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Show Chapter VIII. The Problem of Rational Final Ends 346 attachment to my own desires. My lack of personal connectedness to Jeff is maintained by my overabundant personal connectedness to my own desires and emotions. In both cases, there may be some validity to these complaints. I may be, indeed, so enamoured of my moral theory and the fact that I subscribe to it that I really do regard other moral agents as nothing more than occasions for instantiating its precepts. But alternately, I may be so committed to the satisfaction of my other-directed desires that I regard other moral agents in a similarly superficial way, as mere occasions for exercising my beneficence. This is the stereotype of the "do-gooder," whose moral behavior somehow seems entirely self-aggrandizing, and neither elicits nor presupposes any attachment to the individuals her actions serve. In this case, too, the agent foregoes the depth and insight that accompanies attention to the specifics of who they are, for the sake of an essentially egocentric conception of reality. In the first case, the self is personally invested in a theoretical moral stance that degenerates into impersonality because it is used to deflect and disguise unmediated interpersonal contact. But in the second case, the self is invested in a nontheoretical moral stance that also generates into impersonality because it deploys others as a means to the achievement of its personal moral ideal. Thus I may subvert my personal connection with myself and others, not only by interposing a universalistic moral theory between us. I may accomplish this by interposing self-aggrandizing emotions and desires as well. To suppose that impersonality necessarily implies unemotionality would be mistaken. For in both of these cases, the very real problem to which Williams' thesis calls attention is not just personal detachment, but a deeper, more generalized pathological narcissism, of which the condition Williams characterizes as "moral alienation" is merely a contingent and localized symptom. 3.2.4. Narcissism By narcissism, I mean that persisting state of the self characterized by an excessive preoccupation with one's self-image and image in the eyes of others, with one's personal flaws and assets and an unrealistic ideal of perfection against which they are measured, and with a self-oriented conception of one's relationship to others. Moreover, a self is narcissistic if it cannot tolerate others' independence of its expectations and requirements, nor appreciate their independence as intrinsically valuable. Finally, a self is narcissistic if these preoccupations effectively shield it against unmediated interpersonal © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
