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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 329 who have responded negatively to one's quest for approval. Suppose, for example, that he resembles one's wicked stepfather, hated sibling, or parasitic former spouse. Then one may respond to his esteem or praise, sought-after and highly valued as it clearly is, not with delight or self-confidence, but instead with rage, resentment, or the suspicion of ridicule. One's intuition that such emotions are inappropriate to their immediate causes may then lead one to deny or suppress them, or to refuse to identify them for what they really are. Thus one may express one's resentment in the form of sarcasm or verbal abuse, and claim, upon being confronted, that one was only joking, meant no harm, that one's victim is oversensitive or insecure, and so on. Alternately, one may rationalize one's anger by calling attention to the person's irritating imperfections, and claiming, for example, that anyone who speaks in a high whine and wears chartreuse is bound to provoke blind fury, no matter what his virtues. Finally, one may simply dissociate or disown one's inappropriate emotional response, by claim that it overtook one as a blind, irresistible impulse, and was completely outside one's ability to control. Self-deceivers who take this last tack tend not to recognize the inconsistency involved in then promising that it will never happen again. Or consider the self-avowed "close friend" who sells one's confidences to the tabloids for a hefty fee, then purports surprise at the suggestion that her governing emotion toward one might be competitive envy, resentment, vindictiveness or greed rather than friendship - denying, perhaps, that selling one's confidences to the tabloids is inconsistent with strong emotional attachment of a benevolent nature; or dissociating her opportunism as an uncharacteristic moment of emotional immaturity; or rationalizing it as a well-intended promotional effort on one's own behalf. In both cases, the questionable behavior uncovers emotions at odds with the agent's selfaggrandizing theory of herself as mature, tolerant, and secure in her selfesteem. In both cases, the agent's own emotional response is theoretically anomalous relative to a self-conception that includes commonplace assumptions about psychological normalcy and socially appropriate behavior; but that may not be similarly anomalous relative to a more informed, sophisticated or self-reflective theory of human nature. An agent who is not too incapacitated by her personal investment in her favored theory of herself to do the hard work of analysis and introspection might well move from the relatively provincial, "pre-shrunk" self-conception in which these responses have no place to a more inclusive and informed self-conception in which they are to be acknowledged and controlled rather than disowned. The inclination to self-deception would be correspondingly diminished. 2.2. Conative Anomaly Similar considerations apply to anomalies in action relative to one's conception of one's own character dispositions. Suppose, for example, that I © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
