to believe p, motivates A to act in such a way as to cause himself to believe the negation of p” (1985, 88). In deceiving herself, the person is, according to Davidson, divided between two (partly overlapping) compartments. One compartment contains a belief that not-P and a judgment that this belief is, all things considered, unwarranted. These two beliefs can be held harmoniously together because the belief that a proposition is, all things considered (i.e., according to the evidence) unwarranted, does not induce a belief that the proposition is unwarranted. Although rationality requires the person to believe that the proposition she takes to be all things considered unwarranted is indeed unwarranted, the relevant requirement of rationality is separated from the “all things considered” judgment in the other department. “There” one believes that not-P is unwarranted and maybe believes that P is warranted and that P. We can call the first compartment deceived, for self-deception is according to Davidson narrowly intentional, while the intention or motivation is hidden from that compartment. It is harder to decide, as we will see, if the second compartment is supposed to be “a deceiver.” How should this grouping into two compartments be understood? One version—Pears’s “negative model” in what follows—is that attitudes that belong to two separate arrays of attitudes are deprived of rational interaction. For instance, one cannot make inferences from pairs of separated beliefs. Alternatively (“the positive model”), the separate attitudes interact causally and irrationally. Their link is similar (Davidson 1982, 300) to the one between Sarah’s desire that Abraham will expel Hagar and Ismail, and his respective action, given that she in fact brings him to do it. Under a Davidsonian conception, Sarah’s desire causes Abraham’s action, but in itself it does not take part in constituting the act’s rationality, and similarly the one subsystem supposedly causes the other system’s belief without interlinking with it rationally. At the same time, while each of the subsystems has—as Pears emphasizes—the structure of a subject, they should not be tantamount to two completely distinct subjects. Focusing on Davidson 1985 and Pears 1984, I am going to argue for the failure of the partial split in the case of self-deception and analyze this failure.24 In this I join Sartre’s (mistaken) criticism of Freud,25 Sebastian Gardner’s analysis of the approaches of Sartre’s Freud, Davidson, and Pears,26 and Johnston’s 1988 critique of the homuncularist model. In fact, as we will see, Davidson is wary of homuncularism. Unlike Johnston, I do not so much aim at the inconsistency of the examined model, but rather attend to where it is incoherent. Davidson’s account is illuminating because he is concerned with self-deception as an actual phenomenon, and because the irrationality of self-deception intrigues him precisely since he recognizes that self-deception is an ordinary part of our mental and rational lives. More importantly, the

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concern with a basically rational phenomenon reappears in the details: he is not satisfied with a “solution” of the paradox of irrational rationality and of the paradoxes involved in self-deception, in the form of a blunt division in which basic rationality pertains only to the parts. Rather, he strives to maintain the unity and basic rationality of self-deception, while breaking the unity and basic rationality down from within in subtle ways. If self-deception is, however, a unitary engagement whose irrational aspects demonstrate its basic rationality, then such an account cannot succeed. Attending to these breaking points can, however, direct us to the self-deception broken there and to an alternative understanding of basic rationality and irrationality. 4.1 The Exclusion of Rationality Self-deception consists, according to Davidson, in a detachment of a rule of basic rationality from the primary part of the subject (1985, 92). This rule, the requirement of total evidence, demands that the subject adopt as her belief the hypothesis that she takes to be supported by the totality of evidence accessible to her. Rationality, which is supposed to underlie the constitution of the subject, and whose absence is the raison d’être of the division of the subject, is suddenly transformed into a number of ordinary attitudes. Moreover, if this rule of rationality is detached, then one of the quasisubjects is supposed to be lacking it altogether. This suggests that that the purported split must not be taken too seriously. At least the subsystem that suffers the self-deception, which is the primary part of the mind, cannot be properly described as a quasi-subject. If it is subject-like, then it has mental attitudes, including beliefs, which must be conceptualized independently of the rest of the mind.27 However, it is not clear what an attribution of beliefs that are free of the demand to accord with the totality of evidence regarding them would mean.28 4.2 Irrationality as Split: The Positive Model More generally, the subsystems approach aims to account for irrationality via a notion of a divided mind. Perhaps we could ignore the problematic construction of basic rules of rationality as mental attitudes, if we took the mental division itself to constitute the irrationality. In what sense, then, is the rational interaction of attitudes impaired in the divided subject? As Pears emphasizes, Davidson vacillates between two conceptions: a negative conception, according to which the division prevents a rational interaction, and a positive one according to which the separated attitudes interact causally and irrationally. According to the positive model, there are connections between the badly interacting attitudes in the separated compartments, although the connections



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are irrational. “This is an irrational state,” says Davidson after describing a case of self-deception, “but at what point did irrationality enter? Where was there a mental cause that was not a reason for what it caused?” (1985, 90) In his attempts to answer, an undermining feature recurs: it is not only that the causing and caused attitudes are both mentally described, but rather they are described as rationally interlinked attitudes. For, strangely enough, the irrationality ought to consist in the fact that the person’s motivation merely causes the motivated element. Pears (1984, 96–97) argues convincingly against the positive irrationality approach and adopts instead the model of a rational interaction prevented. The central problem he identifies in the positive model is the fact that it does not require a conflict. Let us consider the example of wishful thinking in a sense that renders it an element of self-deception. In this sense wishful thinking consists in the person believing something because he wants to (believe it), which is generally speaking an irrational attitude for her to take.29 According to the positive model, her irrationality amounts to the fact that the desire produced the belief. A desire for a belief cannot justify the belief, hence causes it irrationally. Whether the subject is capable of acknowledging the irrationality of the belief or its causation, and can thus avoid wishful thinking, makes no difference in the positive model. Thus, the hypothesized division of the mind is in fact of no use here. While a mental division is supposed to explicate internal irrationality and internal conflicts, the moral to be drawn here is that the positive model does not even try to explicate internal irrationality and conflicts. Self-deception being part of our intentional life, the person knows (in a self-deceiving way) of her irrational believing—it is part of her engagement—but the positive model does not allow for anchoring the irrationality in an aspect of the subject’s rationality. At the same time, the irrationality pertaining to a rational mental connection is the nexus of the problem for Davidson, who accordingly insists on locating the “merely” causal relations precisely between attitudes defined by their rational linkage. Why do “mere causes” fail to explicate the irrationality of wishful or willful believing? The point is that if a “desire” to believe that Ismail is alive merely causes Hagar’s belief, it does not characterize her belief as intentional or willful; add to this that “believing” implies an appeal to a truth transcending one’s will. The irrationality of intentional believing has, hence, an internal aspect. The irrationality cannot be some fact, foreign to the subject, about the belief’s adoption, but, rather, must be a part of what one ascribes to the subject, when ascribing intentional believing: he is realizing a “desire”30 to believe, while believing commits him to reject the desire as a reason for the belief. Likewise, we cannot take the irrationality of other aspects of selfdeception to constitute a fact external to one’s bad faith. Thus, it is central to

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self-deception that the person dodges reality, rather than leaves reality (and the irrationality of so doing) behind. In the same way, bad faith does not mean that one is found entangled with contradictory beliefs, like a mathematician who is unaware of the inconsistency of his set of axioms. Take the opposed epistemic attitudes held by Hagar of the second version or of the third version. One pole cannot be depicted without reference to the other pole, as well as to the problematic character of their conjunction. Hagar’s belief that Ismail is dead acknowledges and spoils her belief that he may well be alive and vice versa.31 We have begun to see that Davidson’s analysis aims at the phenomenon with which ordinary discourse deals under the name of self-deception, namely with a unitary engagement of believing what one wants to believe, wanting to believe the disbelieved, and believing the disbelieved. At the same time, he wishes this engagement to be read into an array of engagements that are interlinked only for an observer. However, the irrational rationality of self-deception can no more be read into a purely third-person perspective than wholehearted or justified beliefs or actions can. Let us conclude for the time being that the positive model alone does not provide an appropriate interpretation for the sorts of irrationality discussed. In such irrationality, the violations of rational patterns are accessible to the subject. In particular, if the irrationality is grounded in a conflict, then conflict, that is, opposition of beliefs from the point of view of the subject, must be part of the account. Another problem with the positive model is that it reduces irrationality to “ex-rationality,” that is, to relations that are outside the sphere of rationality. There is of course nothing illegitimate in taking a mental feature to be non- or ex-rationally connected with something. For instance, both in cases of deception and in honest communication, the beliefs we adopt have some causes that do not comprise motives for holding these beliefs. Sarah’s endeavors account for Abraham’s thoughts rationally: hearing her, he accepts her claims, disapproves them, and so on. They also participate non-rationally in Abraham’s life, being the endeavors of someone else directed at him. This is thus a nonrational dimension of an instance of basic rationality. What would it mean, by contrast, for ex-rationality to come instead of basic rationality? The positive model demands, at the very least, an explanation. 4.3 Irrationality as Split: The Negative Model However, if self-deception is understood in terms of a split, then shouldn’t the split capture an absence? Does not the irrationality of bad faith consist in a lack of rational linkage between attitudes? A closer examination shows that absence of connection can explicate the irrational rationality of self-deception no more than the positive but merely third-personal connection.



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How are we to understand the lack of rational interaction? Davidson and Pears describe self-deception as a state in which the person possesses an unapplied rule requiring her to act on behalf of the totality of accessible evidence (Davidson), or a cautionary belief according to which a certain belief would be irrational (Pears). In the following discussion, we will ignore the aforementioned problematic nature of Davidson’s rule of rationality. This nature being ignored, the failure of rational interaction is nothing but the fact that one embraces a demand from oneself, and yet does not act or hold an attitude in accordance with it: the person in question won’t believe according to the evidence, or won’t be cautious in affirming a certain belief. Yet this characteristic, that is, maintaining a value judgment or a desire without fulfilling the valued or desired state of affairs, represents the human condition in a nutshell. Of course, this nonphilosophical truth stands in contrast with the received assumption according to which opposed value judgments, desires, or demands from oneself would hinder the person from functioning. This view is thought to be implied by the relations of practical rationality as they are articulated in the Aristotelian practical syllogism. I believe that this assumption, in fact, misconceives that which is valid in the syllogism.32 When we say, with the practical syllogism, that a value judgment (for instance, that it will be good to eat something sweet) conjoined with an appropriate belief (such as that a particular dish is sweet) entails a particular action (eating the dish), we speak of the value judgment and the belief (or of the desire and the belief) as if they were isolated from the rest of one’s mind; yet, attitudes are never isolated and always account for an agent’s actions in the context of the rest of the person’s engagements. If it is irrational to demand something from ourselves without acting accordingly, then the plurality of our aims render us constantly irrational. Moreover, this view ascribes irrationality to any person who does not submit to her desire to deceive herself, just as it does to her self-deceptive friend. While the friend infringes, in Davidson’s model, the requirement of total evidence, the one who would not deceive herself infringes the demand to adopt self-deception.33 Thus, the model of interruption of the rational connection ascribes irrationality too readily. Irrationality extends to the whole spectrum of human life. However, perhaps we should understand the interruption in the rational connection differently. The problem with the internal demand would not be that it is not fulfilled, but rather that it does not concern the separate subsystem. The idea would be that general demands in one part of the divided subject do not specify demands about attitudes belonging to the other part. Thus, one can at the same time believe that the totality of evidence supports P and disbelieve P, since these attitudes are separated from the demand to believe in accordance with the evidence. Under this interpretation, the irrationality

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of self-deception (and similarly for a weakness of the will) is intolerable. First, we confront the problematics of a split personality. But moreover, the deceived subsystem is itself given to extreme irrationality—that irrationality in which mental attributions stop making sense. For what could be the sense of ascription of beliefs, which are in principle undisturbed by a totality of evidence against them?34 Pears places in a separate system only a specific cautionary belief. Thus, he does away with one problem for Davidson’s account, that of a general danger for the sense of ascriptions of beliefs to the subsystem. There is still a danger to the sense of the particular belief, but this is not impossible. Indeed, it is inherent to basic rationality that it can loosen, thus forming particular engagements that are irrational in a conceptually (but not clinically) extreme manner. Such irrationality is ordinary whether in the form of unknowingly holding contradictory beliefs or of temporary forgetting of certain sorts. However, such irrationality has nothing to do with the cases that the subsystems approach is supposed to account for, that is, cases like self-deception. To characterize a belief (or disbelief) as one held in self-deception is to assume, rather than exclude, rational interaction. Let us, in seeing this, follow Davidson and consider self-deception as a problem of justification. According to Davidson, a person who deceives herself takes (wholeheartedly) the totality of accessible reasons to be supportive of a belief and yet she does not accept this belief. In fact, however, a belief can be rejected in bad faith although the totality of accessible reasons does not clearly support it. Moreover, even when the totality of reasons would clearly support the belief as far as the person is concerned—if not for the bad faith—she need not wholeheartedly believe that the rejected belief is justified. Self-deception tends to extend, and the person may well avoid—also in bad faith—the conclusion that the totality of reasons supports the belief that she, in bad faith, rejects. Let us, however, consider self-deception in which the person violates the requirement to believe in accordance with the totality of evidence. As a violation committed in bad faith, it comprises a mode of existence that takes part in the constitution of the subject as unitary. How is that? The first thing to notice is that holding that the totality of reasons favors a belief does not entail accepting the belief. This is already suggested by the use of “requirement,” rather than “criterion,” here as elsewhere in discussing basic rationality. Moreover, there is a systematic structure to such rejections of belief. They appeal to the gap between truth and justification, a gap which is part and parcel of the concept of belief. For while belief ascription presupposes a notion of justification, including the requirement regarding total evidence, it is just as central to belief that to believe is not tantamount to taking the proposition to be justified. It is possible for the best justification to be in discordance with the truth.



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This gap can be used by the person in bad faith. The refusal to draw the conclusion from the evidence (taken by the person to be total) is irrational when made in bad faith: in such a case, it is not motivated by a concern with the truth, and the reasoning that may support it would not stand up to examination in light of the subject’s less biased thinking. However, at the same time that it may well be irrational to accept that the total evidence supports P and yet avoid accepting P, such avoidance cannot be interpreted in terms of the elimination of the requirement of total evidence. The person in bad faith exploits the logic of belief, while if the requirement is (for the subsystem) eliminated, she entertains a belief that does not address this logic. Thus, while self-deception involves, at times, a refusal to draw the conclusion from the total evidence, this phenomenon cannot be formulated in terms of division of the mind between mutually irrelevant attitudes. Aspects of self-deception and similar forms of irrationality include, in a sense, rational interactions that are prevented, but only by virtue of a rational interaction of the engagements “across the split” in ways that that make these other interactions unsuitable. Moreover, it is often the case that (nonbasic) rationality is avoided in a highly, rather than merely basically, rational way. We shall see that the structure of ambivalence of belief can be described this way. (To be more precise, ambivalence of belief infringes a pattern of rationality in a highly rational way. I shall suggest that ambivalence of belief is thus not generally irrational, despite the violation of a pattern of rationality.) In any case, the violation under self-deception of the requirement of total evidence involves an affirmation of rationality, for, as Sartre (1958a) shows, the structure of conscious belief invites its undermining. In order to avoid believing that which the evidence supports, a person in bad faith emphasizes that no belief is beyond doubt. Incidentally, Pears also acknowledges that we can abstain from rationality in a rational way. Having presented the case of a person who refuses to believe a telegram containing bad news from a reliable source, Pears writes: “It is in the nature of inductive evidence that it allows people the latitude to refuse to make their beliefs conform to it even though they are perfectly aware of what they are doing, and, when a powerful wish is operating, the refusal may go to considerable lengths” (75–76). 4.4 Intentional Split? There is another problem for the subsystems approach that we must consider. This chapter argues that the phenomena of self-deception are intentional qua phenomena of self-deception. Self-deception does not comprise a description of certain phenomena, which is foreign to the subject, but rather the subject deceives herself from her own perspective. First, she is ambivalent: she holds, from her own perspective, contrary beliefs (or some similar pattern). Second,

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and this is our current focus, she deceives herself. That is, she takes one of the poles of her ambivalence as illegitimate and intentionally pursues this pole. Self-deception is not something one runs into by chance; the person in bad faith is moved to deceive oneself. To see what this means consider Amelie Rorty’s assertion that “self-deception need not be motivated by a desire or a wish” (1996, 78).35 Now, Rorty may be right, for her examples show that she discusses motivation that aims further than the self-deception itself. Thus, consider a person who is in the habit of ignoring or denying his ailments. In deceiving herself that she is not ill, she does not have to have some special purpose that the self-deception is intended to achieve. What does not follow, however, is that the person does not act intentionally in order to have this bad faith. We should differentiate two aspects of the narrow intentionality of selfdeception: the one aspect is that self-deception might include a narrowly intentional relation between engagements, for example between the selfdeception as a whole and some desire or value judgment that it is intended to achieve. Recalling that any engagement necessarily makes sense in the person’s life, and that this must be understood in terms of interlinkages with other engagements of the person, we see that purposes which go beyond their fulfillments constitute a central form of such interlinkages. It is, accordingly, sometimes right to ascribe some additional purpose to a person who hides from herself the fact that she is ill—for instance she might deceive herself about her illness in order to be able to pursue unhindered a most important task that is not consistent with focusing on a recovery. We may also, however, identify nonpurposive interlinkages in cases of self-deception. For instance, bad faith might express the person’s fear that she is mortally ill. Or, she may have learned as a child that illness ought not to be succumbed to, acknowledgment included. If this is the case, then she is in the habit of self-deception. Our engagements include in particular (short- or long-term) actions, and thus actions, be they taking a walk or deceiving oneself about one’s medical condition, have sense in the agent’s life—they are understood through their interlinkages with further actions, attitudes, and other engagements. This is not to say, however, that they are necessarily desired, intended, or aimed at: while actions are narrowly intentional by definition, the notion of action does not imply that they must be interlinked with some narrowly intentional attitude. When a person takes a walk, for example, this is already a motivated action. It does not follow that he wants to do something. We cannot assume that the action is a means to a differently described end—for example, strengthening his heart—but, moreover we cannot even assume that the person wants to take a walk in any sense that implies more than that he actually takes a walk (as we could if, for instance, he has arranged for a time to do so).



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Such an assumption unites two features of desire-action relations—that they pattern basically rational interlinkages and that a desire can constitute the narrow intentionality of an action. In uniting them, the assumption misconceives both features. On the one hand, action out of a desire transcending the action can be interlinked with the desire in various ways, rather than simply or entirely fulfill it. Thus, a person who wants to take a walk might, if he is too busy, merely stand a little in the open air. On the other hand, an action can be narrowly intentional or motivated—it can constitute a “fulfillment”—without this suggesting a desire (or purpose or value judgment) the person fulfills, unless by “a desire” we merely refer to the narrowly intentional character of the action.36 All this has a special bearing on the allegedly self-defeating character of self-deception. For the worry about self-defeat is based on the presupposition that the act of deceiving oneself is distinct from the desired state of selfdeception that the person is motivated to realize, and by implication that this motivation is not simply the narrow intentionality of the action. Now, insofar as self-deception involves a motivation for deceiving oneself that P that transcends the self-deception, it is indeed only partly fulfilled, thus in a sense partly defeated.37 On the other hand, self-deception is centrally a motivated, that is, narrowly intentional, route in a person’s life, a route of ambivalent believing held in self-deception. The heart of the matter is that self-deception can no more be fractured between a self-deceived belief and its motivation, than between evaluation of the evidence and a belief to the contrary, or between two contrary beliefs. For a person to deceive herself (in the ordinary sense) is to believe—or disbelieve—something notwithstanding the evidence or her contrary belief. From this perspective, the core of self-deception, and in particular of the belief in bad faith, is a motivation to accept what the evidence denies. Davidson, breaking what he at the same time shows to be unbreakable, vacillates here between two incompatible conceptions. According to one conception, the motivation belongs to the deceiving part of the subject, while it regards the deceived main part of the subject. It is, hence, a motivation concerning a sort of other. The irrationality consists, primarily, in the existence of a nonrational link between the motivation in the one subsystem for the belief in bad faith and this belief, as held by the other subsystem. The motivation is part of the deceiver’s rationality. It moves her to deceive. In this way, the motivation indirectly brings about the deceived subsystem’s belief, serving as its external cause. This view is the positive conception of irrationality (whether accompanied by the negative model or not). Davidson maintains that there must be some desire that is the cause of self-deception, although it is not its motivation. The positive conception attempts to explain how this is possible.

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At the same time, and this is the second conception, the motivation must be the reason for the self-deception itself. Davidson allows for other forms of irrationality, but says that self-deception requires that the self-deceiver intend the deception and participate in producing the inference contrary to the evidence. To take this to apply to one sub-subject who deceives a second sub-subject would be insufficient. What the subject produces, according to Davidson, is a “weakness of the warrant.” A person manifests it by rejecting a hypothesis while judging that relative to the available relevant evidence, the hypothesis is more probable than not. How is weakness of the warrant produced? In the case where self-deception consists in self-induced weakness of the warrant what must be walled off from the rest of the mind is the requirement of total evidence. . . . In the extreme case, when the motive for self-deception springs from a belief that directly contradicts the belief that is induced, the original and motivating belief must be placed out of bounds along with the requirement of total evidence. (1985, 92)

The production of weakness of the warrant is thus one with the division of the subject. It cannot, therefore, rest upon it, nor characterize a subsystem of the divided subject. The subject’s motivation for weakness of the warrant must motivate her division. However, the split in the subject—the essence of her irrationality, according to Davidson—is given in his account in advance. Indeed, the motivation and its realization cannot be external to the division. Self-deception, as Davidson also agrees, is not a gradual process where the person enables herself at one time to lose information later. The motivation and production of self-deception, he maintains, are simultaneous with the produced state. This in fact means that if the motivation precedes, temporally or conceptually, the division, there is no division. There is, anyway, no division that solves the fundamental problem. Once again we confront a human being—a whole human being—to whom we must ascribe a belief that he forms despite knowing that it is not justified. It is no wonder, then, that Davidson locates the motivation for the selfdeception within a subsystem of the subject. However, as we see, this prevents the motivation from fulfilling its role, that is, from producing the self-deception. While the argument above directly refers to the position presented by Davidson, it would not be easy to dissolve it through a reinterpretation, or an alteration of some elements of the position. For example, it does not matter what is hidden from the sub-subject. Perhaps, we could maintain that the sub-subject lacks part of the evidence for the belief or that she lacks the belief that she possesses the totality of accessible and relevant evidence: we would



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still have to explain how self-deception as a whole is narrowly intentional. It would also be of little use for the subsystems approach to conform to a purely negative model. Whereas this spares us the need to locate the motivation for self-deception within the sub-subject, it leaves this motivation resistant to incorporation in the model. In fact, we would lose much in such a case. After all, the subsystems approach, conceived as a metaphor, enables Davidson to present the motivation for self-deception: similarly to a motivation for taking a walk that does not go beyond the walking, it is the motivation for, but at the same time part of, the self-deception. What would this mean? Does not the action of deceiving oneself by definition fulfill a desire, which surpasses the action, having an object the action has to produce, as suggested in Bermudez 2000? In general terms the intentionalist view [which Bermudez supports] is that it is a necessary condition of a subject’s forming a self-deceiving belief that p that they should intentionally bring it about that they believe that p. (310)

Formulations like this are at the same time almost right yet completely wrong. Some dashes would solve the problem: in self-deception people intentionally bring-it-about-that-they-believe-that-P. And this is again emphasized by Davidson: the self-deceived-belief is part of self-deception, which is taken as action, rather than as a result achieved and includes the better belief as well.

5. Some Paradoxes of Self-Deception Self-deception has been bound up with various paradoxes. One of them, namely Mele’s dynamic puzzle, is, as we now see, dissolved. Understood on an interpersonal model, self-deception seems to be self-defeating. Deception requires ignorance on the part of the deceived in regard to the intentions and schemes of the deceiver, and this duality of knowledge and ignorance becomes a mystery when the deceiver is the deceived. However, the mystery is gone if the narrow intentionality of self-deception does not involve a desire for a separate state of self-deception or for an independent improper belief. While there is often much to learn on self-deception, owing to the creativity it permits us to employ, there is nothing mysterious about our ability to achieve self-deception since rather than a desired action and its product, self-deception is an intentional doing, that of indulging in an illegitimate ambivalent belief (the ambivalence regarding the legitimacy of this belief’s justification included). This does not hinder special motivations—when such motivations exist—from being fulfilled by self-deception. What about the desire to be deceived completely, or the desire to wholeheartedly believe that P? I am

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not ruling out that some cases of ordinary (i.e., simultaneous) self-deception would be aptly described as involving such desires; these desires would not be completely fulfilled. More generally, we do not in deceiving ourselves actually fulfill, or try to fulfill, such desires. Other paradoxes of self-deception include Davidson’s general paradox of irrationality (1982, 1985a). The problem is that the ascription of irrationality is a mental ascription, where mental ascriptions both assume and state rationality. The existence of reason explanations of this sort is a built-in aspect of intentions, intentional actions, and many other attitudes and emotions. Such explanations explain by rationalizing: they enable us to see the events or attitudes as reasonable from the point of view of the agent. An aura of rationality, of fitting into a rational pattern, is thus inseparable from these phenomena, at least as long as they are described in psychological terms. How then can we explain, or even tolerate as possible, irrational thoughts, actions, or emotions? (Davidson 1982, 289)

Another cluster of paradoxes, let us call them the paradoxes of ambivalence of belief, includes Davidson’s 1985 paradoxes, Mele’s static puzzle, and others. These paradoxes are concerned with prohibitions, or impossibilities, implied in the concept of belief, regarding epistemic attitudes that cannot be held together. A belief that P negates a belief that not-P, as well as a belief that not-P might be the case, that is, a disbelief that P. It also negates a belief that one’s belief that P is unwarranted. In a related paradox, those who ascribe ambivalence appear to contradict themselves since they ascribe a belief and a disbelief (or desire and non-desire, happiness and unhappiness, and so on). The aspect of motivated believing gives rise to a further paradox, regarded above in terms of wishful thinking, when the wish is a wish to believe. We can also name it “the belief at will paradox” after the terminology of Bernard Williams 1973a. A belief that P is a belief that P is true. In other words, a belief or faith is directed to an objectivity, which is independent of one’s will. Doesn’t the willful character of a bad faith therefore annul the faith? 5.1 The Paradox of Irrationality My primary aim in this chapter has been to dissolve Davidson’s paradox of irrationality while acknowledging its serious character. The paradox is dissolved since self-deception is rational in the required sense: to ascribe it is to ascribe to the subject a unitary engagement. Or, to put the emphasis differently, in ascribing a person with a belief held in bad faith that P, we describe



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it as interlinked in a basically rational way with a disbelief that P. Yet the paradox is serious, and in a way genuine, because the irrationality of selfdeception involves infringing patterns of rationality. By contrast with cases in which we take people to be entangled in a contradiction, we understand Hagar’s ambivalence of belief in the second case, or Hagar’s self-deception in third case, as aspects of their lives, aspects that make sense in terms of the ways that each of the Hagars links her attitudes. Thus, in believing that Ismail apparently survived, this belief competes for Hagar2 (and similarly for Hagar3) with her belief that the boy did not survive. When we take someone to be entangled in a contradiction, we ascribe her two opposed beliefs, but the whole point of such ascriptions is that the beliefs are not part of a unitary attitude of the person. She believes that P and also believes that not-P, but is not ambivalent between her beliefs: they are not interlinked for her. Not so for the ascriptions of opposed beliefs to the Hagars. Similarly, when a person believes under ambivalence or self-deception that her belief that P is unwarranted, this belief is interlinked with the belief that P. Thus, Hagar3 does not innocently believe that Ismail has plausibly survived. In believing that he survived, she is not at all blind to what she takes to be the absurdity of this belief or to her believing it being absurd. Rather than naively believing that her son may be saved, she clings to the belief despite her appreciation that this can hardly be the case. What about the particular paradoxes of self-deception? We saw that the dynamic paradox reflects philosophical misconceptions and is completely dissolved once the misconceptions are corrected. By contrast, the other paradoxes mentioned above are dissolved without ceasing to be genuine in the following sense: they reveal a situation in which we are “impossibly” engaged, for our engagement violates a pattern of rationality. The genuine nature of the difficulty becomes even clearer under a terminology of mental concepts or terms: self-deception connects the engagements involved in ways that infringe the senses of the relevant mental terms. For example, wishful or intentional believing, we saw, infringes the sense nucleus of “belief,” according to which to believe is to accept an objectivity, which is independent of its acceptance. 5.2 The Paradox of Ambivalence of Belief Dissolved So far as our philosophical puzzles are concerned, the most problematic case is the least irrational one, namely that of ambivalence of belief. The general solution of the paradox of irrationality may seem insufficient. Rational patterns can be infringed in a basically rational manner. However, what would such a manner be? What would allow one to ambivalently believe? An explicit reply is also positively informative for the explication of self-deception. This

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can be contrasted with belief at will or wish, which can violate the rationality of belief in various ways, in accordance with the person’s other engagements. Unlike it, the structure of ambivalence of belief consists in a particular mode of violating the impossibility of holding contradictory beliefs. Ambivalence of belief affirms a pattern that calls for the violation of another. In this sense, it is even rationally required (although its self-deceptive forms are not). In any case, whether one is ambivalent in one’s belief or not, one must infringe fundamental rules of rationality. Let me explain. We can say that the concept of belief—that which is extricable from human life around believing—is paradoxical. Together with the prohibitions, it includes an obligation: disbelieve that which you believe. Sartre (1958a) exposed this pattern, showing that it is necessary because consciousness is self-consciousness in the sense that in engaging with something consciously, the engagement is itself conscious.38 In particular, to consciously believe that P implies that the person regards the proposition as an object of her believing. However, belief is fallible, and thus to regard P as believed is to regard it as perhaps wrongly believed. This pattern invites one to concretely disbelieve her belief, that is, to take an attitude that undermines in specific ways the apparent warrant of the belief. For example, Hagar2’s belief that Ismail is dead takes the form of assuming that a wild animal ate the boy. The belief is undermined by a possibility that someone has passed by and took Ismail with him. This antithetical belief, strengthened by the absence of blood in the area, is itself undermined if Hagar2 is ambivalent, perhaps in view of the visible traces that a human presence in the desert could be expected to leave behind. While based on the character of consciousness, the structure here described transcends conscious beliefs. It aptly depicts the attitude of belief in general. This is so because attitudes are moored in conscious attitudes: they can (by definition, but in a minimal sense, which would sometimes be merely analytic) become conscious. In saying that attitudes can be conscious, we understand attitudes as concrete and basically rational aspects of one’s subjectivity. For, to ascribe such engagements—as in the ascription of mental attitudes—is to ascribe engagements that are held by the person from her own perspective. In other words, it is to describe a person as potentially living with and according to the attitude, in the first person, that is, consciously.39 Thus, ambivalence of belief conforms to a structure of a belief undermined by disbelief, which does not destroy the belief, but rather is itself undermined by it.40 At the same time, due to the conjunctive logic of truth and the aim of belief at truth, the concept of belief determines that a belief excludes the holding of an opposed belief. In ambivalence of belief, this determination is subverted. The subversion is basically rational, for the person infringes the pattern that believing P and believing Q entails believing P and Q, precisely to the extent that she links her opposed epistemic attitudes by their epistemic



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opposition: holding one of the beliefs involves that one undermines, in a concrete way, the other belief, and that the other belief undermines and concretely shapes this belief. Basic rationality can loosen, and it can loosen such that the person holds contradictory beliefs without ambivalence. In such cases, however, the person does not hold the beliefs as contradictory attitudes. When she does, that is, when it is part of the identity of the person’s belief that it is opposed by a disbelief, this means that the beliefs undermine each other. However, some philosophers analyze ambivalence of belief in terms of opposed epistemic attitudes that on the one hand do not form a belief in the conjunction of their contents, but on the other hand do not undermine each other. Instead, the opposed attitudes are supposed to consist in different aspects of a full-blown belief. In taking the opposed beliefs to constitute epistemic engagements in different senses, some philosophers intend to deny the opposition between the epistemic attitudes. For example, Bach (1981) analyzes self-deception that P in terms of mere thinking that P while believing that not-P, and Audi (1982) contrasts a sincere assertion that P with unconscious justified belief that not-P. Some other philosophers are concerned with how opposed beliefs are possible.41 Sommers (2009) contrasts beliefs as to how the world is, which are closely related to experiencing the world as such and such, with beliefs that some proposition is true. Thus there is no problem, Sommers tells us, in understanding how, for example, a convinced atheist may vehemently pray to God for help when in need (268). Similarly Gertler (2011, section IV) contrasts beliefs as dispositions for action (when combined with further attitudes) with beliefs as dispositions to recall an endorsed content. I agree that ambivalence of belief may at times have a more reflective pole and a more experiential one; but to say that a person who is still an atheist prays seriously to God is to say that he does question the truth of his conviction. Nor shall we describe him as atheist if he does not, in fact, take (ambivalently) the world to be godless.42,43 5.3 Irrationality in the House of Reason Ambivalence of belief constitutes a basically rational engagement and cannot be divided. It consists, however, in a pair of a belief and a disbelief, which in general also imply contrary beliefs.44 Does this make ambivalence of belief irrational? As you wish. We are concerned in this chapter with ascriptions of irrationality in a certain sense of the word, named by Davidson (1985a) “objective” and by Mele (1987, 75) “subjective.”45 The ascription of such irrationality presents a perspective maintained by the subject concerned. It presents the perspective as inherently irrational: the irrationality, or what renders it as such, is part of the perspective.

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This is to say, that the irrationality so often ascribed together with selfdeception is itself (basically) rational. Do we in attributing self-deception identify a perspective, that is, a manifestation of basic rationality, and in addition judge that this perspective is contrary to reason in some sense or other? Such a perspective, in contrast with such as our tracing of self-deception exposed, would not be irrational in its own right. The irrationality in fleeing truth, willful belief (in self-deception), and also weakness of the will, as well as the purported irrationality in ambivalence of belief, is thus subjective: It characterizes the perspective of the irrational subject. This very subjectivity renders it objective, that is, inherent to the engagement. Such inherent irrationality, finally, brings us back into the structure of basic rationality. The necessary gap between basic rationality and any rule belonging to it calls for inherently irrational engagements. Whenever a person takes up a rational engagement which violates (or subverts, or avoids) some rule or pattern of her basic rationality, her engagement can be called irrational. Correspondingly, an engagement that involves going by such a rule can be conceived as highly rational. Is ambivalence of belief irrational, then? We should not assume there must be univocal agreement here. For, if this explication of the notions of objective rationality and irrationality is right, then it must be complemented by pointing out that objective irrationality is also subjective in the ordinary sense. In other words, it expresses conceptions and concerns that transcend the attitude. The whole discourse of irrationality and (high) rationality in the objective sense would otherwise lack significance. For after all, first, we constitute our basic rationality by infringement no less than by pursuing. Second, we pursue rules of rationality by the same token that we infringe others. Third, violations (and pursuits) of patterns of basic rationality are pervasive in our lives. Moreover, as in the case of holding a belief, one, often, must violate some pattern: a person infringes a core nucleus of belief when she is ambivalent, but she does so when she is wholehearted as well, since belief calls for disbelief. Fleeing from the horns of the dilemma toward the affirmation of agnosticism is no less problematic both in general (inasmuch as a general agnosticism is coherent) and in many particular instances of suspension of belief. All this is not a decisive case against any specific attribution of irrationality. One may have good reasons to ascribe irrationality to (wholehearted and ambivalent) believers. One may do well to (ambivalently) appreciate some attitude, or type of attitudes, as highly rational and as irrational at the same time. It is easy, for example, to appreciate an open-eyed life and reject self-deception on these grounds, while also accepting, after William James, that in some cases (such as courting a person who, to begin with, might not be interested in you (James 1956, IX)), it might be rational—helpful and even sincere as well as open-eyed—to deceive oneself.



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In any case, self-deception invites accusations of (basically rational) irrationality more seriously than ambivalence in general. As I see it, the most problematic elements are those of wishful or intentional belief and of fleeing truth or plausibility. Here patterns of rationality are infringed so as to partly deprive us of real life. This still allows one to ambivalently acknowledge the high rationality of many bad faiths, as James or Rorty show. The high rationality of some bad faiths could moreover be due to the fact that ordinary bad faith also sticks partly to the real life denied. By deceiving oneself, one might in important ways keep closer to reality, truth, or understanding, than by other courses—self-deceptive or not—that might suggest themselves. Thus, Hagar’s self-deception could be her way to acknowledge the terrible facts.

notes 1. “Narrow intentionality” will be used to characterize engagements that involve an intention to achieve something. See more on my use of “intentionality” in the Introduction, section 3. 2. When not indicated otherwise, “rationality” is used in what follows as a shorthand for “basic rationality.” 3. “Bad faith” translates Sartre’s Mauvaise Foi (1958a); the term should suggest the notion of an insincere belief. 4. Yet he understands “thinking” as a form of cognition. 5. When the context is clear, I shall use “intentional believing” as shorthand for a narrowly intentional believing. 6. Gardner (1993) suggests a different view of self-deception as a rational and both narrowly and broadly intentional engagement of a unitary subject. He takes selfdeception to require, however, “mental distance” (in a sense that doesn’t undermine unity). I agree only that some cases of self-deception involve mental distance at certain levels. Gardner also distinguishes the unity of a person from rationality, arguing that other forms of irrationality manifest the one but not the other. 7. Basically rational interlinkages between engagements can be understood in terms of the patterns they demonstrate. Consider even such examples as a unique expression of John’s love toward his only child: usually amiable, Jane is different today, having suffered humiliation from a group of classmates. Noticing her wish to be consoled without talking about the matter, John steps out of his usual “nobullshit” approach with her and everybody else, demonstrating a tactful gentleness. The humiliation is not so terrible, and hopefully by tomorrow he can go back to their usual way of interacting. Yet when we see his present conduct as showing his love to Jane, we understand it as following (and constituting) some pattern that surpasses the particular occasion, perhaps an inference-pattern that, taking the love of Jane and her need for nonintrusive attention as premises, draws the practical conclusion of showing Jane tactful attention. This also suggests that specific patterns of rationality might characterize single persons, and even more importantly that patterns of rationality

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should not be understood as a rigid framework for actual basically rational lives, but rather as open to rational change together with our engagements. 8. Patterns of rationality are also important for the understanding of action under ambivalence of desire. See chapter 9. 9. Other logical relations, such as being in accordance with a particular pattern and not violating any of the patterns in the list of patterns, similarly cannot serve to explicate basic rationality. 10. Mele’s work, especially on akrasia and self-control, is another important example of the move to rationality drawn up from life. 11. While engagements and their sense are moored in the possibility of ascribing them. 12. I develop the notions of the soft identity of engagements and their mutual sense borrowing in chapter 4, section 2 (see also chapter 3, 6, and 9). It is shown there that such accounts of engagements are essential both in view of the phenomenon of ambivalence and independent of it. 13. Other engagements can also be central to self-deception, and, in particular, we often deceive ourselves regarding our emotions. This, however, implies intentionally believing that we feel what we do not feel (or not in the same way that we take ourselves to). This is not say that self-deception about the person’s own emotions does not have a special character, namely the entertainment or playing up of the emotion in a special way. See epigraph to chapter 3. 14. I also focus on belief even though self-deception is often, and in a sense necessarily, a matter of weaker epistemic attitudes. The structures, however, remain unchanged. 15. I take issue with Sartre’s analysis in some respects. His account does not allow that people can be ambivalent in their beliefs without bad faith. He also does not differentiate the rationality of ambivalence of belief from what I call conceptual ambivalence (an example of the latter would be ambivalence about the character that the concept of love ought to take. Thus, in considering a relationship, Anna may be ambivalent as to whether the concept of love should entail missing the beloved when they cannot meet. The structure of ambivalence of belief can combine with conceptual ambivalence, as is the case in a central form of ambivalence of value judgment, see chapter 8). Third, the conceptual relations of bad faith and consciousness are looser than Sartre takes them to be. 16. The Book of Genesis, 21. 17. Davidson appeals to the notion of holism in his explication of the unitary subject, her rationality, and her attitudes (where the latter are primarily propositional as far as Davidson is concerned). See, for instance, Davidson 1984, 1985a. 18. For example, Davidson 1985a. 19. Genesis 21:16, King James Version. 20. See further examples of ambivalence of belief in chapter 6, 133 and chapter 8, section 2.2 (esp. 212–13), and 219. 21. The basic structure of ambivalence of a belief consists in a belief that P which is undermined by a disbelief that P, which is itself undermined by the belief that P. This structure enables one to hold contrary beliefs that P and that not-P. We will come back to this.



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I will not argue directly against the view that self-deception that P includes only the belief that P or that it includes only the belief that not-P (the very fact that both interpretations exist may make them suspect). Another cluster of ways to try and interpret apparent or real oppositions of belief is by distinguishing different aspects of a belief. Bach’s distinction between belief and thinking (1981) may be understood in this way. Funkhouser 2009 understands belief as consisting in low-level attitudes of regarding as true in some respect and takes self-deception to consist in discordance between such attitudes; for example, on his account a person who deceives herself that P might believe P or regard it as true so far as her practical reasoning goes, but regard it as false in the sense that she reports to herself that not-P. Interpretation of oppositions of belief as pairs of attitudes that constitute different aspects of belief are popular in the recent literature that focuses on more or less automatic contradictory beliefs. Thus, Gendler (2008) introduces the concept of an alief in order to capture the automatic behavioral dispositions pertinent to beliefs. She analyzes her phenomena as mismatches between beliefs (of which Gendler ambiguously speaks of as aliefs with further aspects and as complementary to aliefs) and between mere aliefs. Schwitzgebel (2010) rejects the popular division of beliefs between judgmental aspects (which should be associated with cognition, reflection, assertion, and consciousness) and behavioral aspects. As Schwitzgebel argues, oppositional pairs of beliefs cannot be reduced to pairs of a judgment that is not acted on and a nonjudgmental behavioral disposition. However, he rejects the analysis of relevant phenomena in terms of a particular division between judgment and behavioral disposition only to argue that some division or other to what he calls half-beliefs must always be at work. I here cannot discuss the phenomena of contradictory beliefs that are not held together in a basically rational way. However, some of the cases discussed in this literature, in fact, constitute basically rational attitudes, whether non-ambivalent or of ambivalence of belief or of value judgment (thus, Juliette and Kaipeng, two of Schwitzgebel’s main examples (532), appear to be ambivalent). Let me suggest that the problem with the analysis of self-deception by half-beliefs is not so much that the results lack the particular basic rationality of self-deception and especially lack ambivalence of belief. Rather, the view of basic rationality that is defended in the current book entails that “half-beliefs” do not, as a general rule, comprise a coherent notion. Of course, there are attitudes that are like beliefs in some ways but not in others, but we cannot allow a half-belief, in which, out of the blue, some aspects—for example, a tendency to sincere assertion or to act on a suitable desire—are absent. This would leave us with an eclectic cluster of elements cut from the attitude that makes them basically rational and allows us to identify them. 22. Pears terms the parts of the personality that are disconnected from each other subsystems or systems. 23. Davidson 1985, 1982, 1985a; Pears 1984. I consider Pears’s reconstruction only in so much as it elucidates features of a Davidsonian model, rather than as a comprehensive alternative view. 24. Also pertinent are Davidson’s discussions of irrationality in 1970, 1982, and 1985a. 25. Section I in 1958a. In fact, Freud’s work brings out an important way to think of ambivalence in terms of a unitary I. The terminology of consciousness/

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unconscious, as well as that of ego/id/super-ego, is far from implying sub-persons. See chapter 6, section 3. 26. Gardner 1993, chapters 2 and 3. Gardner focuses on Pears’s partition model, which he conceives as substantially interpersonal. His two main objections (3.6) are that the subsystem must replicate the person and that it must have an origin. Gardner argues that in attempting to understand self-deception on an interpersonal model, the idea is that as quasi-persons the compartments have further attitudes beyond those that belong also to the person as a whole and that these attempts fail. This view might imply a quite substantial idea of split, each of the parts being rather like a genuine person. The discussion of related problems for partition in the present chapter implies that even explanations of self-deception in terms of a thinner notion of split would be untenable. 27. More precisely, they must be conceptualized without a dependency of the relevant kind on the rest of the mind. The rest of the mind may be needed as a part of the world, but not of the “subject.” 28. While such a demand need not be fulfilled, it cannot lose all role and significance in the person’s life. 29. I regard wishful, that is, intentional, believing that P as constitutive of bad faith. The relation is also inverted, and wishful thinking in this sense involves selfdeception about its justification. Self-deception that P does not seem to necessarily involve a wish that P. 30. I will, later, suggest a change of terminology. 31. However, I will not regard the aspect of ambivalence of belief as by itself irrational. 32. The syllogism is formulated in Aristotle 2000, Book VII, 1147a29–31. Chapter 9 analyzes significant action under ambivalence of desire. 33. I am not suggesting that infringed patterns of rationality imply ambivalence. Also, the example of shunning self-deception should not mislead us to think that self-deception is appropriately described as submitting to a desire. 34. Self-deceptive beliefs are sometimes irresponsive to evidence, but this doesn’t mean that the evidence is irrelevant to the belief. The person confronts the challenge in various ways, for example by reinterpreting the evidence. 35. Consider also the common denominator of Fingarette’s two very different essays on self-deception. According to his later essay (1998), we “avoid” or “intentionally resist” turning our attention to certain things, while Fingarette 1982 [1974] argues that the ego splits, and this is not “something that ‘happens’ to the ego but something the ego does, a motivated strategy” (224). Using the term “narrow intentionality” for intentions and intended action, I accept that they are also intentional in the sense that they are basically rational engagements of subjects. Deflationists, on the other hand, may take up contrary approaches here. Thus, engaged in “naturalizing” subjectivity as a whole, Johnston 1988 feels free to acknowledge the narrowly intentional character of self-deception, depriving it at the same time of its broad intentionality. Mele, by contrast, even while using the terminology of motivation, tries to abolish it and deflate the narrowly intentional character of self-deception. The motivation is



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supposed to generate biases that innocently bring about the unjustified belief. This way, Mele also excludes broad intentionality from self-deception, for it ceases to be a unitary engagement of the subject, but rather a complex of engagements. As I see it, our lives abound with arrays of engagements in which the basically rational interlinkages between the engagements add up to further connections that are not themselves basically rational. At the same time, Mele is wrong in the present case, not only in driving us away from the ordinary sense of self-deception, but also, though I won’t be able to argue for it here, because the motivation persistently reappears in his own phenomena. 36. Note that in arguing that an action does not imply a desire that goes beyond it, I regard desires and other mental attitudes as engagements of the person. More specifically, I take them to be dispositions that constitute perspectives. The question is, therefore whether an action requires a disposition of desire that surpasses it. No implications are made regarding any purported relations of actions with brain states. 37. Funkhouser 2009 argues that we can want to be able to have a particular aspect of belief—for example to report to ourselves that P—and that self-deception that P can achieve this completely. Our narrowly intentional believing can indeed involve a focus, on, for example, reporting to ourselves. As a focus on sincere reports, however, it still depicts a narrowly intentional believing, and what is “completely achieved” is only a bad faith. 38. See chapter 5, section 1. 39. Conversely, the conscious belief has to be a belief, that is, an attitude of belief, which can be ascribed to a person and comprises a sort of disposition to behavior, thoughts, feelings, additional attitudes, and so on. Only as an attitude does a conscious belief invite one to disbelieve (though Sartre would disagree). For the relations of attitudes and consciousness, see chapter 5. While attitudes of belief are moored in conscious belief, beliefs do not always constitute attitudes. Beliefs may also comprise aspects of the merely matter-of-course basis of the attitudes and other engagements of the subject. Thus, a person’s sitting down ordinarily entails that she believes that the chair won’t break up. Such beliefs cannot form ambivalence or self-deception. For in this case, the person does not have one attitude (of belief) toward P, not to mention two of them. Complementarily, becoming ambivalent implies that the belief has lost its matter-of-course character. 40. Accordingly, ambivalence of belief permits, but is not grounded in, two positive beliefs that P and that not-P. 41. Funkhouser 2009 clearly takes the first position in understanding self-deception as consisting two discordant qualified beliefs (see note 21) and yet he is interested precisely in “deeply conflicted self-deception” (3). 42. In describing “mondial beliefs,” Sommers moves between capturing the aspect of taking the world to be such and such and emphasizing experiential modes of believing. Gertler is preoccupied with persevering superstitions. In this context, there are further phenomena, in addition to ambivalence, to consider. 43. The view that a belief by a person excludes doubt on his part often leads to reducing ambivalence of belief to cases of having complementary evaluations of truth, for example, a 70 percent belief that P and 30 percent belief that not-P. I hope to have shown that the element of mutual concrete undermining doubt is indispensable for the

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description of self-deceptive as well as non-self-deceptive forms of ambivalence of belief, in addition to showing why this is not a philosophical problem. The irreducibility of the doubt element does not imply, however, that the poles of ambivalence amount to full beliefs, and indeed they can be substantially weaker. What is implied is, rather, that any degrees of belief we might confer on the opposed attitudes would sum to more than hundred percent and that any degree of belief we might thus ascribe to the person would also be undermined. See also chapter 2, 36–37 and chapter 8, 220. 44. A belief and disbelief that P can comprise, respectively, a belief that P and a belief that not-P, but they can also imply a belief that Q and a belief that not-Q, where Q = “it is possible that P” or when Q = “it is justified to believe P.” Ambivalence of belief without opposed positive beliefs also appears conceivable. 45. This applies to the pre-theoretic concepts they wish to capture, and not necessarily to their elaborations.

Chapter 8

Ambivalence of Value Judgment, Deliberation, and the Logic of Value

Suppose that Hannah judges ambivalently that she ought and that she ought not to apologize for something; or suppose that Samuel ambivalently judges his mother to be a good mother and a not-so-good one; or suppose that Sarah is ambivalent as to whether a certain offer is fair. Ambivalence of value judgment, in the central cases to be discussed here, can be formulated as the holding of two opposed mental attitudes of a particular kind, namely value judgments, toward the same object. Many philosophers believe that ambivalence of value judgment is strictly impossible. Others allow it, but only as a subjective attitude that does not reveal anything about the logic of the propositions judged, whereas insofar as these propositions themselves are concerned, any conflict is resolvable. On other accounts, ambivalence is said if not to destroy ethics all together, then at least to mark the limits of the applicability of a value.1 However, a consideration of our life and language with value judgments should lead us to reject such accounts. Ambivalence that involves conflict about the application of a value is commonplace, and central to the logic of value. One can judge ambivalently that one ought to do something and that one ought not to, or that a certain person is nice and that she is not. Such patterns often serve to attribute genuine ambivalence, in whose attribution the value term must be regarded as bearing roughly the same sense when affirmed and denied. At the same time, genuine ambivalence is not tantamount to vacuous desperation or embarrassment: rather than being mutually annihilated, the opposed judgments together constitute a meaningful and value-focused attitude to their object. Moreover, in many cases, we ambivalently judge one tension-fraught, yet meaningful, thing. This book engages with three kinds of objections to ambivalence. I argued in earlier chapters that subjectivity does not exclude ambivalence, but rather 199

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ambivalence presupposes and demonstrates mental unity—and it will here be taken for granted that the objection from subjectivity is misconceived. The main objection that will concern us refers to ambivalence in regard to objectivity. According to this objection, the logic of objectivity-aiming leaves no room for ambivalence between value-applying, or truth-affirming, attitudes. It appears that if Hannah judges that she ought to do X, she by definition does not judge that she ought not to do X. It seems that in attributing the opposed judgments to Samuel, we attribute to him a judgment that his mother is a good mother and that she is not; and it seems that in accordance with this, he endorses a contradiction, and thus does not in fact judge anything. It appears that if David judged an example convincing and also judged it unconvincing, then these judgments would destroy one another, leaving him clueless as to the character of the example. While these appearances may be found in what follows to be unwarranted, they all respond to what will here be called the objectivist character of ambivalence of value judgment. Yet this character is rarely acknowledged: one thing that is held in common by Kant, Mill, and various authors who take a naturalist attitudes to ethics is that judgments are, partly or wholly, objectivity-directed or objectivist; a second thing is that if ambivalence is possible, it cannot be objectivist.2 In chapter 7 I argued that ambivalence of belief, and in particular ambivalence of factual belief, is possible, basically rational, and is implied in the concept of believing. Turning now to ambivalence of value judgment, we shall see that value judgments also enable objectivist ambivalence. Furthermore, two opposed value judgments may evaluate their object together, and moreover such a tension-fraught evaluation may be appropriate. The third cluster of objections regarding ambivalence centers on the worry that ambivalence does not permit action and significant behavior. I argue that this is wrong in chapters 4 and 9. Can we act well in terms of both our opposed attitudes, however, when they apply and deny a value to our actions or to the things they would serve or respond to? Can we act well, for example, when we judge that we both ought and ought not to do a certain thing? It is an implication of this chapter that we can.3 Let “v” be a value term, or a term which clearly has an evaluative dimension (e.g., “nice,” “something I ought to do”) and “w” an opposite counterpart of “v” (e.g., “nasty,” “something I ought not to do.”) The more general point made in this chapter, then, is that ambivalence can often be attributed and expressed in the form “One judges (or I judge) that A is v and that A is not v” or “One judges A to be v and judges it not to be so”; or similarly “One judges that A is v and that it is w.” Such attributions might, however, be accounted for by interpreting ambivalence in terms of prima facie opposition: Bob judges A prima facie good and prima facie bad, where the idea is that different lines



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of consideration lend initial support both to A being good and to A being bad. Again, such ambivalence would often be interpreted in terms of apparent opposition: Bob judges A good-in-this-respect and bad-in-another-respect. Mill’s treatment of opposed judgments regarding the justice of certain practices makes recourse to both elements. First, in judging that A is just and yet A is unjust, one only accepts that A is just-in-a-certain-respect and A is unjust-in-another-respect, and, second, this apparent opposition is a prima facie opposition as regards a common question. One judges by the same token that it is prima facie best and prima facie not best to adopt A: Who shall decide between these appeals to conflicting principles of justice? Justice has in this case two sides to it, which it is impossible to bring into harmony, and the two disputants have chosen opposite sides; the one looks to what it is just that the individual should receive, the other to what it is just that the community should give. Each, from his own point of view, is unanswerable; and any choice between them, on grounds of justice, must be perfectly arbitrary. Social utility alone can decide the preference. (Mill 1968, 298)

Certainly some judgments that A is v and A is not v are only apparently or prima facie opposed; I shall argue, however, that there can be genuine ambivalence between a judgment that A is v and a judgment that A is not v; and I shall argue that such ambivalence is often and importantly concerned with objectivity, that is, it is objectivist: its poles contend with one another regarding some objectivity. This definition implies, first, that in objectivist ambivalence each pole makes some objectivity-aiming claim: for instance, that the value of being a good mother applies to Samuel’s mother. The definition requires, second, that the very objectivity claimed at the one pole is disclaimed at the other pole. Samuel’s judgments do not divide the value of being a good mother into two separate values, of which only one applies to his mother; if they did, the opposed judgments would be consistent in what they claim, and Samuel would not be ambivalent as to where the objectivity lies. Objectivist ambivalence is precisely the ambivalence that appears to be either impossible or destructive to ethics, and yet it is neither an accidental nor peripheral feature of our values discourse. Nor is objectivist ambivalence actually destructive to ethics or to value judgments—so this chapter proposes—although it may be detrimental to certain received philosophical conceptions of ethics and value. This chapter comprises three parts. Section 1 identifies the phenomenon of objectivist ambivalence of value judgment. Section 2 shows that it cannot be reduced to the harmonious consideration of two competing propositions, and section 3 analyzes a central form of objectivist ambivalence of value judgment in terms of three aspects. The analysis of the mental attitude of ambivalence will have consequences for the logic of value. We shall see that this logic allows and invites meaningful tensions.

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1. Identifying Objectivist Ambivalence of Value Judgment 1.1 Objectivist Judgments Let us begin with an introductory analysis of value judgments. Ambivalence of value judgment would pose less difficulty regarding values if value judgments did not involve a claim for objectivity, that is: if, perhaps like desires and emotions, they did not judge anything.4 However, in the central cases they do.5 Thus, in deeming a job offer unfair one aspires to reach beyond the attitude itself, and actually to judge that the offer is unfair. The judging agent might say: “It is not merely that I don’t like this offer: it really is unfair.” Accordingly, we shall here adopt the view that value judgments are typically directed toward objectivity.6 The locus of objectivity may be thought of in terms of the value that is supposed to apply. We can alternatively speak of the objectivity or the truth of the proposition judged. In any case, let us not presuppose that the logic of value (or of truth in regard to value) is identical to the logic of (ideally) factual truth. Nor shall we presuppose, at the level of attitudes, that the logic of value judgments is identical to the logic of (ideally) factual belief. (Below, I use “judgment” for value judgment and “belief” for factual judgment, while employing these expressions interchangeably in some unproblematic cases.) We are heading toward the identification of a specific and central phenomenon of ambivalence between value judgments insofar as they make claims to objectivity, and we shall consider in particular a case of such ambivalence in regard to the fairness of a certain offer. Yet judging an offer unfair involves (in ordinary cases) something akin to disliking it. I briefly argue below for a certain strong sense in which such a dislike is involved in the value judgment. In accordance with this, we will be able to speak of value judgments as having two dimensions: the value judgment’s objectivist (or cognitive or truth-aiming) dimension marks the judgment’s claim for objectivity, namely a claim that a value applies to the matter of concern. Complementarily, we shall refer to a value judgment as “a judgmental engagement” in order to focus on its nonobjectivist dimension. Some judgments are solely judgmental engagements—consider the one Lea expresses by the utterance: “This offer is very important to me.” In this case, Lea, so to speak, imposes a value on the offer, rather than finds that a certain value applies to it. She refers to the offer positively in such a way that the offer is constituted as important (to her), but the form of objectivity is misleading. For example, there is no question of responding to her words by wondering: is it really important? (It can be asked: Is it really important to you? But this is a different question.) However, such expressions and



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attributions make use of the primary sense of “value,” in which the application of value is partially objectivist (and in these primary cases, when a person says that something is important, it is one thing to respond that it is not as important as she takes it to be, and another to say that it is not as important to her as she takes it to be).7 While some judgments are not objectivist, the objectivist dimension, central to our life and language with judgments, cannot stand alone: we may say that no value judgment is only objectivist. This is because of the kind of objectivity primarily involved in value judgments, namely their applying and denying values.8 Thus note that in its objectivist capacity a value judgment may be described both as aiming at an evaluative truth and as aiming at truth in an evaluative way. The latter formulation takes us beyond truth-aiming (as does also the comfortable use of the two as complementary ways to say the same thing).9 The second formulation describes the judgment’s epistemic character in a way that brings out the non-epistemic or nonobjectivist character of the judgment. In other words, such formulations stress that the objectivist aspect of a value judgment is not analytically independent of the aspect of judgmental engagement. Again, we can see that the objectivist dimension of value judgment presupposes the dimension of judgmental engagement, if we think of a purely objectivist judgment in terms of a mere employment of concepts. For example, a person who masters the concepts of a job offer and of an Internet announcement, and has reasonably relevant information, can (in simple cases) judge that the job offer is announced via the Internet. By contrast, when we consider ordinary value judgments, no case would be sufficiently simple as to be understood that way. In finding an offer to be fair, for example, a person does not merely manifest her mastery of a concept of fairness and of concrete facts that call for applying it to the offer. Ordinarily, the objectivity claimed is that the offer is really fair, rather than called “fair” or considered fair. When such distinctions are helpful, our focus is on the objectivist dimension of the judgment: we are making clear what is really said of the offer. However, what we are making clear is that the judgment is a real value judgment, namely that it is not some purely objectivist concern, but a judgmental engagement with the object. Indeed, one is supposed to treat a fair offer differently from an unfair one, or from one that fairness does not concern. One is supposed, in one way or another, to treat it—to engage judgmentally with it—as a fair offer. We may think of the objectivist dimension of value judgments in terms of finding (or believing to find) a value in the object of judgment and of the judgmental engagement as imposing a value on the object. In these terms, the former point is that one cannot find, or believe oneself to find, a value without imposing it. We also saw that there are judgments, like those of personal importance, that merely impose a value. Insofar as a judgment has an

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objectivist dimension, however, the dependence is two-sided. The dimension of judgmental engagement is also dependent on the objectivist dimension. The judging person imposes on the object a value which is supposed already to be there. Consider again a person who judges an offer made to her as fair. It is not merely that she is happy about the offer, that she considers it seriously, appreciates the honesty of the offering party, and calls the offer “fair”; rather, she judges it fair. For her, the fairness of the offer justifies being happy about it, considering it seriously and so on. It is now possible to identify the phenomenon of objectivist ambivalence— a kind of ambivalence which is defined in terms of the objectivist aspect of value judgments, and is, as we shall later see, fundamental to the logic of value judgment and of value in general. At the same time, the account to be presented in this chapter should elucidate the objectivist dimension of value judgment as one that is constituted mutually with the aspect of judgmental engagement. 1.2 The Identification Argument Does the definition of objectivist ambivalence capture a real phenomenon? We will be able to answer affirmatively by contrasting examples of such ambivalence with suitable cases of nonobjectivist ambivalence. The dissimilarity between the cases will reveal the character of objectivist ambivalence in a concrete way and show that such ambivalence cannot be assimilated to those other forms of ambivalence. Since the problem from objectivity suggests that objectivist ambivalence is impossible, assimilating it to other phenomena might appear the right thing to do, and in fact it could be thought that there is an easy way out: for could it not be the case that while each of the opposed judgments is directed to some objectivity, ambivalence always pertains merely to their dimension of judgmental engagement, that is, that the opposed judgments are opposed only qua judgmental engagements? Under such an interpretation, the ambivalence between one’s judgments would be similar to ambivalence between desires or between emotions, while, on the other hand, the judgments would affirm perfectly consistent propositions. Thus Samuel’s brother can think that his mother is a loving and caring mother and that she is, at the same time, too strict. Both judgments, paradigmatically and in the imagined case, claim some objectivity, and moreover holding both these claims together would typically comprise ambivalence on the part of Samuel’s brother. However, it would not be objectivist ambivalence, insofar as the claims are held as perfectly consistent. Ambivalence of value judgment is not always objectivist also in cases where it can be articulated in terms of a single value term. Attributions of



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ambivalence that take the form “He judges that A is v while he also judges that A is not v” need not be objectivist if it is part of their point that v has “split” into two. In such cases, the judgments are ascribed to the person as a pair of judgments that identify two separate values within a broader value concept. While under this use of the formula the person is not ascribed with ambivalence as to the objectivity of the matter, he is often thereby ascribed with nonobjectivist ambivalence. Let us, for instance, attribute to Samuel (of the Bible) an ambivalence of judgment regarding Eli, the great priest in whose hands Samuel’s mother put him in early childhood. Was Eli a good mentor to him? Samuel answers both in the negative and in the positive, for Eli was too close to corruption to be a good mentor, but at the same time Samuel acknowledges that Eli has trained him perfectly. Samuel thus judges Eli ambivalently, with gratefulness and reservation, but he is not ambivalent as to where the objectivity lies. The value of being a good mentor splits into two values, of which Samuel deems one but not the other to apply to Eli. Contrast this example, however, with a case in which Samuel judges of his mother ambivalently both that she is a good mother and that she is not-sucha-good mother: the case to consider is one in which there is more to Samuel’s ambivalence than merely combining longing and love with bitterness. Rather, unlike in cases of nonobjectivist ambivalence, his mother’s being a good mother denies for Samuel the judgment that she has not been a good mother and vice versa. What could these denials consist of? We may wish to describe Samuel’s ambivalence by saying that the notion of a good mother is sharpened in different directions in Samuel’s opposed judgments. Perhaps one direction emphasizes the love of one’s child and doing what is best for him, while the other direction lays stress on the intimacy of daily care.10 However, insofar as this description stands alone, it can suit cases of applying separate values to Samuel’s mother as well. When the description concerns Samuel’s objectivist ambivalence in regard to his mother, it must be complemented: the crucial element is that the two directions of conceiving of a good mother are directions for settling the question of whether his mother is a good mother. Ambivalence that involves contention of the opposed judgments with respect to objectivity typically involves contention over what the value—for example, a good mother—ought to be, in the case concerned. Again, consider a case of ambivalence between judgments of an offer’s fairness. Our protagonist, let’s call her Anna, is ambivalent in an ordinary way as to whether an offer made to her is fair. As such, her conduct, further attitudes, and so on express the two opposed courses suggesting themselves to her, as well as the character of their opposition in her life. In the current example, the opposition of judgmental engagements may take the form of considering the offer seriously and respecting the offerer, while coming to hate oneself for doing so; or of rejecting the offer with a two-faced cynical/sincere “no thank

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you”; or perhaps of rejecting it as unfair, but soon after accepting a lesser offer; and so on. To identify objectivist ambivalence also when the judgmental engagement dimension of the poles amounts to a desire that P, in the sense of an attitude in favor of enhancing a state of affairs, consider a person who ambivalently judges that she ought, and that she ought not, to apologize. In such a case, the fulfillment of P competes for the person with the fulfillment of not-P, and her conduct, thoughts, and attitudes express in particular the competing courses of fulfillment of P and of not-P. A person who is ambivalent about whether she ought to apologize may, for example, say some words to the hurt party more by way of an excuse, or apologize a bit too dramatically, or say nothing in words but manifest her apology in deeds, and so on. At the same time, ambivalently judging an offer fair and unfair, or that one ought and that one ought not to apologize, would often involve ambivalence between contrary claims to objectivity. To ignore the objectivist dimension that ambivalence of value judgment often involves is to ignore the difference between an ordinary ambivalent judgment of an offer as fair and as unfair and an ordinary ambivalent judgment that an offer is unfair but better than nothing. In the second case, one is ambivalent about the offer, but not about its fairness or being better than nothing. The offer being judged better than nothing does not undermine the judgment that it is unfair, nor does it raise questions as to what the fairness consists in. At the same time, the person’s engagement may be ambivalent here, that is, guided by opposed engagements, just as in being ambivalent whether the offer is fair. Similarly, holding ambivalently that I ought to apologize and that I ought not to apologize implies as a rule that I want and I don’t want to apologize (in the sense of “desire” or “want” given above). Yet there is more to such ambivalence, as can be seen by comparing it with ambivalence in which the person wholeheartedly judges that she ought to apologize, while at the same time, she hates that unpleasant prospect. In the former case, but not in the latter, the application of a value is itself at issue. The agent finds that the value applies, and that it does not, and these judgments challenge one another as to where the objectivity lies. Let us use the term “objectivist ambivalence” to refer to such ambivalence of value judgment, namely cases in which the attitudes are opposed as claims to objectivity, and also to refer particularly to the “objectivist dimension” of objectivist ambivalence. When ambivalence is objectivist, the person’s judgments challenge each other in particular in regard to their claims that the value holds or does not hold. Thus, in her objectivist ambivalence as to whether a job offer is unfair, Anna might think: how little money and how much work. So unfair! But is it? (“Should the concept of fairness be inflected like this?” she may wonder). This workplace is a new venture, and they promise to pay more once they have properly established themselves. Fair enough. But she also sees that this is her (potential) livelihood: it is neither a hobby,



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nor does it present her with a prospect of getting rich. They have to pay her a plausible salary; and so on. The examples of Anna, Hannah, and Samuel demonstrate the existence of a truly objectivist ambivalence of value judgment. The crux of the identification argument was to show that cases of objectivist ambivalence are dissimilar from cases of nonobjectivist ambivalence. Complementarily, I showed the examples to constitute cases of ambivalence where the person’s conduct requires that she has two opposed attitudes to the object in question. It is in terms of two such opposed attitudes, and the way that they are concretely connected by their opposition, that our protagonists’ behavior, further attitudes, thoughts and feelings make sense. If objectivist ambivalence exists, this raises the question of what such ambivalence consists of—how are we to understand ambivalence in which the person’s opposed judgments contend with one another? In reply, we will proceed in section 3 to analyze objectivist ambivalence of value judgment. Perhaps, however, the phenomenon of objectivist ambivalence may still be dispensed with. In showing that it exists, I have also defended the view that value judgments have an objectivist dimension. Yet it is the objectivist character of judgments that makes objectivist ambivalence appears inadmissible. Philosophers who regard judgments as objectivist could perhaps accept that objectivist ambivalence would clearly be unlike nonobjectivist ambivalence (if such a thing is allowed), but would, by and large, insist that the phenomena of objectivist ambivalence are, in fact, innocent aspects of processes of deliberation. On this view, the deliberating person considers two competing propositions without endorsing either of them. The person might be looking for reasons that lend support to the respective propositions, examining these reasons and assessing them together. Whatever such a deliberation of unendorsed propositions might involve, the deliberating person is supposed be aiming at reaching a harmonious judgment. Objectivist ambivalence is assimilated, on this view, to harmonious interim consideration. Is this, however, the way that objectivist ambivalence is connected to deliberation? I shall answer negatively, while agreeing that objectivist ambivalence and evaluative deliberation11 are conceptually connected. The first connection to be drawn is quite innocuous, namely that deliberation, being conceived as a path to forming value judgments, refers to the objectivist dimension of the judgments and ambivalence. Is the example convincing? Ought I to apologize? What ought I to do? (A concern bound up with, but different from, a concern about what to do.) Let us reflect on this.12 In fact, when we consider objectivist ambivalence and deliberation, an array of more intricate relations is revealed. Rather than depicting objectivist ambivalence as an aspect of deliberation, these relations demonstrate the objectivist dimension of value

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judgment and ambivalence, as well as the possibility of ambivalent significant behavior. 2. Deliberation and Ambivalence Insofar as the logic of truth is considered to be one and the same wherever in language truth is at all relevant, the objectivist character of judgments encourages the interpretation of conflicts in terms of pairs of prima facie judgments. In particular, this sort of analysis is often connected with the reduction of “conflict” to an intermediary harmonious stage involved in the path to making a judgment. Having observed this view in an example from Mill, let us now read Kant’s version: Since, however, duty and obligation are in general concepts that express the objective practical necessity of certain actions and because two mutually opposing rules cannot be necessary at the same time, then, if it is a duty to act according to one of them, then it is not only not a duty but contrary to duty to act according to the other. It follows, therefore, that a conflict of duties and obligations is inconceivable (obligationes non colliduntur). It may, however, very well happen that two grounds of obligation (rationes obligandi), one or the other of which is inadequate to bind as a duty (rationes obligandi non obligantes), are united in a subject and in the rule that he prescribes to himself, because then one of the grounds is not a duty. (Kant 1999, 17–18)13

There are many others in the respectable company of Kant and Mill. In general, according to the stricter approaches, an internal conflict about A being v consists in the person merely judging that something stands in favor of A being v and that something else stands against it.14 In such an account, a person who is searching for a place to rent and is considering the suitability of a certain apartment would only entertain judgments such as “considerations of air circulation suggest that that apartment is suitable,” but never absolute judgments such as “the apartment is suitable.” The person is assumed to try to reach a value judgment on the basis of such prima facie attitudes, which are conceived as factual beliefs. More moderate approaches permit the reasoning to include apparent conflicts between value judgments which are in fact consistent with each other—for example, judgments on what is suitable from different respects (the apartment is suitable with respect to air circulation).15 Holding such consistent judgments, the agent can actually want or care for things for the time being, until she learns and decides whether the absolute value—the value that is not from some respect or other—applies: whether the apartment is suitable, whether mother is a good mother, and so on.16 The idea is thus to assimilate conflicts between value judgments to investigations



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into the yet unknown and undecided. We will see, however, that objectivist ambivalence may not be assimilated to deliberation: the following points depict objectivist ambivalence of value as implicated in ordinary forms of deliberation. It follows that objectivist or any other practical conflicts cannot be reduced to a phase or aspect of deliberation. At the same time, the discussion below constitutes an investigation into the relations between objectivist ambivalence and deliberation. As we pursue the ways in which ambivalence enters into deliberation, the character of objectivist ambivalence will also become manifest. The few philosophical explications of objectivist ambivalence of judgment that do understand it as genuine ambivalence tend to describe ambivalence about objectivity in terms of two foreign points of view that have nothing to do with each other. Yet in objectivist ambivalence (to anticipate the analysis in section 3) the two poles mutually mold and undermine both one another and the values that they respectively apply; hence, the opposed points of view, which together constitute objectivist ambivalence, are necessarily not foreign. The study of the relations of objectivist ambivalence with deliberation provides further support to this analysis. The poles of objectivist are nothing like two judgments that cannot be jointly deliberated upon. On the contrary, deliberation is a central form through which ambivalence and its poles take their character. 2.1 Attempts at Solving Ambivalence When a person maintains opposed value judgments, this would often include deliberation intended to acquire a non-ambivalent value judgment. This is true even if “deliberation” refers to actual, explicit, and thoroughgoing deliberation, and all the more so as regards extended deliberation, construed perhaps as developing one’s point of view in a way that is concerned with reasons.17 The first challenge to the reduction of ambivalence to deliberation derives from considering states of affairs in which a person (actually, or “as if”) tries to reach univocal objectivity while holding opposed actual judgments. Her opposed judgments function then also as interim judgments, which are considered together in order to achieve a final judgment. This is to say, first, that during her deliberation, the person keeps on living, and her opposed judgments express themselves in various ways. Consider, for example, a film critic who is excited about a film in which, however, she finds major faults. This person might well pursue a wholehearted all-thingsconsidered (ATC) judgment, but meanwhile watch the film again since it is so good. Second, working toward a conclusion in cases where one’s actual judgments are opposed might differ significantly from deliberation in which such judgments have not been formed. When the person is ambivalent between

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her judgments, these judgments are part of what she considers. For one, they are her own judgments, that is, they are attitudes she maintains, and she may consider them as such (“It’s only because I’m so impressionable that I take the film to be a piece of art”). She may also deliberate upon the objectivities she ambivalently accepts (it is one thing to be prepared to reconsider the greatness of a movie and the explication of its greatness, as may be the case under ambivalence, and another to wonder, deliberating rather than being ambivalent, whether greatness is there in the first place). Moreover, the ambivalence of the agent who tries to reach a wholehearted final judgment changes the character of the deliberation, and not merely its contents. Our film critic’s ambivalence perhaps takes the form of thinking that she is being too hasty to find greatness in a work whose potential is impaired by a careless performance. This evaluation, which both recommends deliberation and is a part of it, she may in turn subject to criticism, or she may pursue it and further penetrate into the greatness, and so on. The contribution of the person’s actual attitudes to her deliberation is acknowledged in various districts of philosophy, even if the possibility that these attitudes may be ambivalent is usually disregarded.18 Aristotelian ethics, and especially Aristotle’s own Nicomachean Ethics (2000), might be of special interest here for several reasons. First, Aristotelian ethics understands ethical conduct and judgment in particular matters as normatively based on the person’s prior attitudes, including her virtues. Second, the particular conduct and judgment do not logically or actually follow from one’s virtues (and factual beliefs). Rather, judging and acting virtuously is on this approach taken to be a difficult matter consisting in the identification and pursuing of the normative target.19 This makes the possibility of deliberation (and the use of practical wisdom, or phronesis, in general) an important element of ethical life, and one which, in light of the former point, is part and parcel of the virtuous agent’s ongoing engagements (see Nussbaum 1990). Third, let me briefly suggest that the Nicomachean Ethics, and in particular the doctrine of the mean, depicts the virtuous person as inherently ambivalent in aiming at his target. Rather than advocating “the golden mean,” Aristotle depicts judging and behaving well as a state in which the virtuous person maintains two opposing value judgments, and it is from within the special ambivalence they form that Aristotle’s virtuous person identifies and pursues his target. By contrast with Aristotle, thus understood, neo-Aristotelians and virtue theorists deny virtuous and deliberative ambivalence. McDowell (1979), for example, depicts a path of perceptive deliberation that leads to virtuous action, while presupposing the harmony of the deliberation and conclusion. Even when virtuous ambivalence is acknowledged, deliberation is thought of as a harmonic course of appreciating the situation. Thus, according to Nussbaum, an ambivalent agent takes up two parallel harmonious courses,



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which meet only in the act of selecting between them (when such selection is possible).20 We have so far considered several ways in which ambivalence is part of evaluative deliberation, such that the reasoning is different from harmonious reasoning and hence cannot be assimilated to it. However, ambivalence is also shown to be indispensable both to various cases and to the concept of evaluative deliberation, when we note that such deliberation is often somewhat ambivalent. Although this chapter deals with cases of clear ambivalence of judgment of the form “Hannah judges that A is v and that A is not v,” this fundamental structure finds widespread and multifarious expression in more vague ambivalent attitudes. In other words, the language of value judgment is not content with allowing only full-fledged value judgments: it often presents semi-judgments, which are not prima facie judgments, but rather are “only half” genuine (objectivist and engaging) judgments.21 In particular, semi-judgments and pairs of opposed semi-judgments are far more central in the process of pursuing an appropriate judgment than pure prima facie judgments. Thus, suppose Lea begins to wonder whether she ought to apologize after people suggest to her that she should. This may be a case in which ambivalence is not there to start with. At the outset, the idea that she should apologize might indeed be nothing more than a mere idea. However, more or less everything that makes its way into her deliberations would become a kind of judgment: she sees now that she hurt Bob and that an apology is not absurd. But at the same time, all she did was speak frankly: “Is that a crime?” she may protest to herself. Yet Lea is uncomfortable. She could have been more considerate, it is not like there is nothing for her to apologize about, and so on. It might be that we do not want to say that Lea at any time judges that she ought to apologize to Bob and that she ought not (or that it is not something that she ought to do). However, we cannot really understand an ordinary case of deliberation of this kind without appealing to various semi-judgments, which are undermined by opposing (semi) judgments. 2.2 Ambivalence to Stay In the former section, ambivalence was traced along a deliberative path whose end point would be a wholehearted judgment. We need, however, to extend our gaze. One further dimension of the relationship between ambivalence and deliberation is that the agent will not always try to solve or cancel her ambivalence. She will not always pursue a wholehearted ATC judgment. Judging ambivalently both that the movie is a piece of art and that it is not one, our film critic may cling to her ambivalent judgment. This aspect, holding both for factual beliefs and for value judgments, would make the assimilation of objectivist ambivalence to deliberation even more futile. Suppose that we can

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adhere to both opposed attitudes—instead of the deliberation, and despite it, as part of the deliberation and as something the deliberation is part of. If this is the case, then not only does the assimilation of opposed epistemic attitudes to a harmonious aspect of deliberation fail, but, moreover, deliberation does not even imply that we are (always or when we are rational, wholeheartedly or at all) trying to resolve our objectivist conflicts. Yet people sometimes adhere, at times intentionally or deliberately, to their objectivist ambivalence; indeed, deliberation itself may recommend an ambivalent judgment. The last point aside, one might respond to this initial presentation of the possibility of adhering to objectivist ambivalence by changing the kind of harmonious engagement22 to which ambivalence is assimilated. Perhaps, it could be suggested, objectivist ambivalence is not a harmonious part of deliberation, but is rather agnosticism or harmonious uncertainty. “Objectivist ambivalence,” it would be explained, simply means that the person does not judge either way: there is no need for her also to be deliberating. Such a response must be rejected. First, people do at times deliberate, and as already seen ordinary deliberation often includes objectivist ambivalence rather than agnosticism. Moreover, people can deliberate as they adhere to their ambivalence, and these are the kinds of cases we shall investigate below.23 We might begin by noting that self-deception is a form of ambivalence in which the person takes care to be ambivalent regarding objectivities on which her judgment could be univocally settled. For example, a director who understands that his new film is not good enough may try to undermine this better judgment of his, even if he cannot abandon it as misconceived. He may, for instance, emphasize the film’s good points or focus on reasons for lowering the criteria, while remaining aware that the good points do not add up to much and that the criteria in fact ought not to be lowered.24 Self-deception is in important ways irrational; however, a person can be highly rational in not trying to solve her ambivalence, whether of value judgment or of belief. The grounds for our film critic’s ambivalence can at the same time serve as grounds for her to keep her ambivalence. The critic judges that the movie’s flaws are significant and that because of them, the film is less than great, while at the same time, she deems the film to be a piece of art that transcends its flaws. The critic sees that trying to adopt a univocal conclusion would mean closing her eyes to one of these lines of thought. This is an appropriate response, in which the ambivalence can even take the form of a single judgment: the film is and is not a piece of art. In such cases, the opposed judgments form a joint judgment that ambivalently posits a tensionfraught yet meaningful value. Suppose, however, that our critic is forced to adopt a final conclusion in terms of the “stars” rating system: in such a case, she may balance stars with words. Meanwhile, a film director who wishes to create a piece of art, and is ambivalent as to whether he is capable of such



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a feat, may be highly rational in not trying to resolve his ambivalence.25 His positive belief would induce him to make artistic efforts, and these efforts could be all the more fruitful if the fact that his belief in his powers is undermined by doubts has made him wary of lousy films. Still, the rationality pertaining to the judgmental ambivalence of the film critic is of another character than that pertaining to the director’s ambivalence of belief regarding his talents—or indeed to any ambivalence of belief. Here, the differences between these two forms of objectivist ambivalence come into view. Ambivalence of belief is often a highly rational attitude to maintain; yet, at the same time, such ambivalence poses serious problems for us. Now this point is more appropriate the closer the beliefs in question are to the ideal of factual beliefs—by this ideal I mean that a belief’s truth must be independent of believing it and that a belief must employ concepts without contributing to shaping them.26 To have a suitable example in mind, suppose that a director ambivalently believes that a person he met at some event and to whom he wasn’t very nice is in fact a well-known critic, who (unsurprisingly) has recently written badly of him. The director has been looking at the critic’s photos on the Internet and by now takes himself to have identified her quite securely as the person he had offended; but this belief is also undermined in view of his past mistakes in similar matters. Indeed, his experience with emotionally charged identifications leads him to believe he must be misidentifying that person. Yet there is a malicious edge to the critic’s comments that make the author doubt his doubts as well. Thus he is ambivalent, rather than merely ignorant or possessed of a belief of a certain degree on either side. He hates himself for being so stupid as to have insulted the critic, but also laughs at himself for inventing imaginary reasons in order not to face the fact that his film may simply be thought bad. The director is ambivalent—and may in many ways be rational about it— but in one way his attitude is surely problematic. For he surely must be wrong either in believing that the person he wasn’t nice to is the critic or in the belief that that person is not the critic. To keep the ambivalent attitude is to knowingly keep an error and in this respect not trying to solve such an ambivalence of belief might be considered irrational. In other words, a harmonic ATC judgment that would resolve one’s ambivalence of belief can in principle be pursued. Nothing similar could generally be said in regard to ambivalence of value judgment. It is quite absurd to assume that regardless of the ambivalence of the film critic, we and she know that all in all either the film is great, or it isn’t; the critic may engage in deliberation, and may pursue a harmonious judgment, but it is not pregiven that the deliberation’s epistemic success would consist in “the” true harmonious judgment. The character of the ambivalence may be such that any ATC judgment would be undermined and a resolution of the ambivalence may seem entirely impossible or inappropriate.

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This is because the contention of the opposing value judgments is relevant for the characterization of the value. In particular, the way the judgments are opposed may not be ignored in such cases that the two judgments elucidate their object together, applying to it a tension-fraught value. Yet in pursuing a harmonic solution, one has to disavow the relevance of the contention itself.27 This brings us to another dimension of the relation between deliberation toward a conclusion and ambivalence. Ambivalence can survive deliberation and the drawing of a conclusion, as shown by Bernard Williams in Ethical Consistency. In the cases in which the agent judges “what is for the best,” in Williams’s terms, this need not cancel the contrary judgment (1973 [1965], 172). Objectivity is settled in a sense: she judges that doing D is for the best, rather than avoiding A (at least, there is a point of view that permits us to attribute to the agent such a harmonic judgment). Yet the objectivity is not altogether settled. In Williams’s discussion, this is demonstrated in the agent’s regrets for doing D or in her efforts to compensate for it. And we may take Williams’s analysis further still: after all, nothing guarantees that the repudiated pole will survive, univocally and irreversibly, only in the minor form of a “remainder.” The film critic judges that the movie is not a genuine piece of art and she does not present it in her review as one. On the other hand, it may guide the way she views films from now on. She has, in short, an ambivalent value concept of great art. 2.3 Deliberation and Objectivist Ambivalence Illuminate Each Other We have considered the relations of reasoning with objectivist ambivalence in order to examine whether such ambivalence may be reduced to a phase of a harmonious process of reasoning. We can conclude that ambivalence is not reducible to a phase of deliberation, having found that ambivalence shows itself in the very way in which deliberation proceeds: when one actually judge’s contrary things, one’s reasoning would (and should) often take the judgments and their contention into account. Moreover, being part of one’s life, deliberation then expresses the ambivalence, which by the same token it also shapes and changes. Even when ambivalence is not the point of departure of deliberation, and is not clearly acquired at any stage, ordinary deliberation often proceeds through opposing semi-judgments. We have also observed that we do not always focus on resolving our ambivalence, as well as that when we pursue a harmonious resolution (or decision), the ambivalence and its validity would often survive the resolution. Objectivist ambivalence hence cannot be understood in terms of deliberation of prima facie or apparent judgments of whatever kind. We cannot take objectivist ambivalence as to something’s fairness or to its artistic value as the



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mere consideration of propositions. Nor, in contrast with a central version of the reduction of objectivist ambivalence to deliberation, can we understand ambivalence as to what we ought (morally or practically) to do as a pair of mere options for action. In studying objectivist ambivalence and deliberation together, however, we also learned what objectivist ambivalence is, as well as what deliberation is. May this lead us any further? Regarding deliberation, I can only suggest here that the complex interrelationships between deliberation and ambivalence call for opening up this field of investigation.28 Thus, we should be asking such questions as how deliberation aims at action and at value under actual ambivalence as well as in other cases. In particular, it cannot generally be supposed that deliberation aims at dissolving ambivalence or that when it does, the deliberation or its result can be isolated from the ambivalence. More generally, the present investigation shows that we should not be thinking of deliberation in terms of pre-given procedures, but rather be sensitive to how deliberation expresses, responds to, and reshapes one’s actual perspective, including judgments and their objectivist ambivalence; to how deliberation maintains our attitudes and transforms them; and to how it may both solve ambivalence and generate it. At the same time, when it is not divorced from life, deliberation is a key to the analysis of the structures of objectivity-aiming and of action. We can, in particular, inquire into diverse forms of ambivalence, and we can ask how ambivalence could or should intermingle with indifference, uncertainty, and wholeheartedness. In this chapter, we turn in section 3 to the analysis of objectivist ambivalence of value judgment, wherein we shall find the same aspects that we have already encountered. This will be complemented by identifying and rejecting certain presuppositions that make objectivist ambivalence appear impossible. Objectivist ambivalence also appears to be inconsistent with action. It is this misconception that we now turn to. 2.4 The Details of Deliberation Reveal that Objectivist Ambivalence Can Be Acted on Even if critics may ambivalently judge films great and not great, or ambivalently believe that they ought and yet ought not to heartily recommend a film, it would seem that they are hindered by their ambivalence from acting well on their judgments. Yet the observation of ordinary cases of ambivalence has shown us that people often act well on their opposing objectivist judgments, although these judgments direct them in opposed directions. I argue in chapters 4 and 9 that the problem from action is misconceived. It might be thought, however, that there is a particular problem for significant action under objectivist ambivalence. A related stance has led Michael Stocker (1990, esp. chapter 4) to reinterpret the relation of value judgments to action.

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Acknowledging rational conflicts (although not objectivist conflicts), while taking ambivalence between action-guiding attitudes to exclude significant action, Stocker argues that half the judgments about what one ought to do could be reconstructed as nonaction-guiding. This is, however, hardly the general case. Nor is there any need to explain away the action-guiding character of ambivalence of value judgment. Focusing on the objectivist dimension of ambivalence of value judgment rather than on its character as judgmental engagement, I discussed only indirectly the role of deliberation in deciding the required action under such ambivalence. However, since the objectivist judgment and the judgmental engagement are two sides of a single coin, and since judgmental engagement is generally bound up with, and often consists in, a desire, it is not surprising that we may draw conclusions in this respect as well. In particular, the opposed judgments in ambivalence, according to which something ought to be done and yet ought not to be done, would often be action-guiding. The traces of Williams’s thought that we followed at the end of section 2.2 can now lead us in this direction. Williams shows that ambivalence of value judgment often survives deliberation such that even having judged some action for the best and acted accordingly, the person might continue to act on the other pole as well. We have also noted that the ongoing counteracting behavior does not have to be minor or residual. Minor or major, the point is that action in accordance with one of the opposed judgments often forms part of a larger action or conduct, which respects both judgments and their opposition. Consider, for example, the critic who judges ambivalently that she ought and that she ought not rate a certain film as “five stars.” Let us suppose that while, narrowly speaking, she acts on one pole and rates the film as only four stars, her more general action includes such things as warm words of praise, expressions of discomfort when somebody mentions the review, and a lower rating to other films in the following weeks. Thus far, Stocker might agree, except for distinguishing acting in accordance with the action-guiding judgment from all sorts of other behavior. This dispute might be thought of as merely verbal, were there a way to distinguish the two levels of behavior. In that case it might be suggested that I use “action-guiding” more broadly than Stocker, and similarly that “an action” in my terms encompasses such behavior that is merely expressive in Stocker’s. Yet the two levels cannot be generally distinguished. We may, for example, ask whether the lower rating of films in the following weeks does not transform the “four stars” given by the critic to the film into a “five stars of honor.” Moreover, we have had a glimpse of the power of deliberation to aim at some narrow action, which would ambivalently satisfy both judgments in a way that respects their particular tension. Consider, in particular, ambivalence whose object is a potential action under a certain description A (e.g., making



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an apology), and in which the agent judges one—tension-fraught and ambivalently held—thing regarding A-ing, namely, that it ought and yet ought not be carried out. Such tension-fraught judgments would sometimes be fulfilled by (or reflect) an action which comprises A-ing and not A-ing. Thus, let us consider somebody’s judgment that she ought and yet ought not to apologize for something unpleasant she said in response to an insult. She may say to the person concerned something like, “I am really sorry, although I must also remark that you have challenged my better attitudes,” where the idea is that the second part of this sentence is sufficiently friendly not to annul the point in the first.29 3. The Objectivist Ambivalence of Value Judgment: An Analysis We have seen that ambivalence of a strictly objectivist character is part and parcel of ordinary life, language, action, and rationality. In particular, a person sometimes holds two opposed value judgments such that her ambivalence centers on their contending claims to objectivity. In such cases the person’s judgment that A is v challenges her judgment that it is not v or that it is w and vice versa, and furthermore, in typical cases the ambivalence primarily concerns the character of the value in question. Objectivist ambivalence exists then. But how are we to understand it? This section proposes an answer in terms of three aspects of typical objectivist ambivalence. The first aspect, mutual undermining, is sufficient to distinguish ambivalence from confusion on the one hand,30 and from harmonious opposition between a judgment that prima facie A is v and a judgment that prima facie A is not v on the other. In contrast to both confusion and prima facie opposition, in cases such as Anna’s ambivalence as regards the job offer (205–7) or the critic’s ambivalence toward the film, the agent holds both objectivist attitudes. Moreover, she holds them as her opposed attitudes. Accordingly, objectivist ambivalence is also irreducible to apparent objectivist oppositions of judgments in which one judges that A is v and (that it) is not v. In apparently opposed judgments A is judged v-in-some-aspect and not v-in-another-aspect, where these aspects are supposed to constitute two distinct values: this stands in contrast with the second aspect to be analyzed. 3.1 Aspects of Objectivist Ambivalence of Value Judgment: (1) Mutual Undermining In ambivalence of value judgment, a person may judge that P and yet that not P. In both poles of her ambivalence, the person accepts some objectivity—the

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same one that is denied at the other pole. It thus appears that the concept of judgment excludes the possibility of objectivist ambivalence. This, however, only follows if we assume that the opposed judgments are held by the person as partial judgments, together affirming a wider objectivity, the conjunction of what they affirm apart. But we may not assume this:31 after all, the person is ambivalent between these judgments. By the notion of mutual undermining, I intend to formulate the rationality of objectivist ambivalence as such, that is, insofar as the particular character of objectivity—the application of value—is ignored. Although our concern is with objectivist ambivalence of value judgment, the first point is also relevant to ambivalence in questions of fact.32 We will consider ambivalence in which the agent applies to the object and denies of it one and the same value.33 We have seen that objectivist ambivalence of value judgment implies that the agent’s judgments refer to one another, by way of opposition, in their evaluation of the object. In order to analyze this relation further, it should be distinguished from mutual reference by opposition in general. For mutual reference by opposition characterizes the poles of any ambivalence. Otherwise the poles were not related for the agent and she would not be ambivalent in holding both of them. Our concern in this chapter is more specific, namely with opposed judgments which refer to each other as judgments in objectivist conflict. It could seem, however, that the poles of objectivist ambivalence do not refer to each other at all. Objectivist ambivalence would seem tantamount to entanglement in self-contradiction, for there too one both judges that P and judges that not-P. Yet ambivalence is not the same phenomenon as the inadvertent holding of contradictory attitudes: mutual undermining distinguishes the one from the other. Consider two cases of non-ambivalent entanglement in contradiction. In one case, our protagonist has learned car mechanics and is presently worried that the car he is working on is going to explode. However, his more theoretical beliefs in fact exclude this possibility. While his beliefs mutually contradict, this person is clearly not ambivalent insofar as he is not aware of the contradiction. His belief that the car might explode does not take account of the other beliefs as beliefs that are opposed to it. Again, a person may, without ambivalence, have value judgments that are opposed in the sense that he accepts in them opposed propositions. This might reflect ignorance of the facts: the person judges that a certain job offer is revolting and the people who have made it are bad people; he also judges that Bob is a good man, unaware that Bob is responsible for the offer. Unlike such entanglements in contradiction, Anna’s judgment that the job offer made to her is fair discussed above refers to her antithetical attitude that this offer is unfair. The nature of their mutual reference is of molding and undermining.



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Let us explicate the account of mutual undermining further through a somewhat different example. Sarah is ambivalent regarding Sam’s generosity. For although Sam donated some money, Sal claims that certain promises of reward underlie Sam’s action and Sarah ambivalently believes this explanation. Conceiving of generosity on the part of Sam as implying the absence of this kind of interest, she judges him generous, and yet also judges him not so. In each of these attitudes she denies the truth of the other. This example indeed captures a part of the structure of objectivist ambivalence of value judgment. In objectivist ambivalence the person holds both poles, while these poles may be said to contend with one another. In each of her opposed attitudes, the person makes a claim that a value holds, and this claim is opposed, or disclaimed, by the other attitude. In thinking Sam generous, Sarah portrays the judgment that he is not generous as wrong. Her believing that he has been counting on rewards in his donation involves thinking the contrary belief wrong. At one pole of her ambivalence, Sarah judges that Sam didn’t make his donation with an eye to repayment, even though Sal says otherwise—perhaps Sal puts too much stock in rumors. Yet, Sal’s explanation does make sense, Sarah thinks, and Sam must have given the donation counting on a reward; but then again perhaps not, since he is normally a straightforward person. And so on. Seen as an internal monologue, and on condition that everything else known about Sarah’s judgmental engagements is ignored, this passage may suggest that Sarah does not judge one way or the other. The passage is proposed here, however, as a condensed depiction of the mutual constitution of the judgments, which belongs to objectivist ambivalence. As such, it depicts a structure, which is sufficiently durable for the attribution of judgments, but also precarious in principle. In actual fact, the ambivalence and the attitudes may be rather stable. For example, imagine that Sarah needs help but would not ask for it if she did not believe that she would be helped out of generosity: in this case, Sarah’s ambivalence may induce her to ask for Sam’s help, strongly emphasizing, however, that she will not be able to pay back. Or, in a different version of Sarah’s ambivalence, Sarah, who tries to be a generous woman, may treat Sam as someone to look up to, but then, in those moments that she personally feels more cynical, may be struck by strong suspicions against him. The point is that the structure of mutual undermining and molding is implied whenever we identify objectivist ambivalence. Hence, the philosophical line of thought according to which to be accepting an objectivity—a truth or a value—implies that we do not find it doubtful must be misconceived. The thought underlying this widely accepted position is that while a judgment or belief can be qualified by doubt, it is not possible for a belief to be held and yet also be undermined, that is, that an undermined belief is a belief that has been abandoned. According to this conception, if one’s doubts do not

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amount to the complete rejection of a belief, the standing doubts must qualify the potential absolute belief. The person’s belief is supposed to be necessarily weaker than it would be without the doubts—or, to put it another way, the person’s attitude is supposed to be an epistemic attitude that is weaker than belief. We can call such belief or attitude a belief to some degree; this expression may either be taken as inherently vague or allow for the further move, made in decision theory, to beliefs to some particular degree that can be depicted by a number. One way or the other, objectivist ambivalence and its opposed poles are supposed to be reducible to a pair of complementary beliefs to some degree. Yet such a reduction cannot hold. This is shown most clearly when we notice that objectivist ambivalence implies that one doubts her belief-to-a-degree as well. Consider the case of the potential director who is ambivalent regarding his abilities and prospects for making a worthwhile film: it might be that he thinks that such an achievement is quite possible for him, sufficiently so that he may devote himself to film making, whereas this belief-to-a-degree is precisely that which his contrary belief challenges. In probabilistic terms, the “sum of probabilities” of the contending judgments would be greater than one.34 Thus in objectivist ambivalence the inconsistent beliefs or judgments are interlinked by mutual undermining. In the case of Sarah, her judgment that Sam is generous undermines and molds her judgment to the contrary and vice versa. That example has been chosen, however, in order to depict such mutual undermining in which the contents of the judgments—the propositions judged and the concepts involved—are ideally not molded as part of the ambivalence. The proposition entertained by Sarah’s judgment that Sam is generous does not acquire a meaning together with the proposition entertained by her judgment that he is ungenerous. Compare with a case in which someone (without ambivalence) judges that Sam counted on repayment in giving the money, and also judges that Sam didn’t count on repayment, where repayment is supposed to be political in the first case and financial in the second. Sarah’s case does not manifest anything similar to this re-characterization of the concept of repayment. Her ambivalence has nothing to do with how the concepts concerned are to be understood. Relatedly, Sarah does not judge that the conjunction of the contents of her judgments holds. She does not think that Sam both did and did not give the money counting on certain rewards. Accordingly, while Sarah thinks that Sam is generous and while she also thinks that he is not, Sarah does not think that Sam both is and is not generous, nor that Sam’s action is generous and ungenerous. Sarah’s ambivalence provides an ideal example with which to explicate the notion of mutual undermining. However, the example is less than ideal for illuminating the kind of mutual undermining by opposed value judgments that is our main concern. The reason for this is that Sarah’s ambivalence is



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not of the ordinary—and more central—kind of objectivist ambivalence of value judgment. While manifesting mutual undermining, her ambivalence does not manifest the characteristic subject matter of such undermining in ambivalence about value, and in this respect, is, in fact, negatively instructive. Although Sarah judges ambivalently that Sam is generous, her ambivalence does not concern the value of generosity. Rather the contrary: in analyzing Sarah’s ambivalence, we wish to say that Sarah is completely assured about the value of generosity, with which she ambivalently characterizes Sam. She has no worries about how generosity should be understood in this context. Her trouble lies entirely in ambivalence about the facts, which she takes to be all that is needed to determine whether the value applies. It is as if Sarah presupposes what generosity would have to be, and is ambivalent only as to the application to the object of the pre-given value concept. 3.2 Value Judgments and Their Typical Objectivist Ambivalence While Sarah is ambivalent about the application of the value, this does not reflect an ambivalence as to the character of this value. Sarah’s ambivalence is about Sam’s generosity without being in any way about generosity. She is not preoccupied with how one should understand the concept of generosity in the context of her judgments.35 Values, however, are bound up with raising such questions. This may be contrasted with the concepts that contribute to factual beliefs, for example with the way that the concept of a desk may contribute to beliefs about desks. There, an important role is played by an ideal of an objectivity which is not about the concepts the belief employs. Much has been said against the hypostasis of this ideal.36 In some sense, however, to believe that there is a desk in this room is to pursue a truth about the desk and the room, rather than about such concepts as desk, room, or presence. What sense is that? Suppose that Charles’s judgment that there is a desk in the room refers to a room that contains only a box serving as desk.37 In such a case we may believe that a concern with the concepts characterizes Charles’s judgment and in view of this we can regard his attitude as different from factual belief. The point is that the notion of a value judgment could not make use of any analogous ideal: it is possible that Sarah proceeds to judge that Sam is generous only after, so to speak, having settled her mind about the concept of generosity, but this feature would be accidental to her attitude being a judgment that Sam is generous. As we saw in section 1.1, the objectivist dimension of a value judgment collapses unless that other dimension in which the person imposes a value on the object of judgment is evoked. In the attribution of a value judgment, we, by the same token, attribute a concern with value concepts. This is never more visible than in cases of objectivist ambivalence of value judgment.

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In the first part of this chapter, we identified the phenomenon of objectivist ambivalence of value judgment. More specifically, we identified ambivalence as to what or how the value ought to be in the case to be judged. We are now in position to name this kind of ambivalence typical objectivist ambivalence of value judgment (typical ambivalence, for brevity). Having established its character as a full-blown ambivalence that can guide a process of deliberation, as well survive or conclude it, we turned to analyze it in terms of three features. The first of these features—(1) mutual undermining and molding— is essential to any objectivist ambivalence. The two further features, to be extricated below, aim at explicating (2) the meaning of an ambivalent concern with values and (3) its implications for the logic of value. If value judgments in principle include a concern with values, then typical ambivalence reveals something central to non-ambivalent value judgments as well. Up to now, we have seen the mutual dependency between the objectivist dimension of judgment and the dimension of judgmental engagement, but what we need yet to see is how a concern with values appears from the objectivist perspective: how it is expressed in the logic of value judgments and in the logic of value. I will argue that value judgments in general require typical ambivalence, with its aspect of (2) conceptual ambivalence; and that conceptual ambivalence entails that (3) value concepts are subjected to molding by judgments, and capable of internal tensions.38 The analysis to follow can be said to posit at the heart of the logic of value and of value judgment an extension of G. E. Moore’s open question. Moore writes “[W]hatever definition may be offered, it may always be asked, with significance, of the complex so defined, whether it is itself good” (1903, chapter I, §13). This is true not only of attempts at descriptive definitions of values, as Moore’s use of the question suggests. Nor is the question limited to attempts at general definitions of values or to explicit definitions. 3.3 Aspects of Objectivist Ambivalence of Value Judgment: (2) Conceptual Ambivalence What distinguishes Anna’s opposed judgments as to a job’s fairness from Sarah’s ambivalence as to Sam’s generosity is the fact that Anna’s judgments are in conflict over what fairness would be in such a case. We can understand this further by appeal to a notion of conceptual ambivalence. In the case of objectivist ambivalence of value judgment, conceptual ambivalence combines with the aspect of mutual undermining. Rather than being independent of it, the additional aspect ought both to complement that relation, and to give it its particular shape: each of the opposed judgments in a typical ambivalence undermines an opposed view regarding the value’s-possible-applying to the object. The italics and dashes are intended to emphasize that the application



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of the value to the object constitutes a partial view of the value (fairness) and that the contentions between the opposed judgments are contentions between views of the value. In her opposed judgments that the job offer is fair and that it is not so, the person takes up two contrary views on fairness, or at least on what fairness ought to be insofar as her present concern goes. What we see here is that typical judgmental ambivalence involves ambivalence in regard to the concept, that is, conceptual ambivalence. Let us think of concepts as notions that capture certain threads in our life together. For example, under this general and fundamental meaning of “a concept,” the concept of justice captures judgments regarding justice, efforts to act justly, insincere politics in the name of justice, and so on. This Wittgensteinian conception of concepts does not mean that the character of concepts as functions from objects to truth values is abandoned. Thus, it is part of the concept of justice that we can, in various ways and domains, ask what is just and what is not. On the other hand, the proposed understanding of “concept” implies that concepts are not fixed. Of course, concepts as threads in human life allow for domains that require determinacy. For example, the concept of addition includes a mathematical domain of natural numbers in which it is fixed that adding 3 to 2 gives 5 and that it does not give 6. It is not by accident, however, that our example here is external to the field of value. While value judgments are objectivist, that is, we ask rather than decide if something is just or fair, it will be a conclusion of this chapter that values are not determinate, neither universally nor contextually, in the way that the concept of addition is.39 Once concepts are thought as threads in our joint human life, it can be said that concepts are inflected through life. I wish to coin this expression first in a broader and then in a narrower sense. In the broader sense of inflection, to say that concepts are inflected means no more than that they take a different character in accordance with the specific judgments, actions, institutions, and so on, that manifest them. Thus, other things are important or true of justice when one tries to remedy an injustice one has perpetrated, as compared to when an oppressed group fights for justice, or when justice is analyzed as the law of the powerful. This should not be taken to imply, however, that in inflecting a concept the person finds himself with a reduced concept of some kind: when justice guides a plan, justice guides it as that concept that may also underlie demands, be abused in so many ways, and so on.40 People do not have to inflect concepts intentionally, not even when the inflection belongs in particular to something that an individual does or thinks. Indeed, it is necessary for the inflection of concepts under attitudes and actions, that generally the inflection is not itself an attitude.41 However, sometimes inflecting a concept comprises a mental attitude. Such inflection is, moreover, itself a value judgment, that is to say, the person judges that the relevant concept should in this case be inflected thus.42 In this narrower

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sense of “concept inflection,” inflection is intentional. For example, it can be someone’s political position that justice, in the context of fighting for justice, is not something that can be asked for or given. Again, sometimes such an attitude to justice stands in conflict with another: the two attitudes are poles of a conceptual ambivalence. A person (or a group) may fight for justice in a way that expresses ambivalence as to how justice ought to be inflected, whether as something to be asked for, or as a guide for action. (When they constitute ambivalence, the contending inflections have, by definition, become attitudes.) While conceptual ambivalence may intermingle with uncertainty or with ambivalence about facts in the formation of objectivist ambivalence of value judgment, we will ignore such possibilities. Here is a simple case of typical objectivist ambivalence: Sarah can think that Sam is generous and that he is ungenerous, not merely because of factual questions, but by way of ambivalence about what generosity should be in such a case. He is generous: he gives so much. But this is not generosity: he expects to be paid someday. Well, this is generosity: giving without calculations, not without hopes or interests. And so on. The explication of objectivist ambivalence in terms of mutually undermining judgments that manifest or constitute a conceptual ambivalence stands in contrast to a central conception of ambivalence. Many of those who acknowledge ambivalence of value judgment base this on the existence of a plurality of separate, very different values. This conception stands, for example, at the heart of section II of Foot’s 1983 “Moral Realism and Moral Dilemma” and of Zimmerman’s 1993 “A Plea for Ambivalence.” I argue in Razinsky 2014, section 9 that ambivalence whose concern is with objectivity cannot depend on foreign values and that objectivist conflicts involve a concern with the same value in both opposing judgments even when they are primarily concerned with different values. This is not to say, however, that the plurality of values is unimportant. Objectivist ambivalence often concerns plural values—imagine Rob’s ambivalence regarding Bob, whom Rob deems a sort of helping angel, always ready to help anyone in need, yet he also undermines this appreciation of Bob by considering him prone to violence. Moreover, judgmental ambivalence as regards some object often involves ambivalence as to whether the one judgment applies the same value that the other denies, or whether they apply different values. And, indeed, plural values are relevant to objectivist ambivalence per se: plural (unstable) perspectives belong to the unity of a value, though it is essential to them that they are not separate from each other or from the value they inflect. In formulating the last point I have already moved from the person’s attitudes to the value concerned. The third aspect of typical ambivalence justifies this move. Conceptual ambivalence can be thought of both as an ambivalent



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holding of the concept and as an ambivalent attitude toward it. Under the second formulation, a typical ambivalence involves a judgment as to how the value should be inflected in the situation. In addition, according to the first aspect of objectivist ambivalence, the person’s conflicting judgments, A1 and A2, undermine each other. Each of these opposed claims is disclaimed by the other in a concrete way. The two aspects combine, and in typical ambivalence, A1 takes the character of judging against the way A2 inflects the value and vice versa. We may also say that the ambivalent person maintains two opposed judgments, B1 and B2, that the value ought and that it ought not to be inflected as in A1 (or as in A2). Again, according to the first aspect, the B1 claim is disclaimed in a concrete way and vice versa. This partial description must be complemented. Were the description exhaustive, it would make typical objectivist ambivalence completely analogous with fact-based objectivist ambivalence. Yet, typically, contending value judgments do not, generally, merely undermine one another. While deeming Bob violentand-bad undermines for Rob the judgment that Bob is kind-hearted-and-good, Rob may also accept the two evaluations together. In judging Bob violentand-bad he criticizes his judgment that Bob is kind-hearted-and-good and the understanding of kindness as applicable to people who are violent-and-bad. Yet, by the same token, Rob may well also acknowledge that Bob is both violent-and-bad and kind-hearted-and-good. In the same way, Anna’s judgments that the job offer is fair and that it is unfair can undermine each other while forming together a joint judgment of the job offer. Thus Rob and Anna, as well as Samuel and Sarah in the typical ambivalence versions, do not share the situation of Sarah’s entirely fact-based ambivalence regarding Sam. To the extent that her ambivalence is based on a factual question,43 Sarah is ambivalent regarding Sam’s generosity and as to whether he gave the money for a reward, while she knows perfectly well that either Sam was, or he was not, expecting a reward. By contrast, as Williams says, if somewhat too strongly, in Ethical Consistency, ambivalence of value judgment can have the character that “both ‘ought’s do apply.”44 While this claim may seem mysterious, Williams’s formulation suggests that the opposed propositions that are accepted together are understood independently of one another, and this suggestion may be responsible for the mystery. Conversely, our opposed account of typical objectivist ambivalence of value judgment should allow us to articulate the possibility of ambivalence in which we aptly judge two contrary things together. 3.4 Aspects of Objectivist Ambivalence of Value Judgment: (3) Objectivist Ambivalence and the Logic of Value How is it possible that mutually undermining judgments, which are in tension as to the character of a value, may together constitute a unitary judgment

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on the part of the agent? This question confronts us not only with the logic of objectivist judgments and ambivalence—thus of attitudes of a particular kind—but also with that of the meaning and objectivity of judged propositions. If people judge ambivalently that A is v and not-v, then such judged propositions are meaningful even though they apply and deny the same value to the object. Furthermore, if ambivalent judgments that A is v and not-v are part of our ordinary life and language with judgments, it appears to be required that such judgments may indeed be right.45 Thus at the crux of the matter lies the logic of value. My reply to the “how possible” question is that if such judgments seem to be impossible, this is because of logical misconceptions regarding the domain of values. A further examination of what typical ambivalence involves may establish an alternative view as to the logic of values and their objective application. It is part of the third aspect of typical ambivalence, to be explicated in what follows, that ambivalent value judgments mold the values concerned. This is true in regard to any case of typical ambivalence, regardless of whether one’s opposed judgments combine into a unitary judgment according to which “both ‘oughts’ do apply.” To keep in mind that objectivist ambivalence can be typical without conforming to Williams’s insight, consider the following ambivalence of Hannah regarding an apology. She judges that she ought to apologize for having treated Sam harshly. Yet (Hannah thinks) she clearly had to be harsh or he would not see! She definitely ought not to spoil this now. Indeed, ought she to apologize for being in the right? But was she? (She must doubt it.) She had no right to speak to him that way. She ought to make an apology. Still (she pulls back), this is ridiculous and she may as well urge him to go on with his misdeeds. And so on. We are by now familiar with the conceptual ambivalence bound up with the mutual molding and undermining of the poles of typical ambivalence, and, thus, with the fact that Hannah’s opposed judgments contend as to the way that the value of “ought” ought to be inflected, while the two inflections compete to form the unitary concept or inflection of “ought.” In fact, speaking of conceptual ambivalence, our inquiry has not remained solely in the domain of mental attitudes, but has extended to values. We can extricate from the account of objectivist ambivalence the further claim that typical objectivist ambivalence molds and undermines the very values concerned and that it may in particular find in its object tension-fraught values, such as “good and bad.” What we need to see is that we cannot reconstruct typical objectivist ambivalence as referring to objectivity of a univocal kind. Note first that the notion of inflection (in the narrow sense in which it constitutes an attitude) has to do with what happens to the concepts. For inflections are not merely attitudes about concepts, but rather a contribution to the conceptual thread.



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In particular, in inflecting generosity or fairness in one’s judgment, one by definition shapes these concepts. Generosity, for example, is shaped as requiring (in order to be judged to apply in relevant contexts) some sacrifice or renunciation on the part of the generous person. We are not interested, however, in any aspect of the conceptual thread of a value, but rather in the concept as establishing the character and objectivity of value judgments. With this in mind, what kind of objectivity is bound up with the discourse of value judgment? Call “univocal objectivity” the idea that a value implies unique answers to questions of the form “what is the right inflection of this value?” when the context raising the question has to do with the value’s application to objects. Univocal objectivity means that something about the value determines (together with innocuous further factors such as the special facts of the situation) whether it should or should not be inflected in each way that would make that value true of some objects.46 If value judgments are bound up with inflections of the value, and if such inflections shape the values as regards the values’ applicability to objects (in suitable contexts) then values do not obey the logic of univocal objectivity. Typical objectivist ambivalence grants the truth of the conditionals, with one point still requiring to be explicitly extricated. As we are concerned with value concepts as establishing the character and objectivity of value judgments, it has to be shown that values are shaped in typical ambivalence especially in respect of their application to objects. Before seeing this directly, let us consider what it would mean to construe typical objectivist ambivalence in terms of a completely predetermined and unambiguous objectivity. Under such a construal, the conceptual concerns bound up with ambivalence of value judgment and with value judgment in general become quasi-factual. There would have to be facts—in language, in evolution, in the realm of Plato’s gods?—as to what the value of ought is, or how ought should be inflected in the context of Hannah’s possible apology. Or does it belong to the relevant context for the inflection of ought that Hannah herself judges in the issue? Or perhaps a certain larger description must determine the inflection, such as “apology after harsh treatment” or maybe “apology after partly justified harsh treatment”? If the objectivist concern with value imitates the concern with facts, the facts that could be known and settle a typical objectivist ambivalence must settle these problems of identifying the right facts as well. If it is central to the logic of value that it is not quasi-factual, typical ambivalence establishes this through a still stronger characterization of the logic of value: it reveals to us that values tolerate un-univocal objectivity. What would that be? Let us reconsider typical ambivalence. We have seen that the inflections bound up with the opposed judgments shape the value. Now add to this a characteristic of ambivalence discussed above, namely that

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opposed attitudes partaking in ambivalence are not independent attitudes, but rather they are held as mutually opposed. As such, the poles mold each other. In the case of objectivist attitudes they mold each other by mutual undermining, as in the descriptions of Sarah. Finally, since judging shapes a value, the contention between attitudes molds the shaping of value. It is not only that the judgment—the judging attitude—that Sam is generous takes account of the opposed judgment. Rather, the inflection of the value proposed by the judgment that Sam is generous takes account of the opposed judgment. This also implies that if we ask how Sarah, for example, inflects generosity under one of the poles of her ambivalence, any answer is unstable or simplifying since her inflection takes into account the contention, and remains undermined in any form it might be said to take. Thus, the understanding of objectivist ambivalence of value judgment in terms of different aspects of the value is both right and wrong. On the one hand, typical objectivist ambivalence entails that the value is understood or inflected in different ways. On the other hand, any separate identity of one of the inflections is denied, since to say that a concept is inflected at one pole of the objectivist ambivalence means that its inflection is challenged by the opposite inflection. In the study of objectivist ambivalence of value judgment we considered its similarities and dissimilarities to ambivalence of factual belief. As ill-reputed as ambivalence of belief is, ambivalence of value judgment is in a sense more philosophically perplexing, concerning not only the attitudes but also their content. In typical ambivalence of value judgment, the ambivalent agent, such as Hannah, does not oppose a claim solely by disclaiming it: Hannah’s judgment that the ought value applies to her apology is undermined, and, by the same token, her “ought” is inflected as bound up with an “ought-not.” We thus get, so to speak, an ought-but-ought-not at the one pole of the ambivalence, and it is coupled with an ought-not-though-I-ought-to at the other pole. In such cases, in which the combined values at the poles do not converge, it might, however, be relatively easy to ignore the tensions the values contain. Yet in other cases they do converge, constituting these phenomena of typical ambivalence that make explicit the un-univocal logic of value. These are the cases already presented, in which the person judges—alas, ambivalently— that both judgments hold together. So do people believe contradictions when it comes to value? I do not think there is a good answer to give here. While a negative answer cannot do, to reply in the affirmative drives us into one of two unsatisfactory horns of a dilemma. On the one horn we would ignore typical ambivalence, with its cases of judging that A is v and not v, or we would deny that such judgments are meaningful. On the other horn we would think of contradictions as completely legitimate according to their own logic, and thus assimilate contradiction into the domain of meaningfulness and lose the tension that is bound up



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with ambivalent judgment. It is better to say that it is not clear how we should inflect the concept of contradiction when judgments are concerned with how to inflect concepts. For typical objectivist ambivalence of value reveals that the logic of the objectivity of value is not the same as the logic of (factual) truth. Thus we get joint objectivist ambivalence, in which we can attribute to the agent a judgment that makes a joint claim to objectivity, creating a kind of tension-fraught value, only ambivalently held, of the form “v and not-v”: Sarah judges Sam generous and ungenerous. 4. Further Suggestions If the proposals in this chapter are not entirely wide of the mark, then ambivalence is central to the logic of value and of value judgment. Value judgments have an objectivist dimension, and this dimension invites cases of appropriate ambivalence in regard to the application of a value to a person, action, or thing. In typical cases, such ambivalence includes the mutual undermining of the opposed judgments as well as conceptual ambivalence and entails that tension-fraught inflections are inherent to values. While accepting objectivist ambivalence thus runs against entrenched philosophical conceptions of subjectivity and objectivity, value and judgment, taking typical objectivist ambivalence into account should at the same time be rewarded with respect to various related debates. Let me mention here two directions of inquiry that go beyond those already outlined in the body of the text. First, if values are importantly open to ambivalent inflection, this challenges the quick move from theories of the unity of value to theories of separate plural values in the contexts of relativism and of conflicts between people and groups. To acknowledge instead the inherent rationality of objectivist and partly objectivist tensions is also to be able to think into various possibilities of happier and less happy dialogues. Second, I believe that the work on concrete ethical and aesthetical issues as well as on the values of rationality will be deepened and sharpened, once we admit into it the openness of value to meaningful tensions, and its anchor in typical ambivalence. This character of value also calls for substantial changes in the major normative ethical systems. For one, we should join pluralists in denying the adequacy of any one system to constitute the system of morality: a univocal truth for such a principle as, for instance, “goodness is the utility of the society,” would not leave us with some particular version of the values of goodness or of utility, but would in fact leave us bereft of any such values. In addition to this implication, however, it is as important that typical ambivalence is assimilated into deontological, utilitarian, and virtue-ethicist thinking. Kant rejected objectivist ambivalence, utilitarianism is all but defined

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around a similar rejection, and neo-Aristotelian philosophy joins them in a milder fashion; nevertheless, to accept ambivalence is not to annul but rather, we may hope, to significantly enhance the understanding of obligation, utility, and virtue, as well as their relations. notes 1. In their introduction, Betzler and Baumann set out the field of current philosophical research on practical conflicts using a similar framework. 2. Foot (2001) and Jarvis Thomson (1996, esp. 152) provide accounts of moral naturalism that reject the possibility of moral ambivalence. Wong (2006), by contrast, takes the existence of moral ambivalence to support his naturalist relativism. Yet his main line of argument implies that such ambivalence is not objectivist. 3. Davidson (1970) and Jackson (1985) analyze forms of ambivalence in light of both the conduct and the objectivity problem, and their views amount to denying genuine ambivalence. 4. This was emphasized by Williams in 1973b (orig. 1965), and especially (1973c [1966], esp. 205.) Yet 1973b covertly assumes an objectivist dimension to the ambivalence. 5. Of course, philosophically speaking, this is a contentious claim (see Stevenson 1944 for a classic contrary account). I also note that many antirealist and non-cognitivist views are concerned with reflecting the objectivist structure of value judgment, as well as that non-cognitivist views tend to share with objectivist views the denial of ambivalence. In any case, the analysis to be proposed cannot leave out the question of the cognitivist and non-cognitivist status of value judgments. In the following paragraphs, I argue that value judgments are both like beliefs and like desires and emotions and that these aspects are mutually constitutive. This prepares us to abandon the expectation that the logic of judgments in their cognitivist capacity would be parallel to the logic of factual belief. 6. In this I accept a logical characterization of value judgments, seeing the question as concerning an aspect of our linguistic lives. I am not suggesting that there is an extralinguistic realm of objectivity that value judgments (or any judgments) somehow target. 7. Also compare the objectivist response (where the value applied may be understood as agent-relative): “It is not really important for you” with “it is not really important to you.” 8. Value judgments are closely connected with factual beliefs as well, but it is part of the present account that they cannot be reduced to them. 9. The use (outside theorizing) of the two descriptions as near-synonymous while having complementary nuances suggests that we read each with the help of the other. It is suggested (in one direction) that the clearly cognitive description of a value judgment as aiming at a special truth must be cast in terms of an attitude that is in a way non-cognitive and that the cognitive aiming at a special truth must be understood in terms of special, cognitive and non-cognitive attitude.



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10. The mother of the biblical Samuel left him as a child to be raised by Eli, the religious leader. 11. The adjective “evaluative” is intended to remind us that we are concerned with deliberation about objectivity. Deliberation is never only about objectivity, as it is at the same time part of developing and examining our attitudes and of forming our behavior. While evaluative deliberation is not only about objectivity, we also use “deliberation” for engagements which are not evaluative (or not primarily), as when a person deliberates upon taking a certain action and her thoughts lead her to avoid it, without her concluding or attempting to conclude that the action is undesirable, bad, or of any other value. It might be, for example, that she just envisages that it would be too much trouble to act that way. 12. Consider, for reference, any of the Socratic dialogues. I also note that while evaluative deliberation appeals to the objectivist dimension of judgment, the objectivist dimension may not be understood in terms of the possibility of deliberation, and claims of objectivity sometimes entail that there is nothing to deliberate upon there (“She is thirsty. It is good to bring her water”). This is, actually, the point of departure for Moore’s objectivist view of value judgments in Principia Ethica (Moore 1903, chapter IV.) 13. My italics. I use Ladd’s 1999 translation, except for the “because then” [da dann in the original]. Even if Kant’s use of “conflict” concerns the objective level, ambivalence in which the tension is partly taken as objective would mean that the conflict is conceivable. In any case, as the quotation continues Kant focuses on the judging subject. In addition, the present chapter shows that value discourse is bound up not only with legitimate ambivalence, but also with conflicts at the objective level that are ambivalently acknowledged. 14. See Davidson 1970 for an explicit analysis in these terms. 15. Some cases that might be thought of in terms of a judgment applying a qualified value to the object—for instance, a judgment applying the value “suitable in regard to air circulation” to the apartment—can alternatively be thought of as qualifying the object rather than the value, for example as judging that the apartment’s air circulation is suitable. 16. For a moderate reduction of ambivalence to an aspect of deliberation, see Foot 1983, section I. Foot differentiates there two senses of “ought,” in one of which it is consistent to judge that one ought to do A and ought to do not-A, analogously to cases allowing to judge that it is dangerous both to do A and to avoid it. According to Foot, such “ought” judgments play a role (without necessarily being canceled in the process) in judging what one ought to do in another and decisive sense of the term. 17. The idea is that some modes of our basically rational lives demonstrate “as if,” extended, or possible deliberation, and thus that these notions capture a cluster of important senses of high rationality; this could be articulated as above by evoking a familiar connection between “the space of reasons” and deliberation or reasoning. Such a definition is, however, misleading, since much of that which is rational in a relevant sense is not maintained or done “for a reason.” Here is, hence, an alternative formulation: one would manifest extended deliberation in acquiring an attitude, if it is acquired on the basis of a concern with finding the right attitude (or an appropriate attitude).

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18. Drai 2012 argues for the indispensability of desire to all levels of normative deliberation. 19. It is especially significant that the identification and pursuit are not differentiated. 20. Nussbaum 1985 and 1990. For a recent treatment of ethical virtue, phronesis, and ambivalence, see Kristjánsson 2010. 21. The terms “pro tanto duties” and “pro tanto reasons” are sometimes used to make a similar point. I avoid them in view of two other aspects of their philosophical usage, namely that they are sometimes taken as synonymous with prima facie duties and reasons and that they are often contrasted with ATC judgments in a way that supposes that such judgments may not be ambivalent. 22. Or harmonious lack of engagement. 23. Sometimes we adhere to agnosticism while deliberating. This is itself a form of ambivalence. It is ambivalence of desire in which we both want and do not want to reach a conclusion. Furthermore, central forms of deliberating and yet adhering to agnosticism include ambivalence of belief: one would acquire a semi-judgment or the belief that something is probable, but would at the same time take that judgment or belief to be unreliable, or else take it to be a mere thought as well as disbelieve it. 24. Chapter 7 rejects Davidsonian and naturalist views of self-deception and explicates self-deception (in matters of fact) as intentional ambivalence of belief. The chapter also argues that ambivalence of belief is basically rational and provides an account of the notions of irrationality and high rationality as they are applied to basically rational phenomena. It will emerge from this chapter that ambivalence of value judgment is sometimes highly rational from such perspectives that are concerned with the logic of value. 25. In order to make it a clear case of ambivalence of belief, assume that it does not rely on ambivalence on what a piece of art should consist in. 26. I discuss this ideal and especially the second aspect in section 3.2. The contribution of the belief to the concepts also challenges the aspect of the truth’s independence of the believing. Note, however, that beliefs may have bearing on their truth value for further reasons as well. In particular, beliefs about oneself may often be taken to play a part in forming the truth or falsity of their content. This is an aspect of the basic rationality of our engagements, that is, of their consisting in mutual indeterminate interlinkages. 27. At the same time, it will emerge from the analysis in section 3 that the poles of objectivist ambivalence do not only constitute absolute judgments, but often also constitute (mutually undermining) ATC judgments. Each of the poles is then based on “having considered all things” in the sense that each pole takes into account everything that seems relevant. Among these things are such considerations that appear relevant and are endorsed by the opposing perspective, as well as their being taken on it as relevant and justified. (The two opposing judgments do not take everything to be relevant in the same way, however, and in this sense they have a different view of what the ATC situation would be, and are not ATC-based in any way that encompasses these views.) I also note that speaking of two clusters of considerations is misleading as the judgments are not considered separably.



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28. For two studies of deliberation that treat it as part of the agent’s concrete and possibly conflictual situation, see Rorty 2010 and Morton 1991, especially Chapters 3 and 4. 29. This also shows that deliberation does not necessarily aim at harmony. Sometimes, however, we attempt to dissolve or resolve ambivalence. Chapter 6 analyzes this possibility. 30. Barcan Marcus (1980) gives an account of ambivalence of value judgment in terms of confusion. 31. At least, not simply. In typical objectivist ambivalence of value judgment the judgments undermine one another, but also, in a certain sense, combine. 32. See chapter 7. 33. There is a related form of objectivist ambivalence in which instead of two opposed judgments that cast doubt on each other, one such judgment combines with a pole of doubt. Thus, one can be ambivalent between judging that Jane is brave and not judging that she is brave, without judging that Jane is not brave. 34. Objectivist ambivalence may thus be contrasted with a lottery paradox situation. See Razinsky 2013, 407. 35. Or in more general contexts, whereas it may be part of the question what the relevant generalizations are. 36. Against fixed concepts, against the understanding of beliefs in terms of pregiven concepts, and against the assumption that our epistemic projects divide between conceptual and empirical pursuits. Names start with the later Wittgenstein for the first point (despite interpretations according to which Wittgensteinian concepts are fixed by context. See Razinsky 2015), with Quine and Davidson for the second point, and with Quine and Kuhn for the third. 37. I borrow this example from Travis 2000, Introduction. 38. See Rorty 2010 for a related investigation. 39. I also suggested in the former section that the openness of values reflects the character of objectivist value judgments as judgmental engagements, but I don’t make use of this in what follows. 40. Neither can we suppose that there is in general a right answer to the question whether a concept is inflected in certain way under this or that engagement. 41. I discuss concept inflection, inflections versus attitudes, and conceptual ambivalence in Razinsky 2015. See also 27–28 in the Introduction to this book. 42. Accordingly, attitudes of concept inflection can be thought as attitudinal versions of the concepts, but also as second-order attitudes toward the concepts. 43. Sarah’s ambivalence is based on a factual question if she is not concerned in her ambivalence about what a reward, or expecting a reward, would be. 44. Williams 1973b, 177, see also 183–84. 45. I cannot here argue directly against global forms of skepticism, including moral skepticism. For our needs, however, it is enough that a unitary ambivalent judgment that A is v and not v may in principle be right if other judgments may be right. 46. The ways concerned may be thought of as making the value true of some objects only in the right circumstances (including the circumstances of assertion).

Chapter 9

The Openness of Desire and Action in Ambivalence

You will say, “Why did you write this book for me, then?” And I will reply that I’m just borrowing your rituals for killing and that I decided to bury you in a book, that’s all. (Ahlem Mosteghanemi, The Bridges of Constantine)* Orpheus: he loves Eurydice, this is well known, yet he might also be tired of her. Her death breaks his heart, his life becomes empty; he seeks adventure, he seeks death; he wishes to bring Eurydice back, he wishes to see her again, he wishes to make sure she is gone for good. Orpheus descends into the underworld, confronting terrible dangers. At last, Eurydice is following him back to life, on the condition that he does not look back. They are steadily climbing out. With Eurydice near the surface, Orpheus is turning his head. Eurydice: she is no less ambivalent, on being invited to leave the underworld. She still remembers life enough to desire it, and yet she is already too dead to desire life. What is she to do? Postpone the decision, transfer it to someone else, let life decide, let life wait for her? She may do all of the above at once. If she becomes sufficiently alive to take the route to the upper world, yet remains dead enough to blindly follow Orpheus, then, in a sense, she realizes both conflicting desires. Why not guess then that it was not a rule of the underworld that prohibited Orpheus from gazing upon Eurydice, but rather a feeble request on Eurydice’s part that imposed this requirement upon him?

The above versions of the myth of Orpheus provide a depiction of ambivalent and yet active subjects. Earlier chapters have shown that such mental ascriptions of ambivalence and ambivalent behavior are part of our human * Mosteghanemi 2013, 291. Addressing Hayat (who may read his book one day) with these words, Khaled wants and does not want their relationship to revive. He wants and does not want to communicate with her. He wants and does not want to give up his love. His ambivalence is also emotional (love and hate, love and the end of love) and hierarchic (he judges he would do better to be rid of his love).

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life with language and that such (real-life) ascriptions often truly describe the attitudes and conduct of the attributees. We have, in particular, considered and rejected the cluster of views according to which the relations between behavior and attitudes make ambivalence impossible or at least bar us from a significant behavioral expression of both poles of ambivalence. The problem from behavior is usually posited, however, in regard to ambivalence in which a person wants and yet does not want one and the same thing, or both wants something and wants something that she takes to be incompatible with it. It seems that whatever else is possible, a person cannot act to fulfill both conflicting desires together. But this chapter argues that this is not quite true. Through a close examination of the way we actually live, the chapter extricates some features of subjectivity, ambivalence, action, and desire, which underlie ascriptions of an active and fruitful ambivalence and, in particular, allow for strict compromise action in ambivalence of desire.1 We shall adhere in what follows to the main definition of ambivalence posited in this book, according to which an ambivalent person has two opposed attitudes toward the same object, such that to hold one of these attitudes is to hold it as opposed to the other. The person’s mental attitudes are understood in this book as dispositions that constitute perspectives, such that an attitude consists in a disposition to other engagements (and in particular to behavior, consciousness, and other attitudes).2 Attitudes include desires,3 and ambivalence itself can also be described as an attitude. This chapter centers on ambivalence of desire, in which the person wants something and yet also does not want it. One desires what one does not desire. One believes that a certain action will realize that which is desired yet undesired. The logic of desire and action as formulated in Aristotle’s practical syllogism both decrees and forbids that one act accordingly. What would one do? It appears that, in such a condition, if one is not actually paralyzed, then one’s actions are tantamount to paralysis. In the words of Harry Frankfurt: “Unless a person is capable of a considerable degree of volitional unity, he cannot make coherent use of freedom” (Frankfurt 1992, 11); or as Joan Stambaugh tells us: “The attitude of ambivalence discriminates and divides up what appear to be possibilities of choice, but which actually obstruct what is there in the present” (Stambaugh 1980, 167). Frankfurt and Stambaugh formulate here a view shared by many. Chapter 2, sections 1 and 2.4, and chapter 4, section 1.1, explain why ambivalence seems incompatible with significant behavior and action, chapter 2 (1 and 2.4) also presenting some of the ways in which philosophers respond to the difficulty. In the case of desire, the problem is surely not imaginary (even though we will see that nothing like paralysis follows). Perhaps you want that a state of affairs should obtain and you want that it should not. It is fair to ask, however, what is “wanting something” if you won’t act to promote it, but rather act to



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avoid it. If you are ambivalent, any action to make something obtain disrupts making it not obtain. Thus you simply cannot do anything, or else you must repair your acts to the same effect; maybe, you do not really want anything, otherwise you would be helping to bring it about. You only “play” with wanting; or, your desires destroy each other, your will is not really formed. Or so it seems. Such forms of failure as Frankfurt and Stambaugh are struck by are, in a sense, the perfect symbols of ambivalence, and yet they do not show us ambivalent people who cannot act, but rather constitute non-ambivalent attitudes, or boundary cases of ambivalence. Thus Stambaugh’s explanation is, in fact, the analysis of a phenomenon in which people are not so much ambivalent,4 as their opposed “concerns” express together an attitude of self-absorption; thus, Frankfurtian ambivalence verges on mere confusion, inasmuch as the opposed attitudes are mutually destructive, rather than constitutive.5 This could imply that ambivalence of desire does not merely frustrate action, but is altogether impossible, were it not that people, just like Orpheus and Eurydice, are regularly ambivalent in what they feel, judge, and desire. And just like those two, people carry on living and taking action. Ambivalent life and conduct form compromises between the opposing attitudes in which people do things that express to some extent both of their opposed attitudes and express them together in a way that responds to the fact that they are opposed and to the character of their opposition. Some such compromises amount to paralysis; others are creative and appropriate. We shall see, in particular, that ambivalent compromises include compromise actions in which, wanting that something obtain and wanting it not to obtain, people (successfully) act to fulfill to some extent both their opposed desires. Such, for example, would be the case of a person who at times sits and talks philosophy with a certain colleague she likes and yet dislikes, and with whom she wants, but also does not want, to be in touch, given that she is taking good care, all the same, not to get on too friendly terms with him. She is ambivalent, but is not paralyzed. How is this possible? Section 3 rejects the proposal that an ambivalent agent is analogous to a committee. The rest of the chapter provides an account of significant action in ambivalence. To do this, it retraces the logic of personhood and of the single attitude as they apply to the attitude of desire and to compromise behavior and action. As throughout this book, we shall understand the individual person as a unity in plurality, whose plural engagements derive their being and rationality from the unitary subject at the same time that the subject is constituted by her connected, connecting, and reconnectible engagements. Complementary to the notion of unity in plurality, the book defends a notion of basic rationality, which pertains to all our attitudes and actions. The mental interlinkages that constitute the person and her attitudes take up particular forms of basic

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rationality, among which is the Aristotelian practical syllogism. The Aristotelian syllogism connects desire with action and is thus supposed to make action in ambivalence impossible or irrational. I will argue that this expresses a misunderstanding of the character of basic rationality. Understanding the status of the Aristotelian syllogism as compatible with action in ambivalence still requires that we attain a positive conception of such action. We should examine how contrary attitudes become linked in the subject’s behavior. To this end, we will investigate the single attitude and especially the single desire. The chapter supports the book’s claim that the way we talk of mental attitudes and live with them obeys a “soft logic.” The general account depicts mental attitudes as central aspects of the lives of subjects as subjects, such that any expressions and linkages that fix an attitude are all the same also accidental to it. A particular longing, belief, or desire on the part of the subject can always take on new forms as part of her basic rationality. I shall argue that in the case of desires such possibilities enter into the constitutive relations between desire and fulfillment. It may be clear in view of earlier chapters that the soft character of attitudes enables our ambivalent oppositions to assume a fertile manifestation in our lives, but this still leaves us with the special puzzle bound up with ambivalence of desire. The subject may allow her sorrow and joy to jointly guide her in interesting ways, but how can she advance her contrary desires? The key lies in a Wittgensteinian linguistic characterization, according to which the subject may act on behalf of both desires since the flexibility of desire is related also to the contents, or the objects, of the desires. The softness of wanting that P (“P” standing for some proposition, e.g., that we be in touch with the colleague in the above example) is carried over to P, such that there is a range to that which the person wants, and does not want, to achieve. It may be that an act or a state of affairs is not entirely and yet to a certain extent is in fact what the subject desires. Owing to this, the ambivalent person can advance, and even fulfill, both her desire that P and her desire that not P, while preserving their quality as contrary desires. Since the object of desire can be used to define the action that may fulfill or promote it—such action would constitute “an intentional fulfillment of P,” or “an action in order that P”—contrary desires raise the problem of contrary actions in order that P and in order that not-P. I will simplify matters in what follows by focusing for the most part on conflicts in which this problem is explicit, and the conflicting actions (or the action and avoidance) are also the objects of the conflicting desires. When the subject wants to A and does not want to A (Eurydice wants and does want to return to life), she would often be able to do something that would reasonably hold both as her desired A-ing, and as her desired not A-ing. (Eurydice exemplifies the structure only indirectly. She ultimately does not return to life. However, she returns to life for a short time while staying dead, and also makes the effort to reach the upper world, and doesn’t make it.)



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1. Soft Subjectivity, Soft Objects of Desire: A Preview Let us retrace the two points of view—unity in plurality and the single desire—together. Aristotle writes: [I]n matters of production it [the soul] must immediately act. If, for example, everything sweet must be tasted, and this is sweet, in that it is one example of particular sweet things, a person who is capable and not prevented must act on this immediately. (Aristotle 2000/Aristotle 2002, Book VII, 1147a29–31)6

The Aristotelian syllogism captures a feature of the (basic) rationality of action. This, however, should not be taken to imply that the conclusion line of the syllogism actually tells us what one does, or would rationally do, when the assumptions hold. If it did, then it would be dubious whether ambivalence between action-based desires even exists, and whether it is rational, and to defend its existence and rationality one would have to appeal, as in Baker 2010 and Marino 2011, to the prioritization of the desires. All the more, no room would be left for significant action that does not choose between the poles. I will propose, however, that Aristotelian syllogisms neither need to, nor could, infer for us what is actually or rationally done, and this is because the syllogism concerns a unity in plurality, and not a so-called person who desires A, believes B, and that is all. The application of the practical syllogism in a situation combines with other basically rational connections of the relevant engagements, without ever being exhausted by these relations. The notion of basic rationality also guides our investigation of the single desire. To recapitulate, mental attitudes, be they beliefs, emotions, or desires, do not make sense by themselves, and their basic rationality depicts them as holistic and as “soft.” They are constituted by the behavior and consciousness that express them and by their connections with other attitudes and further engagements. At the same time, no characterization of an attitude may define it, and whatever character it takes may be transcended into new connections. As we have seen in chapter 4, ambivalence ceases to seem to disallow action, once the soft individuality of attitudes and their ties is acknowledged. People act on attitudes in light of other attitudes, including opposing ones. (You express your desire to rest by yawning and complaining, because, fearing that if you rested now you wouldn’t be able to go back to your tasks, you also do not want to rest. Your anger makes you yell and fuss precisely because you are fighting your opposing indifference to the matter at hand.) Moreover, attitudes can be wholehearted—the connections with other engagements do not fixate them—precisely because they might lack or lose their wholeheartedness and find new expressions. Thus, ambivalent desires, emotions, or judgments have expression in one’s life, and their expression may furthermore be fruitful and constitute a

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direction—an ambivalent coherence—in the person’s life.7 However, desires are not only expressible in all sort of ways, but bound up, in particular, with the realization of their aims. Does the syllogism exclude at least the possibility to realize the conflicting aims? This chapter answers negatively and shows that the agent’s opposing desires may be (to some extent) jointly fulfilled and, in particular, that ambivalent agents may achieve a joint fulfillment or satisfaction of the conflicting desires. This has to do with the suppleness of the desires’ objects and the way that the soft identity of the individual’s attitudes involves a range for the object of desire. Suppose that Sarah wants to plant a tree in her garden. What would planting the tree consist in? Whatever the reply may be, the point is that we turn for an answer to the tree planting as an object of Sarah’s desire. If Sarah expresses her plans to her family and they then plant a tree, this may satisfy Sarah’s desire even though, originally, the option of letting someone else do the actual planting was not suggested by her desire. To know if Sarah’s desire to plant the tree was satisfied, we must consider it. We need to know if certain possibilities for “planting the tree” are permitted by the character that her desire takes up or manifests. Had Sarah already scheduled a time to do the planting, and was she attentive to botanical tips? Is she, now, gratefully smiling at the sight of the new tree? It is, then, at least possibly appropriate to include in the range of what she wanted both a new tree in her garden and to have planted one with her own hands. Of course it might be the case that a person wants to plant a tree, such that a tree planted for her is nothing but a frustration of her desire; but this only means that the desire does not permit this particular possibility of fulfillment, rather than that she wants a range-less “tree planting” to hold. As Wittgenstein notes in a related discussion: “[B]ut no more are there any rules for how high one throws the ball in tennis, or how hard; yet tennis is a game for all that and has rules too” (1953, §68). Someone may even want to plant a tree “exactly as she plans it” (and exactly as she unreflectively “imagines” it), and yet although at the time she could not have imagined that a friend would drop by her place at the time of planting, it might be that their joint planting would fulfill for her this desire for that exact planting.8 In any event, range is important because it marks the desired planting as soft. It does not generate a complex desired object with hard identity. What we see is not that Sarah wants both to plant a tree herself and to have a tree planted in her garden, nor is it that she wants a particular one of these things to happen. Instead, the object of her desire consists in each of the specifications, and also transcends each of them. The object of desire has a range. However, if one is ambivalent about attaining something, one desires the very thing that one rejects. Were the object ranges of the contrary desires to constitute com-possible objects—as when a person wants to have a tree planted and only does not want to plant



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it with her own hands—then the conflict would disappear. Let us thus turn to consider the notion of ambivalent compromise, and some forms it may take under ambivalence of desire. From there, we can go on to analyze compromise action. There a person intentionally acts (or, more generally, behaves in a way that forms a unitary direction in her life) to fulfill both opposed desires regarding precisely the same object. 2. Ambivalence and Compromise Let us consider a person who is offered the opportunity to participate in a daring expedition and is ambivalent about it. He wants to do it, but is scared to. It may be that he ultimately goes along but tries to avoid the more risky parts, or tries to slightly alter the nature of the expedition and thus seeks a partial engagement in the desired and yet threatening activity. Another possibility is that he declines participation in the expedition and joins a less-dangerous trip as a form of compensation. Perhaps he is no longer ambivalent: he no longer wishes to go on a daring expedition, and instead sets his sights on a safer trip. Maybe he remains ambivalent, and the safe and pleasant trek is to some extent a disappointment since it lacks the excitement involved in risk-taking. Generally speaking, the relations of desires (and action-guiding judgments) with action allow both for compromise solutions (or dissolutions) of the ambivalence and for compromises expressive of ambivalence. In a compromise solution, two conflicting desires cancel each other out in favor of a new desire. In an ambivalent compromise, the contrary attitudes are preserved, perhaps with some alteration in their character, but the opposition between them is maintained. The term “compromise” is taken from the discourse of interpersonal relations. Interpersonal relations are a problematic model for understanding ambivalence; hence the term should be adopted with caution. Freud’s writings involve a notion of compromise that is more in line with our needs. For Freud, ambivalence is a fundamental human condition. A person’s life is everywhere and necessarily ambivalent, and many of the modes of living such a life or dealing with ambivalence are compromises (see chapter 6, section 3). Since opposed attitudes involve the subject with contrary life possibilities, ambivalence raises the question of compromise. Compromise would be a life possibility that complies, to a certain extent, with the two conflicting attitudes. The more it supplants these attitudes, the more it constitutes a compromise resolution of ambivalence. We, on the other hand, are interested in ambivalent compromises, such that the ambivalence is not resolved, and is manifested in behavior, consciousness, and attitudes of compromise. How should this notion of compromise be understood? The first thing to note is that there is

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an important sense in which ambivalence entails an ambivalent compromise. Assuming that mental attitudes must find expression in our lives, and that the relevant time span for this to take place may be relatively broad, the contrary attitudes will both ultimately find expression, and in this sense a compromise will occur. However, the notion of a compromise between two contrary attitudes becomes more interesting the more it includes the normative aspect of a successful compromise (see chapter 6, 151ff.). It also becomes increasingly interesting the more the compromise appears as an inherently joint expression of the pair of conflicting attitudes and the relationship between them, that is, the more the ambivalence constitutes a unitary direction taken up in the compromise. A compromise in ambivalence may meet all of the above without constituting a compromise in the additional sense of a partial fulfillment of both opposed desires, that is, without being a compromise action. Compromise action consists in behavior that has for the subject the sense, intentionality, or direction, of double fulfillment. More broadly defined, a compromise action contributes to the joint fulfillment of both desires. The relation of desire with fulfillment invites an area of intermediary kinds of expression in which the person who wants something pursues its fulfillment even if we would not describe her conduct as the fulfillment or intentional promotion of the desire, and the same relation also allows for a certain vagueness in the question of whether some expression constitutes a fulfillment. In sharpening the notion of joint fulfillment, we will proceed through this intermediate zone of compromise behavior.9 When we move from ambivalence in general to ambivalence of desire, and are, furthermore, interested in compromise behavior related to the fulfillment of the contrary desires, the three characteristics noted above resurface. The behavior, again, almost necessarily has the quality of compromise. If one desires something, then one tends to realize it, and if that is so, then given a sufficient time span, one’s behavior takes both desires into account. Just as it is hard to say that some persons’ sorrows have no expression, it is also hard to say that a person wants to go on a trek and yet that his behavior reveals nothing of this engagement. Does, for example, the person avoid the company of his trekker friends so as not to have to confront his decision not to join them? If he is not at all disposed to go on the trip, he would have no need to do so. Likewise, conflicts of desire allow for inherently joint expressions of the two antithetical poles: the act or behavioral array would have a direction, and this direction would be clarified by the person’s pair of opposing desires. The journey that Orpheus, who wanted and yet did not want to bring Eurydice back to the land of the living, took to the underworld, may serve as example here. An ambivalent compromise between desires can also be successful in various ways in accordance with the third and normative notion of



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compromise. However, here again a compromise in ambivalence may meet all the above without being a partial fulfillment of the opposed desires. It may be easy to miss the strong sense in which opposed desires enable compromise actions and invite them; or alternatively we may ignore the relations and continuity between compromise actions and other forms of ambivalent compromise. Both points can be better appreciated if we note that the concept of “compromise action” excludes diverse forms of behavior, or life, with direction, in which both desires are positively expressed.10 In particular, the subject may not merely express each of the desires, but also try to satisfy them. His behavior may, all the more, actually satisfy to a certain extent both desires. Even then, it would not be a strict compromise action unless we could say of the joint satisfaction of the desires that it constitutes the sense or intentionality of the behavior. Thus, suppose the person in our example replies affirmatively to the offer to participate in the expedition, but his tone causes his friends to leave him out; or, suppose that he replies affirmatively but his clear discomfort makes them change the character of the journey. In both stories our protagonist acts, and his action constitutes compromise behavior. In both stories, he can also be seen as attempting to attain both sides: his words enhance his joining the daring journey, his tone enhances his abstaining. In the second story, he actually has a certain success in both opposed attempts, but, supposing that this success is not deliberate,11 in neither of these stories does the person act to satisfy the contrary desires together. Compromise action is of course a form of ambivalent compromise behavior. Furthermore, we laid particular importance on the joint character as well as the success of compromises, and compromise action is necessarily a joint expression of the antithetical poles, as the concept of action implies the unity of the behavior. What about the notion of successful compromise? Compromises never entirely fail, as the different attitudes find expression within it. Compromise action guarantees, however, a clearer dimension of success. Since the success of a desire lies in its fulfillment, a reasonable fulfillment of the two desires constitutes a success in terms of each of the desires and of the ambivalence between them. The ambivalent compromises that characterize our behavior, consciousness, or life in general may have an internal rhyme and reason to some modest degree. A smile frozen on the face of a person, for instance, charts the direction of her ambivalent feelings. However, ambivalence is often suspected not so much of being impossible or totally dysfunctional, as of engendering a life of misery, stagnancy, and impotence. Yet even this cannot be granted, since the ambivalent person can manifest in her life and behavior a direction in a stronger sense. The ambivalent life and behavior can have a direction in the sense that the conflicting attitudes are preserved and transformed in a fruitful manner; the person might behave in a way that responds and contributes to a

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developing reality; and, shaping her ambivalence, it may function as a center around which the person shapes a broader part of her life and attitudes. Ambivalence of desire seems to be bound up with a special problem of functioning. Moreover, it indeed implies the necessity of failure. Ambivalence of desire may be successful in many different respects: the two desires may both have excellent grounds, a desire can be held precisely by virtue of the opposed desire, or the existence or the character of the ambivalence may be enriching, clear-sighted, and so on. And yet it must remain a failure, since the success of one desire by definition entails the failure of its opposite. At the same time, compromise action softens the failure—we are able to function in the sense that the desires guide us toward their joint fulfillment. But, in truth, why should we not function when we have ambivalent desires? The main suspect is the Aristotelian syllogism, and it is blameless. Admittedly, it entails action from dyads of desire (or judgment) and belief, such that contrary desires imply acting in a certain way and imply abstaining from that action. However, regardless of whether we are ambivalent, the syllogism is not practical in the sense of determining the actual actions of a person. One’s attitudes, including one’s various desires, do not exist in isolation. Part of the interdependence between attitudes is that they determine an action together. This is true also when one is not ambivalent. When a couple goes to a movie precisely on a day on which their children are invited to a friend’s, the desire to go to a movie, the desire not to leave the children home alone, and the desire to take advantage of free time converge into the aforesaid action. The pattern of the Aristotelian syllogism allows us to infer the action, in some formulation or other, from one of the attitudes of the parents, or a combination of them, along with the appropriate beliefs. Any Aristotelian syllogism we choose is, however, merely one facet of the rationality or sense of the parents’ going to a movie, a rationality whose facets cannot be gathered into a whole.12 While the above does not constitute an interpretation of Aristotle’s view of the practical syllogism, and although his treatment of akrasia suggests some discomfort regarding practical conflicts, it should be noted that, contrary to the general view, his virtue ethics, and especially his doctrine of the mean, may well characterize rational action in terms of ambivalence and compromise.13 All the same, it is Aristotle’s sense of discomfort that has been inherited by contemporary philosophy of agency, wherein the close relationship between ambivalence and compromise action is rarely identified.14 As we have seen in chapter 2, insofar as ambivalence is not disavowed, it is often supposed to entail paralysis or vacillation. Section 2.4 mentioned particular ways in which ambivalence of desire, and rational action under such ambivalence, have been acknowledged, such as behaving for years as if one of the poles exhausts one’s attitudes (Carr 2009); strict action on one of the poles while expressing each of the attitudes, independently of the other, in



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one’s broader behavior (Nussbaum 1985; Stocker 1990, chapter 4); or neatly dividing one’s life into independent courses of action (Gunnarsson 2014). If ambivalence implies that the conflicting attitudes are not isolated from each other, it is not surprising that, more implicitly, these accounts have recourse to compromise behavior, which may be substantial and successful, and in some cases comprises compromise action. Thus, Gunnarsson argues that the division is accompanied by deliberation over the opposed attitudes together, and Stocker, Nussbaum, and Carr allow for reparations and regrets in accordance with the judgment not acted on. Yet such reparations and deliberations would suggest that the person is demonstrating compromise behavior or possibly even a compromise action. The practical syllogism does not prevent the subject from performing a compromise action, since it does not determine the action, but rather only guides it. On the other hand, it does not clarify for us what the nature of the compromise between contrary desires might be. Basic rationality is such that a person is not condemned to perform an action by any list of attitudes. She ties together attitudes in her life. When she performs an action of compromise between contrary desires, she ties together the contrary desires in her action. And yet how does she do this? We will examine in section 4 an example where actions (or ways in life that fulfill a desire) comprise the explicit objects of the person’s contrary desires. First however, let us take a step back. 3. Ambivalence Is Not Like a Committee If this book has adequately analyzed ambivalence, then even such cases in which the person’s conduct is unidirectional—the person acts on one pole, or her behavior and feeling appear to reveal only one side of her ambivalence—are unidirectional only relatively, or from some perspective. Given that the person is ambivalent, the other pole also finds expression in her life, while the paths of expression are directly or indirectly interlinked. We have seen one way that this may happen in the story, told in section 1 of the Introduction, of Shaharazad’s self-overcoming (weakness of the will is another example—even the weak-willed action itself is often taken in a way that also demonstrates the person’s judgment that she ought not to act on the attitude on which she all the same acts). Other forms of dealing with one’s ambivalence similarly require a unitary subject whose ambivalence constitutes an interlinkage between the opposing attitudes, and is concretely shaped by the interlinkages of the poles and the ambivalence with further engagements. Compromise behavior, including strict compromise action, thus undermines both the objection from subjectivity to the possibility of ambivalence and the objection from behavior.

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Here, however, it might be objected that these elements can be distinguished. If ambivalence does not have to take the form of wavering or paralysis, and one can even rationally act under conflicting desires, must this imply a subject who is a unity in plurality? Perhaps, the objection may run, a person, or an ambivalent person, is a plural creature through and through, who is similar to a committee between whose members the ambivalence is, so to speak, divided. Construed as a committee, the subject is supposed to be divided in respect to the opposed attitudes, but unified in respect to action. Although we have seen that ambivalence is a phenomenon of conflictual unity at all levels, let us accept this model on its own terms and look more closely at what these involve. Let “an ambivalent subject” depict the person as a unitary subject who can as such be ambivalent. Like the ambivalent subject, a committee-subject—an ambivalent human being modeled on a committee— is capable of significant behavior. Committees influence the world through their decisions and through other responses to the need to decide. We may suppose for example that a committee is, to begin with, unable to come into agreement, and thus postpones the decision and appoints a subcommittee. The subcommittee enters a period of discussions, and in the meantime the situation changes. The committee work took a certain direction that allows for the need for decision to disappear or to be acted on in new ways. Or we may consider the paradigmatic case in which the committee takes a vote and acts upon it. If there is a particular policy, the members are divided about, then they may vote as to whether to take it, or alternatively they may vote on a compromise position. In all these cases, we can try to imagine similar proceedings for the committee-subject that would constitute a direction for “her” behavior even though there is no “she” to be actually and unitarily ambivalent. Conversely, the model of the committee-subject is supposed to account for rational ambivalence and ambivalent agency by virtue of committee behavior that has a direction in a sense that is reminiscent of intentional behavior and intentionality-based behavior with direction of human subjects.15 The idea is to model ambivalent engagements—for example, strict compromise action, intentional choice that is made as part of the person’s ambivalence, and the postponement of a decision—on committee behavior that has a direction in a related sense. Suppose, by contrast, that a fire erupts during a committee session and makes everybody run, which prevents a decision. Let us further suppose that due to other particularities of the case, one of the positions consequently gains the upper hand. The notion of the committee-subject is supposed to assimilate significant action and behavior under ambivalence to cases like making a decision or postponing a decision, while excluding cases of running from fire. This being granted, we should consider how committees and their relevant behavior are to be understood. It will be enough to examine the paradigmatic



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case in which the committee takes a vote on the issue and hands the decision over to those who are responsible to fulfill it. We have to ask to whom we ascribe the intentionality or direction of the behavior, or whose position is the committee’s position. Organizations sometimes apply procedures and practices without anybody caring about the results, such that the “intentionality” of the actions reached never goes beyond the organization itself. Action on ambivalence cannot however be modeled on semi-mechanical institutional operation, because the model is intended to explain a phenomenon that involves (two opposed) attitudes as to the matter to be promoted or frustrated, and these attitudes are as relevant to the decisions and actions actually taken. The intentionality of disputing committees leads us accordingly to the committee members. Philosophers are deeply divided regarding the character of groups, and in particular as to whether groups and groups’ intentions are reducible to the members and their intentionality. It is more often agreed that groups imply individuals and that the “intentionality” of a group can be characterized in a way that refers to attitudes and other engagements of individuals.16 This is in any case a condition on the understanding of committees inasmuch as they provide the model for the committee-subject, for the whole idea of this model is that the divided members act together. Once, however, we take into account the specific character of the members’ involvement, the model collapses: we are considering a divided committee that manages to reach a decision—it does not matter whether the decision endorses one of the disputed positions or a compromise. There are various ways that a decision can be reached, and, in particular, the members might have changed their mind during the process, such that they wholeheartedly support the decision. If this is the general case, then committees can at best be a model for the resolution of ambivalence, rather than for action under ambivalence. (Chapter 6 and chapter 8, section 2, show that the resolution of ambivalence engages ambivalent unitary subjects and that the possibility of resolving ambivalence implies that there are also other ways to deal with ambivalence.) In any case, in the standard situation of committee work, the vote does not resolve the dispute. Instead, the committee members adopt, in a sense, the committee position, yet they do not adopt it as their own position, but rather as a position that they are ready to promote by letting it be enacted. When they care sufficiently about their own positions, they will be ambivalent.17 Thus, underlying the possibility of a majority vote is the possibility for the committee members to be ambivalent.18 In regard to real committees this only implies that the ambivalence of the committee members must also be understood under the model of the committee-subject. The problem is, however, that if the ambivalent person is a committee-subject, then the analysis of ambivalence has to involve something

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analogous to the way that the committee position is ambivalently adopted by committee members. Yet what could that be? If the members of the “mind committee” are the very positions, that is, the attitudes of the person, we seem to be speaking of a position that adopts a position: but this is meaningless. The members thus appear to be quasi-subjects, but then the notion of the committee-subject is useless. The attitude that a quasi-subject maintains in favor of the committee position would often be opposed to “her” own unabandoned attitude on the issue, and thus the committee-subject would be composed of quasi-subjects who are themselves ambivalent. Should we cling to the model and depict quasi-subjects as subcommittees, nothing prevents the recurrence of the problem at the new level, and accordingly an infinite regression. Ambivalence, thus, may not be understood in terms of a plural mind whose parts may act or deliberate together.19 The ambivalent subject must be acknowledged, but we have to examine in detail how it is that she can act to fulfill both of her conflicting desires together. 4. Compromise Actions When we want to do something, our desire has a range. Thus, if someone wishes to go to the movies, he can fully realize his desire in various ways. The differences between many ways of performing an action can be insignificant. But sometimes, including in ambivalence, such differences matter. The range pertaining to the desired object may receive an explicit and significant character. It is important that it is able to receive it—the range is not pregiven, that is, it does not comprise a kind of closed super-object of the desire; but rather, the object of the desire participates in the ongoing shaping of the specific openness of the desire. Steven Arkonovich has pointed out in a 2012 paper that our philosophical concerns with desires call for a reconsideration of their relations to satisfaction, and that the understanding of conflicts of desire is crucial to this. His account provides us part of what we need when he writes: “Another way [Adam] Morton might have made his point is to have said that we should reject an artificial view of how desire functions. . . . We should say that even desires with precisely specified contents can be satisfied by a range of states of affairs, wider or narrower as the case varies” (60). The present analysis does not agree, however, with the ways that Morton and Arkonovich develop this idea. First, when Morton holds that satisfaction has a range, what he means is that the specified content is not desired. Morton distinguishes between the agent’s real desire or value and what are mere options for satisfaction and assimilates conflicts of desire into



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“conflicts” between certain options for satisfying the things for which the person cares. He is doubtless right that in such cases a person may do well to look for other ways to satisfy his values. The question, however, is: whether genuine conflicts—in which the person actually cares for, or wants, contrary things—make action on both her desires impossible, or whether the notion of satisfying a specified desire is bound up with a range that allows for compromise action between the opposed desires precisely at the level that they are opposed?20 Second, Arkonovich himself raises the point of range in order to argue that certain conflicts between desires should be understood in terms of conflicts between the emotions that the desires respectively express. Thus, a conflict between a desire to insult and to commend would primarily be a conflict between a desire expressive of envy and a desire expressive of good will. Here there is real conflict between one’s desires, but it is not—so Arkonovich tells us—a conflict between the contents of the desires. According to Arkonovich, a mere desire to insult is compatible with a desire to compliment (thus, we may note, the question of compromise action would not even arise), but performing both actions does not express the emotions, and in this sense the desires stand in conflict. While desires can also conflict by expressing opposed emotions, our question in this chapter is whether we can act when desires are opposed as regards their contents, for example, when a person both wants to insult her neighbor and does not want to insult him. When a person is ambivalent between two antithetical desires to act, their opposition requires that in performing a desired action that is paradigmatic to her desire, the subject does precisely that which her contrary desire rules out. Actions, however, do not have to be performed in a paradigmatic manner. Invoking the notion of conceptual inflection should help to make this clearer:21 a concept may be said to be inflected, that is, assume a certain character, in various contexts to which the concept is relevant and, in particular, in various such contexts in the lives of individuals. The concept of “doing A” (“A” naming some action), for example, is inflected under someone’s desire to do A, or, again, it is inflected under a person’s opposed desires. In other words, the concept has to be understood according to the context: it is one thing for Orpheus to start a journey and another thing for our trekker to do so. Ambivalence may, however, lead to further inflection of the concept of doing A. First, it is possible that we now want to do A under a certain new inflection of “doing A” (or of “A”), and that this desire is different from, and realizable together with, that which we do not desire. If this is so, then we are no longer ambivalent. But, second, the inflection of doing A can also come to include an inflection based on the fact that the old inflection continues to play a role in our desires: we want to do A (and also not to do it) with a certain inflection.

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However, we take doing A under another inflection as satisfying the desire to a reasonable extent. Let us consider a person who wishes and does not wish to practice law. He wants to be a lawyer only in order to satisfy his parents’ expectations. For his own part, he would rather devote his life to literature. He finds a firm that is willing, in exchange for a low salary and non-advancement, to hire him in a part-time capacity, and in working there he realizes a compromise between his two conflicting desires. This is easily understood, but formally it sounds odd. He practices law, and as such wholly satisfies one desire, while the contrary desire remains wholly unsatisfied. Does it not? No, it does not. What our protagonist does is not precisely practicing law. The point is that the desire to practice law takes on a certain explicit range in this person’s ambivalence. He desires and at the same time does not desire to practice law in the broadest sense—that is, even the part-time job sabotages his desire not to be a lawyer, while satisfying his desire to be one. But he also wants to be a lawyer a stronger sense—it is what his parents want: that he be a lawyer and not just work in the field, that he practice law seriously, that he make it his career. And, of course, if he does not want to be a lawyer at all—his literary aspirations render it a waste of time—then he does not want to be a lawyer in a strong sense. If our protagonist wants to work as a lawyer but does not want to work as a full-blown one, then he is not ambivalent at all. If he wants and does not want to be a full-blown lawyer, or wants and does not want to practice law to any extent, then he is ambivalent. Yet his desires must have a range if the part-time legal work serves as a proper compromise for him; otherwise, it would satisfy only one of his contrary desires. Our protagonist can be ambivalent, and live a life of compromise, because both inflections of “practicing law” are relevant to his desires.22 By his minor job, he satisfies to a certain extent his desire to be a lawyer. Admittedly, he satisfies it only to a certain extent, for he wants to really be a lawyer. But to some extent he does. After all a job as a lawyer is a job as a lawyer. What is important here is that the range is constituted through the way that the person is living with his ambivalence. The double inflection of practicing law is significant for his contrary desires, since his desire to be a lawyer as his parents want is linked with his desire not to be a lawyer, but rather a writer, in a manner that raises these particular inflections, and since he is seeking a way of living with such ambivalence. It is not that he is seeking any arbitrary “compromise” or that he is interested in whatever aspect that would allow him to live with ambivalence. His contrary desires induce him to realize them in a way that is shaped by the character of the ambivalence and the poles.



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What he is doing fulfills the desire to be a lawyer in the interest of what is important to his parents—that he be enough of a lawyer in the sense of serious work; it fulfills his contrary desire to avoid the practicing of law and dedicate his time and efforts to literature.23 The desire of our subject is truly ambivalent and his employment at the firm partially fulfills both poles. One might say that he “wants to be a fullfledged lawyer, or in any case a lawyer,” and at the same time “does not want to be a lawyer at all, but in any case definitely not a ‘real lawyer.’” The fact that the compromise action and the existence of ambivalence depend on the sense acquired by the person’s actual desires serves to emphasize the flexibility of the desires. The flexibility of desire sometimes allows for a compromise that recedes from the object of desire. Suppose now that the person, who wants and does not want to be a lawyer in this version as well, and on the same grounds, turns to literary editing. Formally, it appears that he fully realizes the negative desire—he is not a lawyer—and fully renounces the positive desire. We understand the act as a compromise between his opposed desires, however, if we take into account, that in working as a literary editor as a way of devoting his life to literature, the person has in a sense become a lawyer—he is leading a life in which some aspirations are given up in exchange for comfort. Hence, our protagonist is not entirely fulfilling his desire not to be a lawyer, and is actually, in a certain respect, fulfilling his desire to be a lawyer. And this is all despite the fact that he wants and does not want to be a lawyer in truth and not metaphorically. What is happening here? This analysis will be less surprising when we recall that attributions of ambivalence, as well as first-person linguistic expressions, need not always be formulated through syntactic opposition of sentences. In the case under discussion, the action (or occupation) that is desired and rejected is subject to redescription in a manner that clarifies what makes it desirable, and a different action that relates to this redescription serves as the ambivalent compromise.24 The person says, perhaps, that he wants to be a lawyer as is expected of him but that he does not want to give up literature. He may also be explicit in expressing ambivalence on the issue of practicing law. All the same, if his positive desire can also be described as a desire to fulfill his parents’ expectations, he might be able to form a compromise action that deviates from the practicing of law, but where a sort of realization of his desire to make his mother and father happy is discernible. If the person does not practice law in any form, it can be said that his desire to work as a lawyer has not at all been satisfied; but saying otherwise also makes sense. Surely, his behavior only (more or less) fulfills the desire not to work as a lawyer. Yet we cannot ignore the fact that he does not act to achieve this desire alone, but rather seeks to realize both of his opposing desires, that is,

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he performs a compromise action. His desire not to be a lawyer reflects, let us remember, a desire to devote himself solely to writing, and this is frustrated by his taking a career as a literary editor. Is it advisable to say, then, that what he wants is not to be a lawyer but rather to make his mother and father happy? Not really. The desire to make them happy is opposed to his flinching from becoming a lawyer, and in this sense, at least, it is a desire to be a lawyer. His choice of career is a compromise on his part, and is understood in light of the contrary desires. Even if satisfying parental expectations stands at the root of his positive desire, this particular satisfaction of expectations demands that he practice law. Our protagonist may not be working as a lawyer, but this means that he is not entirely fulfilling the expectations of his parents. Moreover, the ascription of a desire to work as a lawyer may fit the way the positive desire is presented by himself or by others, as well as contribute to the understanding of the description of the desire in terms of the parents’ wishes. For example, it may be said of him that he wants to work as a lawyer, and by virtue of this, fulfill his parents’ expectations. Literary editing is not practicing law, but if it is ever a compromise under ambivalence regarding practicing law, it is then sufficiently related to the relevant inflection of the concept of practicing law. Whatever the details are, the concrete formulation of the positive desire as a desire to be a lawyer is in such cases significant, determining the positive action as the person first and foremost desires it. Wittgenstein wrote: “It is in language that an expectation and its fulfilment make contact” (1953, §445). Given a narrow understanding of this position, the above analysis suggests that it must be rejected. When an ambivalent person performs a compromise action, such action may fulfill the desires without fitting the way that they are actually or potentially ascribed or linguistically expressed. More broadly understood, Wittgenstein stresses in §437–§445 that the relation of wishes, plans, and expectations to satisfaction is linguistic, and such a linguistic relation is implied in the concept of compromise action as we have analyzed it. Compromise actions make contact with desires in language, but this does not mean that they meet within a particular linguistic expression. Nor would they do so even in cases in which the compromise is described in terms of the object of ambivalence, since the behavior realizes the desire by virtue of its range. Yet actions meet desires in language: when a person performing a compromise action reinflects the concepts entailed in the desire, such reinflection is among the possibilities of the mental terms and of the terms concerning the desire’s objects; and the terms, and how they are used or could possibly be used, similarly underlie our ascription of concepts to that person. Even when he desires A and as a compromise does B, rather than A, this is made possible by language. He desires A whereas “A” is such that “B-ing” may constitute a compromise between a desire to A and a desire not to A.



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5. Concluding Remarks To summarize, conflicting desires interlink in a basically rational manner both with each other and with the person’s further engagements, behavior included. We have found in particular that the structure of the Aristotelean syllogism does not threaten action in ambivalence. Opposing desires invite actions that fulfill, or attempt to fulfill, one or both of the desires and often allow one to connect them such as to act on both conjointly, despite, and yet in accordance with, their opposition. This book could hardly begin to map the numerous ways we daily form strict compromise actions, or, more generally, take steps to promote the joint fulfillment of our pairs of opposing desires. Political engagement, for example, suggests numerous modes of ambivalence and of compromise behavior, including modes in which people strive (one by one, or together) to jointly act on both poles of their ambivalence. Activists may be committed to conflicting causes, political desires may stand in conflict with more personal desires, and a desire may lead to a conflicting desire; and in these and other cases, people often form compromise actions. Workers who want to freely unionize or strike, yet fear to lose their jobs, would often try hard to make their actions remain within the sphere of the employer’s tolerance or to extend it. Members of oppressed groups who appreciate the importance of separatism but also see it as problematic can produce appropriate compromises by welcoming support from members of the oppressing group, or by taking into consideration everybody’s well-being in imagining a political future. For Malcolm X, such an ambivalent compromise regarding separation constituted the significance of his visit to Mecca, where he found an Islam that unites people of all colors (X and Haley 1973, esp. chapter 17). Since the meaning and success of political action are especially sensitive to circumstances and additional actors, activists would often go for less than what they want if they appreciate that winning would be losing. Fadwa Tuqan, for example, citing Emile Touma, mentions that the Arab activists for independence from the Ottoman Empire had understood that the new regional forces would grab the opportunity to colonize the Middle East. Thus, wanting independence from the Ottoman Empire and yet not wanting it, they chose to demand autonomy within the empire’s frame (Tuqan 1990, chapter 3, 15–16). The chapter focused on the most difficult case in which a person wants to A and does not to want to A and acts in a way that to some extent is both A-ing and not A-ing. When the aim of the desires is detached from an immediate or complete action, a wider field may open for acting with both poles in a creative and successful manner. This is particularly true when the relevant actions are neither a complete fulfillment nor a mere means, but an aspect of the object of desire. For example, some twenty years ago it became fashionable among

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Israeli drivers to include a blue square with the letters IL (abbreviation for Israel) alongside their automobile license plate numbers. It seems that the Israeli law required only that the license number appear on the plate, and yet the government vehicle licensing bureaus had at some point begun to offer, and many enthusiastically acquired, license plates with the “IL” for Israel added. These plates are fascinating in that they satisfy an ambivalent desire combining patriotism, or the desire to be patriotic and to demonstrate it, on the one hand, with an unwillingness to belong to the “patria” or identify with it, on the other. The form of the license plate imitates that of license plates in other countries, particularly the United States. It expresses a desire to be “like the rest of the world” or “like America.” Affixing such a license plate to one’s car, according to this analysis, serves as partial realization of two contrary desires simultaneously. If we consider the driver’s ambivalence toward her own attitude, we can say that she successfully manages to flinch from the Israeli collective identity by reinforcing it. 5.1 Compromise Action Is an Inherent Possibility of Desire The analysis of the possibility of ambivalent action with both conflicting desires exposed a feature of basic rationality that is specific to desires. As in the case of other engagements, so do desires, actions, and their interconnections have a soft identity: while they are defined through their mutual relations, they must transcend any particular interlinkages, otherwise their connections would not confer sense on the engagements and the subject would not be basically rational in having them. Differently put, this book regards attitudes and other engagements as entities—their mental plurality is presupposed in any mental attribution—but they are entities for which a “hard identity” conception must fail. What we have now found is that in the case of desire, the soft identity appears in particular in the relation of desire and satisfaction, such that to the extent that the expression “the object of desire” is defined by the desire, objects of desires have soft identity. We saw that this soft, or open, identity, enables the ambivalent joint fulfillment of irreducibly opposed desires. What a person does might lie for her within the range of both of her opposed desires. We may conclude by noting that this possibility is neither a miracle nor some accidental property of desires on which the whole structure of ambivalence of desires depends. On the contrary, the openness of the object of desire—or more precisely, the openness that consists in the gap between potential and actual satisfaction—provides the nucleus of the concept of desire. The object of desire has been described in this chapter as open due to the openness of desire. This relation can be analyzed, and the first point to mark



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is that desires are paradigmatically about one’s life or one’s world. Even when a person wants a new government in her country, this has to be understood in terms of what such a government means for her, and in particular—if this desire is more than a mere wish—of what she might do to promote its fulfillment. The object of desire is, thus, inseparable from the person’s subjectivity and takes part in its concrete but not fully determinate character. So far as this goes, however, the openness of the objects could still be an accidental feature of desires, as if—for some reason or other (or for no reason)—desires have objects that are themselves potential concrete aspects of the person (including actions), or are closely related to such aspects. Yet a closer examination shows that the object of desire has the openness of subjectivity precisely because of its role in the logic of desire. Let me explain. A desire, like every attitude, consists in its interlinkages with various other attitudes, instances of behavior, and so forth, and is at the same time open to different interlinkages. Our concern, however, is with those directions of openness, which are essential to desire in particular and, moreover, to actionbased desire (action-based desire may be contrasted with mere wishes, the concept of which appears, however, to be secondary). This brings us back to the practical syllogism, since the syllogism describes desire as action-based: given a desire and a suitable judgment, an action that fulfills the desire follows. In other words, to want that P is, in particular, to be directed toward fulfilling it—the possibility of wanting it by (suitably) acting is inherently called upon. The action realizing the desire comprises the desire, presupposes it, and shapes it. Action stands in the middle between the desire and its object. It is not only, in a sense, the desire itself. It is also almost what one wants: one might want the action itself (“I would like to read a book now”). Sometimes a formulation in terms of a desired action in fact goes beyond the action, as when somebody wants to go home or to the movies. Yet, even when one wants something distinct from the action, the action (paradigmatically) follows. Action follows as that which the desire—qua an attitude aiming at something—requires. Being home is not going home, but the preference to speak of a desire to go home is instructive. One’s desire to be home, when it is more than a wish, implies that one intends to become engaged in bringing it about. The object of desire has the openness of the desire itself because it is closely related to the subject’s engagement in bringing it about. It receives the subjectivity pertaining to the engagements of realizing a desire, while such engagements are both one with the desire and separate from it. Thus, the object of desire receives its soft logic from the relation of fulfillment with desire. For this reason, not only does the object of desire have a range, but this range is central to the double character of satisfaction—satisfaction as it is desired or intended, and as it is carried out.

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We may return to Orpheus. Orpheus’s journey could provide a case of ambivalent desires in which both are satisfied to some extent. This promises to provide a nice closure of the circle we have traced in this chapter. Or, again, we may return to Jacob’s children and their variegated forms of ambivalence, with whom this book opened. But is this chapter, or is this book, really a circle, and do I—Do you?—really wish to return to these mythical and biblical figures? Orpheus’s life under the spell of death reveals the possibilities of ambivalent desire as discussed in this chapter, his being a prosperous life lived on the basis of impossibly contrary aims. However, if ambivalence is life, would it not be better to end with life, and to characterize the chapter— and the book—as a spiral, which allows for new possibilities to emerge? Would it not be better to speak about us—immigrants, lovers, prisoners, guards, ambivalent agents—or about you and me? I both want and do not want to conclude with Orpheus. notes 1. This book uses the term “desire” as a noun form, equivalent to “volition” and corresponding to the verb “want” in its more general sense (and similarly, as a verb synonymous to “want”). The relations between desires and desire (as in “sexual desire”) are left for further investigation. Wanting is generally a pro-attitude whose object can be conceived of as a proposition, such that the person who wants that P favors the truth of this proposition. Our concern is with typical desires, such that wanting that P involves taking it as a possibility that P can be true and can be helped to be true, and some readiness to contribute to this result. (“Want” is also used in more specific ways, and, in particular, we sometimes present the particular character of some ambivalence of desire by using “want” only for one of the poles in order to contrast the kind of desire or aversion manifested in it with that characterizing the other pole, for example “I want this but I am afraid,” “It’s no good, but I want this,” “I am tempted to, but it’s not what I really want.”) I refer to cases of ambivalence of desire both as cases that the person wants that P and yet wants that not-P, and as cases that the person wants that P and yet also does not want that P, not wanting that P being understood as an attitude of a negative desire or aversion. (Introduction, note 2 and p. 18). Cases of ambivalence regarding P should be understood to include the person wanting that P while not wanting that Q, at least insofar as she believes without ambivalence that Q will be true if P is (Introduction, 18–19). 2. Introduction, section 3. See also chapters 3 and 4. 3. We can also speak of a desire wherever one acts in a narrowly intentional manner, but the chapter concerns desires which constitute attitudes, rather than merely capturing the “in order to” character of an action without surpassing it. Ambivalence of desire by definition constitutes desires transcending the action, since whatever else they are, each desire is held as opposed to the conflicting desire. 4. At least not at the level of the explicandum.



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5. I ignore here Frankfurt’s view of personhood as consisting in two levels. See chapter 2, 38ff. 6. The translation is Crisp’s (Aristotle 2000, 124), except for the “should,” which is as in Rowe and Broadie (Aristotle 2002, 194). “Must” and “should” translate different words in the original text, and the “should” stresses the normative meaning “δεῖ” can have. The Aristotelian practical syllogism has been interpreted in multiple ways, which purportedly imply various forms of contradictory practical conclusions, but the difficulty always reflects the isolation of the instances of the syllogism, as described below. 7. See on this notion chapter 6, section 2. 8. In some cases no fulfillment would count for the person as sufficiently exact. But to say that such responses exhaust the person’s desire (and are not, for example, expressive of ambivalence) is tantamount to saying that she only “wants” in a marginal sense of the word. 9. See also the investigation of behavior under conflicting desires in chapter 4. 10. Ambivalent compromises can also express one of the poles negatively, as when someone acts vehemently because he wants to act the other way. 11. His success would be more or less deliberate if he acted with the idea that his friends might change the journey for him. 12. Chapter 7 investigates the relation of basic rationality to its patterns. 13. Some details are provided in chapter 8, 210. 14. See, however, Rorty 2010 and Poltera 2010. 15. Intentional behavior and behavior with direction are defined in note 27 in the Introduction. 16. I refer to such things as are termed in recent social ontology “collective actions,” and “joint intentions,” as well as to group decisions, positions, and deliberation, rather than to constitutive principles, procedures, and practices, which can be seen as more similar to the matter-of-course background of a person’s intentionality. They are also similar in being open to losing their matter-of-course character. Collective decisions, “intentions,” and actions can also have a matter-of-course character, but this would not be the case in the context of action under dispute. 17. The conflict between the member’s own attitude and the committee position implies in particular that her cooperation with the committee position is an attitude rather than a quasi-intentional result. (We can also think of committees wherein things proceed such that they are automatically taken out of the hands of the members once the decision is made, but then there are others who take over, or acquiesce, or who are represented by the committee, and they have their own sometimes conflicting ideas, which suggests thinking of a super-committee or of direct democracy as providing the desired model.) 18. In other cases, the committee votes that such and such be the case, but those who do not like the result are not prepared to accept it. In between such cases and “the standard situation,” we encounter ambivalent committee members who enhance their own positions in ways that undermine the implementation of the committee position. 19. Another problem with the committee-subject model is that it does not leave room for behavior that expresses and connects the opposed attitudes without pursuing

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their fulfillment. The notion of a committee-subject was suggested to me by Avishai Margalit. 20. Arkonovich refers to Morton 1980, while my direct reference is to Morton 1991, especially chapters 3 and 4. Morton 1991 also discusses cases of genuine conflicts, that is, conflicts between the values the desires express, but only to describe how they can be resolved through a small value change. 21. See Introduction, 27. 22. It would be sufficient if they were both relevant to one of the contrary desires. 23. The point is not that a compromise depends on independent desired and undesired aspects of the object. One can act when such aspects do not exist. Other features of the ambivalence, or the person’s further attitudes, can always shape the compromise. 24. Formulations of both kinds can be used to describe contingent as well as inherent ambivalence. On this distinction, see Introduction, 18–19 and appendix A.

Appendix A

In the Introduction (18–19), we considered ambivalence toward opposed objects and in that context distinguished inherent ambivalence between attitudes to contradictory propositions from contingent ambivalence between attitudes to incompatible but noncontradictory propositions.1 Understanding ambivalence according to our main definition, such that a person S holds two opposing attitudes toward a single object X, a distinction can be made as follows between inherent ambivalence and contingent ambivalence.2 S’s ambivalence is inherent if the opposing attitudes are concerned with the object from the same respect (or under the same description), if they are concerned with the object independently of respects, and if they are concerned with it under two different descriptions, of which one entails the other. Ambivalence is contingent when it is not inherent, and the convergence between the two descriptions of the object that raise the opposing attitudes toward it is independent of the ambivalent attitudes themselves. An example of inherent ambivalence would be that of a person who wants and yet does not want to dance, for whom a long day of handling a difficult task has ended with that high-adrenaline exhaustion that can make her want to dance, act, spend energy, and move, as well as, precisely under the same descriptions, avoid all the above. Again a person on the verge of going abroad by herself may be both anxious and enthusiastic toward this, and at the root of both conflicting attitudes may be the same thing about the change, namely, that she will be there on her own, to meet, as she will, whatever may come. Baker 2010 sets out the inherent ambivalence involved in challenge-seeking and defends the possibility and rationality of inherent ambivalence.3 Inherent ambivalence is also essential to many forms of ambivalence toward people and, especially, to ambivalence between love and a hostile attitude. I direct the reader to Pugmire 2005 (v), 176ff., on this point, although Pugmire takes such ambivalence to be unstable 259

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or “attenuated.” Ambivalence is also often contingent, as when a person who is standing at the bar outside a dance club hall, wanting and not wanting to dance, is attracted to moving with the music and repelled by the overcrowded place. Another example that can depict a contingent ambivalence would be that of a person who ambivalently finds his colleague both an impressive, he being so wise, and an unimpressive, awkward fellow. It may seem, however, that contingent ambivalence is not really ambivalence, even if it can be described in terms of a single object, either since the attitudes more truly have to do with the different aspects of the object, and thus not with the same thing, or since the two aspects allow for two isolated attitudes toward the object—two separately existing courses that conflict only in the sense that these courses make each other unsuccessful (as when two people separately promote conflicting ends). Again, ignoring or reinterpreting the examples above, it may seem that inherent ambivalence is blatantly impossible, or else that it is an extremely irrational state, since there a single person is attributed with conflicting attitudes to what is irreducibly the same thing. These are two complementary variants of the philosophical rejection of ambivalence in the sense of a unitary and genuinely conflictual engagement of a subject. This rejection and the range of interpretations that go with it were considered in chapter 2. Since Williams 1973b [1965], however, the term “contingent ambivalence” and the distinction between that and inherent ambivalence have been central to a line of research within analytic philosophy, which to some extent acknowledges that ambivalence in a strong sense is part of our lives. Yet the view that ambivalence is a highly problematic notion still informs this body of work (see chapter 2, sections 2.4, and 2.5), often leading, in particular, to the marginalization or denial of inherent ambivalence and to focusing on contingent ambivalence as if the contingently ambivalent subject simply has each of the two conflicting attitudes, such that their conflict does not enter into the attitudes and connects them. This book does not find inherent ambivalence either unusual or, especially, hard to live with. Inherent ambivalence is also not especially philosophically puzzling under the view of attitudes, rationality, and life with language that is developed in this book (see also below). Contingent ambivalence, for its part, cannot somehow mitigate the purported difficulty about one person holding together two opposing attitudes to a single object, because it requires, just like any ambivalence, that in each pole of her ambivalence, the person holds it as opposed by her conflicting attitude. A person can have attitudes that are aimed at different aspects of an object, such that the attitudes are or seem opposed from some perspective, but do not constitute ambivalence. When a person is ambivalent, however, the contingent character forms a respect in which the attitudes are separate from each other, but there are, as this book testifies,



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always various other ways for the unity in having two opposed attitudes to take concrete form. The distinction between inherent and contingent ambivalence, the continuity between phenomena of either kind, and the multiple ways the distinction is undermined in particular cases serve to support the claim that a genuinely unitary and conflictual ambivalence is an ordinary mode of basic rationality. We may say that inherent ambivalence emphasizes the unity within a conflict, while contingent ambivalence emphasizes the two different attitudes between which one is ambivalent. And because the distinction is undermined (Introduction, 218–19), as well as because of the affinities between phenomena of either type, and the possibility for a person’s contingent ambivalence to change into inherent ambivalence (or, more rarely, vice versa), the two categories mutually show the problem about denying that the other form manifests ordinary ambivalence. If, for example, ambivalence of the one form can change into the other in a way that calls for saying the person maintains, as rationally as ever, the same pair of opposing attitudes now developed somewhat differently (as when a contingent ambivalence toward a new acquaintance becomes inherent ambivalence after knowing him a little better), it should be hard to think that inherent ambivalence is a strange meaningless affirmation and negation of something, as well as to think of contingent ambivalence as two attitudes that are not held by the person as opposed. This kind of mutual support is also characteristic of other distinctions within ambivalence. In particular, we may distinguish strong ambivalence from weak ambivalence, regarding ambivalence as weak when either both attitudes are weak or one of the attitudes is clearly stronger or more substantial than the other.4 It can then be suggested that strong ambivalence is impossible or is tantamount to confusion and paralysis and that weak ambivalence does not form a real conflict (or at any rate, that weak conflictuality is easier to understand than strong), for instance, the weak attitude is a second priority, or the two weak attitudes more truly form complementary paths in a person’s life. Conflicting attitudes can weaken or even completely abolish each other, and potential conflicts can make the attitudes weak from the start, as well as prevent their formation. We can also use the notions of weak ambivalence and of strong ambivalence in the understanding of various phenomena of liminal ambivalence, in which the conflicting attitudes are only half maintained or only half opposed. Yet, I hope this book makes manifest that full-blown ambivalence can be weak, as well as strong, and there is continuity, affinity, and indeterminacy between the categories that challenge the denial of the existence or the ambivalent character of either. One reason that the distinction between contingent and inherent ambivalence appears central when it seems mysterious (or dubious) that ambivalence is possible—when it seems unclear what it could mean that one person

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simultaneously holds two conflicting attitudes to a single object—consists in the view that attitudes are exhaustively identified by their type, the person who maintains the attitude, the time in which she maintains it, and its object. If this view is wrong, then the unity between conflicting attitudes and their irreducible plurality need not be seen as a matter of the wholeheartedness/ split pertaining to the person, the sameness/difference of type, the sameness/ difference of time, and the irreducible unity/multiple aspects of the object; the focus of the distinction between contingent and inherent ambivalence on the possible relation of the subject with the object (assuming simultaneously and sameness of type) is not so important. While it is no wonder that ambivalence seems mysterious, or impossible, or radically irrational under the above-mentioned conceptualization of attitudes, as well as that it directs us to the contingency/inherency distinction, the more basic philosophical difficulties with ambivalence are revealed more directly through the complementary presentations of ambivalence in this book as a single tension-fraught attitude and the holding of two opposed attitudes. Using the definition of ambivalence as two conflicting attitudes, we can also draw a distinction between two forms of ambivalence, of which one is more substantially a matter of two attitudes and the other more similar to a single attitude. Let us call them, respectively, secondary ambivalence and primary ambivalence, to mark that ambivalence is logically secondary to its poles in secondary ambivalence and is logically prior to the poles in primary ambivalence. Call ambivalence secondary when the opposing attitudes are relatively separate, such that we can, to some extent, understand, or attribute, the one attitude without taking account of the other; and call ambivalence primary if in understanding, or attributing to a person, the one pole, the other would implicitly or explicitly be evoked and regarded as connected with the other in some conflictual manner. If ambivalence consists in interlinked attitudes, then it is never completely secondary, but this is not to say that ambivalence cannot be more secondary or more primary. We can, for instance, understand quite well and quite separately each of the two poles of the ambivalence of the person wanting and not wanting to dance after a hard day’s work. (This also shows that inherent ambivalence can be secondary.) By contrast, we often understand a particular case of wanting something, first and foremost through its relations with the other pole, for example, as wanting despite not wanting it. Again, given that Oscar Wilde does not reduce love to an unloving attitude when he writes that “each man kills the thing he loves,” the line suggests that love implicates (in one way or another) a conflicting attitude, which forms the other side of love within a primary ambivalence. Primary and secondary ambivalence and their relations are considered in chapter 3, section 3.



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notes 1. I also suggest there that ambivalence often transcends the distinction between contingent and inherent ambivalence. 2. X may or may not be a proposition. 3. Yet his paper takes prioritization to be the key to rational ambivalence. 4. The expression “the strength of an attitude” can have various senses, and, in particular, it can refer to how much the attitude is felt (or is felt in certain ways) and to how much it affects one’s behavior (in certain ways). An attitude can be counted as weak in the sense that it is a part of ambivalence. With this as an exception, the above may refer to various senses of an attitude’s strength.

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Index

acting on a single pole of the ambivalence. See uni-directional conduct, ambivalence characterized by action in ambivalence. See compromise, ambivalent; creative life with ambivalence; defeated ambivalence; deliberation; desire; dysfunctional ambivalence; harmony, the pursuit of by the ambivalent person; problem from behavior; value judgment, ambivalence of action in the strict sense, 32n27. See also behavior; conscious behavior; desire; intentionality; the practical syllogism activism. See ambivalence, as a social phenomenon aesthetics, 229. See also art; value judgment, ambivalence of Al-Ghazali, 55n12 all things considered judgments, 209, 211, 213, 232n21, 232n27 ambiguity, 30n19 ambivalence: and the art of living, 9, 49, 91, 148, 155, 250–51, 261. See also creative life with ambivalence; time; between attitudes to contradictory or incompatible propositions. See belief, ambivalence of; problem from objectivity; propositional attitudes;

273

can be worthy, 9, 37, 53, 95n26, 135–36, 140, 142, 145, 148, 151–52, 163–65, 210, 237, 242–44. See also compromise action; contradictions, meaningful; creative life with ambivalence; high rationality; integration; value judgment, ambivalence of; conceived as a dissolution or a deterioration of personhood, 38, 107, 132–33; conceived as irrational, egocentric, miserable, passive, pathological or a failure, 8–9, 37–38, 82, 107, 113–14, 132–33, 138–40, 163, 170; concept of being extricated from our life and language, 14–16, 98–99. See also concepts; language; as connected with further engagements, 8, 67–69, 72–76, 143–44, 153, 245, 251–52. See also ambivalence as a mode of unity in plurality; compromise, ambivalent; definition of, main 5, 16–17, 62, 98, 262; definitions of, multiple interrelated, 15–17; as directed toward an object/objects. See ambivalence, definition of, main; objects of attitudes and ambivalence; as enduring. See stability; forms of, diverse, complex, categorytranscending and combined, 10, 20,

274 Index 25, 46, 61, 66, 84, 97, 106, 164–65, 194n13, 194n15, 213, 235, 253–54; as implying intentionality, 16, 25–27, 45, 170; as implying a unitary subject, 16, 41, 248; as implying opposition from the perspective of the subject, 133, 175. See also ambivalence, definition of, main; conscious ambivalence and the possibility of ambivalence; the interlinkage between the poles of, 16–17, 52, 68, 85, 112, 139, 143–44, 261; as a mode of unity in plurality, 4–5, 16–17, 39, 45–7, 51–52, 62, 68–69, 72–76, 98, 110, 131–39, 145–47, 170, 238–40, 244; See also ambivalence as connected with further engagements; ambivalence, the interlinkage between the poles of; separate poles, the assumption that ambivalence is composed of; unity in plurality; objections against. See objections to ambivalence; as a perspective. See perspective; the poles of as full-blown attitudes of the person, 24, 70–71, 87, 94n19, 97. See also ambivalence, definition of, main and the pursuit of harmony. See harmony; relative and partial separation between the poles, 52, 139, 142, 146, 150, 153, 196n35, 245, 261; See also contingent ambivalence; secondary ambivalence; as a route in life, 6, 24, 73, 97, 185, 245; and shallowness. See Pugmire; as the simultaneous holding of conflicting attitudes, 16, 188. See also time; as a single attitude, 17, 24, 98, 262. See also perspective; primary ambivalence; a route in life; as a social phenomenon, 25, 30–31n19, 33n34, 45–48, 164–65, 246–47, 253–54; as substantially unitary. See integration; primary ambivalence

ambivalent opposition and the logic of attitudes, 5, 17–19, 28n2, 62, 72–74, 82, 89–91. See also ambivalence, definition of, main; basic rationality; belief, ambivalence of; desire, ambivalence of; value judgment, ambivalence of anger, 64–65, 71, 90, 239 Anzaldúa, Gloria, 47, 57n27 Aristotle, 210, 236–39, 244. See also neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics; the practical syllogism Arkonovich, Steven, 248–49 art, 10–14, 51, 209–17 attention, 63–66, 72–73, 109 attitudes, 18, 21–25; as dispositions, 22, 79–82, 85, 93n15; as interlinked. See interlinkages, mental; the soft identity of, 24, 44, 78, 84–85, 91, 173–74, 238–40, 254–55. See also openness of engagements to other interlinkages See also ambivalence, definition of, main; ambivalence as a single attitude; behavior; consciousness as related to attitudes, engagements and the person; multivalence; orders of attitudes and ambivalence; perspective; propositional attitudes attitudinal ambivalence. See psychology, empirical Audi, Robert, 191 autonomy, 41–43 Bach, Kent, 170, 191, 195n21 bad faith, 169, 193n3. See also self-deception Baker, Derek, 54n4, 110, 239, 259 Bartsch, Anne & Jäger, Christoph, 158n24 basic rationality, 6–7, 23–24, 68, 83–85, 91, 168–98, 237–40, 244–45; of ambivalence, 7–8, 69, 91, 143, 163, 170, 175, 253, 261; compared with conceptual, logical and natural relations, 93n15, 137–38, 157n18, 171, 173; irrationality as a secondary aspect of a basically rational phenomenon, 168, 170, 176–86, 188–89, 191–93, 213;

Index patterns of, 171–74, 181–83, 188–93, 193–94n7, 196n26, 196n33. See also the practical syllogism See also ambivalent opposition and the logic of attitudes; high rationality; loosening of basic rationality; openness of engagements to other interlinkages; unity in plurality Baumann, Peter & Betzler, Monika, 94n17, 230n1 Bayne, Tim, 115, 120–25; behavior: behavioral conflict, 9, 22, 24, 79, 89, 91. See also compromise, ambivalent; creative life with ambivalence; defeated ambivalence; desire, ambivalence of; dysfunctional ambivalence; emotional ambivalence; problem from behavior its intentionality and relations to attitudes, 32n27, 80–95, 172, 243, 246–47. See also desire; intentionality; the practical syllogism belief, 171, 179, 182, 189–90, 195n21, 202, 213, 221, 232n26; degree of, 35–37, 194n14, 197–98n43, 219–20 belief, ambivalence of 10, 12–13, 27, 133, 158n32, 167–72, 174–77, 182–83, 188–93, 198n44, 212–13, 219–20, 232n23, 232n25; and consciousness, 110, 130n53, 190; as a mode of unity in plurality, basically rational, and bound up with behavior 168, 174–76, 180, 188–91, 253; structure of. See objectivist ambivalence as mutual undermining; suspension of belief, 9, 42, 192, 212. See also deliberation. See also contradictions; mental oppositions; objectivist attitudes and ambivalence; problem from objectivity; self-deception Ben-ze’ev, Aaron, 71 Bermudez, José, 187 Bhabha, Homi, 46–47 bodily intentionality, 21, 63–66, 72, 76n7, 99. See also conscious behavior. Brook, Andrew, 120, 128n36

275

Buridan’s ass, 37, 40 Butler, Judith, 46, 57n27 Carelessness. See indifference Carr, David, 50, 92n4, 244–45 Chalmers, David, 102, 126n16 change and ambivalence. See ambivalence and the art of living; ambivalence as a route in life; deliberation; harmony, the pursuit of by the ambivalent person; time character traits and ambivalence, 25 choice, 9, 50–51, 55n12, 80, 139–44, 246–48. See also deciding; deliberation cognitive engagements. See belief; objectivist attitudes and ambivalence; perceptions; value, judgment a complex, emotion as. See emotion as an attitude and a mode of unity in plurality compromise, ambivalent, 12, 66, 144, 147, 164–65, 235, 237–38, 241–43, 253; compromise action, 51, 152, 164, 216–17, 237–38, 241–46, 250–54, 256; compromise behavior, 24, 51–52, 80, 85, 131, 212, 216–17, 219, 242, 244–46. See also ambivalence as connected with further engagements; behavior concepts, 26–27, 31n20, 36, 44–45, 203, 213, 219–29, 232n26, 233n36, 249–50; mental, 14, 27, 81, 84, 137–38, 171, 189. See also language conceptual ambivalence, 27–28, 44–45, 194n15, 205–6, 214, 222–26 conceptual unity, 137–38, 140 concreteness: of ambivalence. See ambivalence, as connected with further engagements; ambivalence as a route in life of subjectivity. See intentionality; interlinkages, mental; mental unity conflict. See ambivalence. confusion, 37, 143, 217. See also ambivalence, conceived as irrational, egocentric, miserable, passive, pathological or a failure; ambivalence conceived as a

276 Index dissolution or a deterioration of personhood; defeated ambivalence; objections to ambivalence; connectibility, mental. See openness of engagements to other interlinkages connections, mental. See interlinkages, mental consciousness, 5, 29–30n15, 99, 127n17, 146–47, 159n38; conscious behavior, 98–100, 103, 112, 126n11; conscious interlinkages and plurality. See consciousness, its unity; consciousness as related to attitudes, engagements, and the person, 22–23, 64, 87 92–93n10, 94n18, 99–103, 111, 113–14, 118; object-directed character of, 100, 119–23; outgoing character of, 99–103, 110, 115–16, 119, 121–25, 126n8; phenomenal character of, 99–100, 115–24; Self-consciousness, 30n15, 99–101, 103, 115, 124, 126n8, 127n17; unity of, 110–12, 114–25. See also consciousness and ambivalence: conscious ambivalence; unconscious engagements consciousness and ambivalence, 108, 146–47, 243; ambivalence does not imply consciously expressed poles, 97–98, 103–4; ambivalence in consciousness, 48, 103, 109–12, 122; ambivalent consciousness, 103; ambivalent consciousness and ambivalence as a matter of full-blown attitudes, 104, 111–14; conscious ambivalence, 5–6, 59, 98, 102–4, 110–14, 116, 118, 121–22, 124, 129n42; conscious ambivalence and the possibility of ambivalence, 24, 97, 99, 104–5, 107–11, 124–25. See also mental unity conceived as harmonious; consciousness, ambivalence, and indeterminacy, 108–9, 113–14, 127n30, 127n32, 128n37. See also vacillation

consistency: of attitudes. See harmony. See also contradictions contingent ambivalence, 18–19, 54n4, 259–62 contradictions: ambivalence as an inconsistent notion. See objections to ambivalence; entanglement in self-contradiction, 40, 130n53, 122, 133, 175, 180, 182, 188–89, 218; meaningful contradictions, 28, 34n40, 44–45, 212, 225–29. See also ambivalent opposition and the logic of attitudes; language of ambivalence; objectivist attitudes and ambivalence; problem from objectivity conventions, 26–27, 157n19 creative life with ambivalence, 37, 49, 51, 151–52, 253–54. See also ambivalence and the art of living; ambivalence, as a route in life; compromise, ambivalent culture, 30–31n19, 51, 149, 164. See also ambivalence as social phenomenon; art; literature Dainton, Barry, 118, 120, 128n36 Davidson, Donald, 21, 32n26, 92n6, 93n15, 135, 157n16, 159n36–37, 160n41, 168, 170–71, 174–82, 185–88, 191; basic rationality, 6–7, 15, 83–84, 129n48, 137–38, 176, 178, 188; interpretations of ambivalence, 39, 92n13, 145–46, 159n37, 168–70, 176–87; mental holism, 67–68, 93n14, 138–39, 194n17 deciding, 9, 25 40, 50–52, 55n14, 141–44, 208–14, 246–48. See also choice, deliberation, unidirectional conduct, ambivalence characterized by decision theory, 35–37, 220 defeated ambivalence, 20, 38, 55n12, 237 deliberation, 94n17, 141–44, 158n30, 164, 207–17, 231n11, 231n17, 245 Derrida, Jacques, 44–45, 47, 132

Index desire, 26, 82–83, 85–86, 94n19, 184–85, 238–40, 244, 248–52, 254–55, 256nn1, 3; ambivalence of, 18–20, 49–50, 82–83, 85–87, 89, 94n20, 112, 143–44, 147, 235–58. See also attitudes, the soft identity of; compromise action; contingent ambivalence; conventions; decision theory; fulfillment; intentionality; the practical syllogism; problem from behavior despair. See misery and ambivalence direction of behavior, 32n27, 242–43 dissolving ambivalence. See deliberation; harmony division. See separate poles Donenfeld, Ayal, 126n9 Döring, Sabine, 77n22, 94n19, 106 doubt, 16, 27, 33n37, 53, 163, 168, 183, 197–98n43, 213, 219–20, 226, 233n33. See also belief, ambivalence of; objectivist ambivalence as mutual undermining Drai, Dalia, 232n18 dysfunctional ambivalence, 8, 38, 113–14, 152, 237 dysfunctional behavior as purportedly implied by ambivalence. See problem from behavior. See also defeated ambivalence, vacillation emotion: as an attitude and a mode of unity in plurality, 63–67, 81, 84, 87; and behavior, 63, 83, 88, 91, 94n19. See also behavior; emotional ambivalence; and consciousness, 64, 72–73, 87, 105–7, 146; and desire, 63, 65–66, 84, 86–87, 89, 95n25, 249; and judgment, 63–65, 72–73, 87, 106, 194n13, 202, 204, 230n5; perceptual account of. See perceptions. See also emotional ambivalence; psychology, empirical emotional ambivalence, 35, 51, 63–66, 82, 88, 97, 107, 118, 142, 144, 149, 158n24, 249, 259;

277

behavior in 63, 65–66, 72–76, 82, 86–91; comprising a single ambivalent emotion, 71–72, 75–76; opposing emotions as complexes of other engagements, 63–66, 72–76, 88. See also perceptions engagements, 22, 67, 135, 169. See also intentionality ethics, 200–201, 229–30. See also Aristotle; hierarchic ambivalence; Kant; Mill; race; value; value judgment, ambivalence of Existentialism. See Heidegger; Kierkegaard; Nietzsche; Sartre expression of a pole of ambivalence: negatively, 12, 147, 152, 257n10. See also ambivalence, the interlinkage between the poles of; compromise, ambivalent Fanon, Frantz, 46–47 fear, 10–12, 22, 67–69, 71–72, 97–98, 106, 113, 136, 184, 239, 241, 256n1 feelings. See consciousness; emotion feminism, 46–47, 57n27, 164–65 Fingarette, Herbert, 196n35 Finkelstein, David, 94n19, 148 first order. See orders of attitudes and ambivalence the first person, 32n26. See also consciousness; the third-person and first-person perspectives to human life Foot, Philippa, 15, 224, 230n2, 231n16 Frankfurt, Harry, 38–41, 92n4, 133, 138, 157n20, 236–37 Freedom of will, 40–42 Freud, Sigmund, 25–26, 134, 140, 145–55; Freudian human being viewed as divided or composed of quasi-persons, 109, 127n31, 145–46, 177; Freud’s human being as an ambivalent unity in plurality 145–51, 153–55, 161n61; Freud’s human being as forming ambivalent compromises 145–48, 151–53, 241; the I, (ego), 147, 150–51, 154–55, 161n61; the it (id), 147, 149, 154, 161n57.

278 Index See also normative unity; repression; therapy; unconscious fulfillment: as a defining aspect of desire, 12, 55n12, 67, 85, 87; joint fulfillment of the conflicting poles of ambivalence of desire. See compromise action. See also desire; intentionality. functionalism, 102, 117 Funkhouser, Eric, 40, 195n21, 197n37, 197n41 Gardner, Sebastian, 57n34, 160n40, 177, 193n6, 196n26 Gendler, Tamar, 40, 43, 169–70, 195n21 Gertler, Brie, 40, 191 Gilroy, Paul, 46–47 Goldie, Peter, 64, 70, 76n4, 6, 106, 156n12 Greenspan, Patricia, 35, 53, 69–70, 92n1, 108 group ambivalence. See ambivalence, as a social phenomenon. Gunnarsson, Logi, 57n34, 245 harmony: ambivalence changed to, 144, 241, 247; often not aimed or not promoted under ambivalence, 133, 138, 140, 142–43, 154, 160n52; the pursuit of by the ambivalent person, 6, 59, 131, 133–34, 136, 139, 141–45, 151–53, 155, 207, 209, 247. See also deliberation; Freud; mental unity conceived as harmonious; normative unity; interpretations of ambivalence in terms of actually plural normatively unitary persons the harmony approach. See interpretations of ambivalence in terms of harmonious engagements Heidegger, Martin, 14, 37 hierarchic ambivalence, 11, 17–18, 31n23, 41–42, 97, 138, 140, 148–49, 156n1, 158n24, 165, 254; and morality 11, 41–42, 46; See also Frankfurt, high-order subject response; self-overcoming high-order attitudes. See orders of attitudes and ambivalence

high-order subject response, 5; 38–42 high rationality, 6, 9, 11, 53, 140, 183, 191–93, 212–13, 231n17, 232n25. See also ambivalence can be worthy; basic rationality hope, 61, 71–72, 113, 174, 224 Hume, David, 8, 39, 107, 109, 132, 156n5 Hurley, Susan, 117, 119–20 Husserl, Edmund, 14, 21, 32n26, 99 hybridity, 47–48, 144–45 illusion, perceptual, 70, 77n22, 106–7, 121 independent poles, the assumption ambivalence is composed of. See separate poles, the assumption ambivalence is composed of indeterminacy of engagements. See attitudes, the soft identity of; consciousness, ambivalence, and indeterminacy; openness of engagements to other interlinkages indifference, 4, 37–38, 215, 239; indifference as a pole of ambivalence, 51 inflection. See concepts; conceptual ambivalence; value inherent ambivalence, 18–19, 54n4, 259–62 integration, 6, 70–75, 131–34, 137, 139–45, 164 intention, 32n27 intentionality, 21–22, 84, 99, 168–70; as both third- and first- person 14, 30n16; narrow, 21–22, 32n27, 94n19, 169, 172, 184–85, 196–97n35. See also behavior; consciousness as related to attitudes, engagements and the person; engagements; fulfillment; the matter-of-course ground of the mind; self-deception as intentional believing and self-deceiving interlinkages, mental, 16, 23–24, 84, 93n15, 111, 115–17, 135, 137–39, 173, 196–97n35. See also ambivalence as a mode of unity in plurality; basic rationality; emotion; openness of engagements to other interlinkages; unity in plurality, internal conflict, 29n10. See also ambivalence.

Index interpretations of ambivalence: in terms of actually plural, normatively unitary persons, 131, 133–34, 138–43; in terms of a purely multiple mind and of a multi-personal model, 4, 38–40, 51, 56n18, 105, 107–10, 122, 131–34, 145–46, 150, 160n39–41, 168–69, 172–73, 176–89, 191, 196n26, 241, 245–48. See also separate poles interpretations of ambivalence in terms of harmonious engagements, 42–43, 105–8, 169–70, 172, 191, 195n21, 197n43, 212; harmonious attitudes to different objects 54n4, 105–7, 231n15; opposed hypotheses, prima facie judgments, or options 42, 92n13, 105, 200–201, 207–8, 214–15, 217, 248–49; value judgements in which the value term is applied and denied in different senses, 201, 208, 217 irrationality, 8. See also ambivalence, conceived as irrational, egocentric, miserable, passive, pathological or a failure; basic rationality; confusion; dysfunctional behavior; entanglement in self-contradiction; loosening of basic rationality; objections to ambivalence Jackson, Frank, 127n21, 230n3 James, William, 118, 120, 128n36, 192–93 Johnston, Mark, 127n24, 173, 177, 196–97n35 judgment, 174. See also value; value judgment, ambivalence of; belief; belief ambivalence of; problem from objectivity justification, 170–71, 173, 176, 178–79, 182–83, 186, 188–89. See also deliberation Kant, Immanuel, 40–42, 200, 208, 229–30 Kierkegaard, Sören, 37, 133

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Koch, Philip, 62–66, 92n1, 109, 127n19, 133, 137, 139, 144, 155 Kristjánsson, Kristján, 43, 94n17, 110, 142–43, 155 Kuhn, Thomas, 34n40, 233n36 language, 14–15, 137–38, 171; of ambivalence, 14–15, 18–19, 28n2, 30n19, 252, 256n1. See also ambivalence, concept of being extricated from our life and language; opposites; propositional attitudes See also concepts; the third-person and first-person perspectives to human life Lazar, Ariela, 172 life, 172; with language. See language. See also ambivalence and the art of living; attitudes; intentionality literature, 10–14, 47, 50, 61, 97, 112, 167–68, 235 longing, 64, 66, 71, 84 loosening of basic rationality, 29n6, 122, 182, 191 love, 3–5, 13, 16, 17, 21–24, 30n16, 32n24, 33n31, 51, 61, 63–64, 66, 71, 84, 91, 109–11, 113, 140, 146, 149, 154, 194n15, 235, 259 low order. See orders of attitudes and ambivalence Margalit, Avishai, 257–58n19 Marino, Patricia, 92n4, 239 the matter-of-course ground of the mind, 26–27, 55n12, 157n19, 257n17 McDowell, John, 210 Mele, Alfred, 168, 172–73, 187–88, 191, 194n10, 196–97n35 mental attitude. See attitudes. mental oppositions: of beliefs, apparent and real, ambivalent and non-ambivalent, 39–40, 169, 172, 191, 194–95n21; non-ambivalent, 16, 31n21, 40, 47–48, 98, 107, 122, 175. See also basic rationality, loosening of; contradictions, entanglement in self-contradiction; interpretations

280 Index of ambivalence; options, opposed without ambivalence mental unity, 16; as an aim. See normative unity; conceived as harmonious, 62, 67, 104–5, 107, 131–36, 139. See also ambivalence as a mode of unity in plurality; unity in plurality mere wish, 93n12 Mill, John S., 200–201, 208, 229–30 the mind, 21–22, 25, 62, 67, 114 the mind versus language, logic, and nature. See basic rationality, compared with conceptual, logical and natural relations; attitudes; consciousness; pershonhood Mintoff, Joe, 55n12, misery and ambivalence, 8, 37–38, 133, 151, 243. See also dysfunctional ambivalence moods. See objects of attitudes and ambivalence Moore, G. E., 222, 231n12 moral ambivalence. See hierarchic ambivalence; neo-Aristotelian ethics; race; value judgment, ambivalence of moral theories. See ethics. Morton, Adam, 54n4, 233n28, 248–49 motivated behavior. See intentionality, narrow; desire multiplicity approach. See interpretations of ambivalence multivalence, 19–20 Nagel, Thomas, 123 narrativity, 13–14, 77n26, 135, 156n12 naturalism, 39–40, 156n4, 168–69, 172–73, 196–97n35; moral, 200, 230n2 neo-Aristotelian ethics, 43, 141–43, 210–11, 229–230 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 37, 146, 159n35 Noë, Alva, 117–18 non-cognitivism. See value, judgment. normative unity, 133–34, 136–40, 145, 150–51, 153–55, 161n61 ‘not’ in the attribution of ambivalence. See ambivalent opposition and the logic of attitudes.

Nussbaum, Martha, 43, 50, 53, 54n4, 94n17, 135–36, 141–42, 155, 210–11, 245 objections to ambivalence, 3–4, 17, 59, 163, 245–46, 260–62; ambivalence as presumably impossible, 3, 6, 8, 17, 24, 28n2, 35–43, 45, 48, 59, 62, 68, 79–82, 89–91, 98–99, 131, 188, 262; ambivalence as reduced to irrationality, 6, 35, 40, 168–69. See also conscious ambivalence and the possibility of ambivalence; interpretations of ambivalence; mental unity conceived as harmonious; problem from behavior; problem from objectivity; problem from subjectivity objectivist attitudes and ambivalence, 88, 106; ambivalence consisting in objectivist attitudes concerned with separate values (e.g., good and not good in different senses), or thus interpreted, 199–201, 204–5, 209, 224; objectivist ambivalence as mutual undermining, 163, 168, 175, 180, 190–91, 194n21, 209, 211–13, 217–23, 225, 228. See also belief; belief, ambivalence of; perceptions; value; value judgment, ambivalence of objects of attitudes and ambivalence, 5, 18–23, 121, 259–60. See also interpretations of ambivalence in terms of harmonious attitudes to different objects; propositional attitudes one-sided conduct, ambivalence characterized by. See unidirectional conduct, ambivalence characterized by ontological ambivalence, 34n40 openness of engagements to other interlinkages, 24, 44–45, 68, 84, 91, 108, 117, 128n34, 131, 137, 157–58n23, 244; openness of ambivalence and its poles to other interlinkages, 69, 74–75, 85, 91

Index opposites, 25, 89–91 opposition, ambivalent. See ambivalent opposition and the logic of attitudes. See also belief, ambivalence of; desire, ambivalence of; value judgment ambivalence of opposition, mental, beyond ambivalence. See mental oppositions. options, opposed without ambivalence, 19, 55n12. See also deliberation; harmony, the pursuit of by the ambivalent person; interpretations of ambivalence orders of attitudes and ambivalence, 17, 38, 97, 138, 149, 158n24. See also hierarchic ambivalence; highorder subject response O’Regan, Kevin, 117–18 organization, mental, 62, 137. See also Freud; interlinkages, mental; unity in plurality an outlook. See perspective. overcoming oneself. See self-overcoming paralysis. See dysfunctional ambivalence Pears, David, 145–46, 170, 176–83 perceptions, 53, 70, 105–7, 121–22, 141–42, 213 personality. See character traits and ambivalence personhood, 67, 101, 124, 135–37, 139–40, 150; of and beyond human beings, 28n1; 77n12. See also consciousness; consciousness and ambivalence; Frankfurt; Freud; high-order subject response; intentionality; interlinkages, mental; interpretations of ambivalence; mental unity conceived as harmonious; the mind; problem from subjectivity; unity in plurality a perspective, 137–41; ambivalence as, 24, 73, 75, 141; an attitude as, 22–23, 25, 65, 67, 72, 80–81, 84, 92n10, 102; each of the poles of ambivalence as, 24 Plato, 5, 38, 227

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the plurality pertaining to a human life as demonstrated by ambivalence, 5, 17, 54n4. See also ambivalence as a mode of unity in plurality; contingent ambivalence; interpretations of ambivalence; value pluralism point of view. See perspective political ambivalence. See ambivalence, as a social phenomenon Poltera, Jacqui, 43, 53, 77n26, 110, 257n14 practical rationality: incompatible means to an end, 55n12; the practical syllogism, 49, 172, 181, 236–39, 244–45, 255. See also basic rationality; compromise behavior; desire; deliberation; value judgment, ambivalence of primary ambivalence, 71–75, 139n35, 262 Prinz, Jesse, 110–11 prioritization, 12, 239, 262 the problem from behavior, 37–38, 49–52, 59, 79–83, 86–87, 142, 163, 200, 215–16, 236–38, 243–46; objectivity, 163, 168–70, 172, 175, 188, 199–200; subjectivity, 35, 37–43, 45, 59, 79, 98–99, 131–35, 245–46. See also interpretations of ambivalence; interpretations of ambivalence in terms of harmonious engagements propositional attitudes, 18–22, 28n2, 29n4, 31n24, 36, 43, 82–83, 89–90, 93n14, 130n53, 251–52. See also belief, ambivalence of; inherent ambivalence; objects of attitudes and ambivalence psycho-analysis. See Freud; repression; therapy; unconscious engagements psychology, empirical, 48–49 Pugmire, David, 70–71, 113, 259–60 quasi-simple unity. See simple unity quasi-subject. See sub-persons race, 45–47, 164 the range of desires, 238–40, 248–50, 254–5 rationality. See basic rationality; Davidson; high rationality

282 Index Razinsky, Hili, 27, 30n19, 31n20, 54n9, 57n25, 127n26; 224 Razinsky, Liran, 33n35 reasons, 69–70, 143–44, 158n30, 182, 209, 231n17. See also deliberation; rationality repression, 50–51, 94n17, 122, 147, 149–50, 152–53, 161n56 resolving ambivalence. See deliberation; harmony Rorty, Amelie, 53, 110, 184, 193, 233n28, 38, 257n14 Said, Edward, 46–47 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 14, 37, 71, 100, 110, 126n8, 145–46, 160n41, 168, 174, 177, 190, 193n3, 194n15 Schwitzgebel, Eric, 92n6, 195n21 science, ambivalence in, 34n40 Searle, John, 32n27, 126n15 secondary ambivalence, 71–75, 262 second-order. See orders of attitudes and ambivalence self-deception, 8, 23, 37, 39–40, 43, 61, 105, 139, 165, 167–98, 212–13; and consciousness, 110, 128n34; as intentional believing and self-deceiving, and its interpretations from this respect 168–70, 172–74, 176–77, 179–80, 183–89, 196n29, 196n33; paradoxes of, 169–71, 178, 187–91. See also basic rationality; belief, ambivalence of self-overcoming, 10–12; 41–42, 245 separate poles, 4; the assumption ambivalence is composed of, 40, 48–53, 65, 69–70, 142, 148, 209, 260. See also interpretations of ambivalence; objectivist attitudes and ambivalence; relative and partial separation between the poles sexuality, 46–47, 57n27, 164 Shohat, Ella, 46–47, 164 simple unity, 62, 67, 103–8, 114, 134–37, 139. See also mental unity conceived as harmonious; normative unity

the soft logic of the mind. See attitudes, the soft identity of; basic rationality; the openness of engagements to other interlinkages Sommers, Fred, 191 split. See separate poles. stability, 8, 9, 29n13, 75, 139, 219 stagnancy. See dysfunctional ambivalence Stambaugh, Joan, 92n4, 113, 236–37 Stark, Susan, 50, 58n36 Stocker, Michael, 43, 50, 54n4, 215–16, 245 Strength of ambivalence, 53n2, 70, 113, 153, 160n49, 261. See also belief, degree of. a subject. See ambivalence as implying a unitary subject; basic rationality; high-order subject response; mental unity conceived as harmonious; personhood; unity in plurality subjectivity. See personhood sub-persons, 39, 107, 132, 145–47, 149–50, 159n37, 160n39–41, 178, 186–87, 196n25–26, 248. See also interpretations of ambivalence suffering. See misery and ambivalence Swindell, J. S., 43, 50 Talbott, W. J., 170 Tappolet, Christine, 70, 110 therapy, 13, 33n30, 147–48 thinking. See consciousness the third-person and first-person perspectives to human life, 14, 21, 23, 32n26, 84, 98, 101–4, 107, 135, 173 thoughts. See consciousness time, 6, 16, 75, 97, 108–9, 147–48, 160n52, 187, 242; ambivalence synchronically expressed and experienced, 24, 98, 109. See also compromise behavior; conscious ambivalence; openness of ambivalence and its poles to other interlinkages; stability; vacillation tragic conflicts, 38, 142 truth, 9, 35, 59, 170–71, 175, 179, 182–83, 190–93, 200, 202–3, 208, 213, 219, 221, 223, 227, 229 Tye, Michael, 115–16, 121–25

Index unconscious engagements, 23, 33n30, 97, 104, 109, 146–47 uni-directional conduct, ambivalence characterized by, 11–12, 49–50, 112, 142, 181, 244–45 unity, mental. See mental unity unity in linking. See unity in plurality unity in plurality, 62, 66–69, 129n42, 131, 133–40, 145, 153–54, 174–75, 239. See also ambivalence as a mode of unity in plurality; basic rationality; emotion; interlinkages, mental; openness of engagements to other interlinkages unity of ambivalence. See ambivalence as a mode of unity in plurality. univocal conduct in ambivalence. See unidirectional conduct, ambivalence characterized by vacillation, 40, 49–50, 97, 108–9 valences. See psychology, empirical value: judgment 202–6, 221, 230n5; the logic of, 201–4, 214, 222–29; pluralism, 204–5, 224, 229–30 value judgment, ambivalence of, 199–233; action, behavior and judgmental engagement in, 49, 143–44, 200, 205–6, 210, 214–17; objectivist, 163, 200–201, 204–9, 213–14, 217–20, 225–26, 229, 232n27, 233n33; a single tension-fraught judgment, which can be epistemically worthy, 212, 214, 216–17, 225–29; typical objectivist, 222.

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See also interpretations of ambivalence in terms of harmonious engagements; objectivist attitudes and ambivalence; conceptual ambivalence; value. Velleman, David, 135, 150, 161n56 virtue ethics. See neo-Aristotelian ethics visual illusion. See illusion, perceptual volitions, conflict of. See desire, ambivalence of wanting and not wanting. See desire; propositional attitudes wanting and wanting not. See desire; propositional attitudes warrant of belief. See justification weak attitudes and ambivalence. See strength of ambivalence weakness of the will, 18, 37–38, 83, 194n10, 244–45. See also basic rationality, irrationality as a secondary aspect; hierarchic ambivalence Weintraub, Ruth, 55n12 well being. See ambivalence and the art of living; ambivalence can be worthy; creative life with ambivalence; high rationality; integration wholeheartedness, definition, 28n3 Williams, Bernard, 51–53, 188, 214, 216, 225–26, 230n4, 260 wish. See desire; mere wish. wishful thinking, 179, 188–90, 196n29 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 14, 26, 31n20, 33n36–37, 87, 101, 156n10, 223, 233n36, 238, 240, 252 Zimmerman, Michael, 224

About the Author

Hili Razinsky is a researcher at the Center of Philosophy, University of Lisbon.* She has a major in mathematics and the humanities and a master’s and a PhD (2009) in philosophy. Ambivalence has preoccupied her since the beginning of her philosophical career. This theme is intertwined in her work with the study of subjectivity as basically rational, linguistic, engaged, and indeterminate and with the analysis of emotion, belief, action, value, and social relations.

* LanCog, Centro de Filosofia, Universidade de Lisboa, Alameda da Universidade, 1600-214 Lisboa, Portugal

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