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Radical Moral Imagination: Courage, Hope, and Articulation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Mavis Biss
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Abstract

This paper develops the basis for a new account of radical moral imagination, understood as the transformation of moral understandings through creative response to the sensed inadequacy of one's moral concepts or morally significant appraisals of lived experience. Against Miranda Fricker, I argue that this kind of transition from moral perplexity to increased moral insight is not primarily a matter of the “top‐down” use of concepts. Against Susan Babbitt, I argue that it is not primarily a matter of “bottom‐up” intuitive responsiveness to experience. Beyond courage and hope, radical moral imagination involves the articulation of inchoate experience, which allows individuals to make new kinds of moral moves and to lay claim to others' acknowledgment of the meaning of these moves.

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Type
Open Issue Content
Information
Hypatia , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , Fall 2013, pp. 937 - 954
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by Hypatia, Inc.

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Footnotes

I thank two anonymous Hypatia reviewers for their valuable suggestions for revisions and additions. I am also very grateful to Claudia Card, Paula Gottlieb, and Emily McRae for their generous feedback on earlier drafts of this work, which especially influenced my discussion of the story of Yentl and my use of the notion of paradigm failure.

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