The View from Here: On Affirmation, Attachment, and the Limits of Regret 1st edition by Wallace, R. Jay (2013) Hardcover

by R. Jay Wallace

Must we always later regret actions that were wrong for us to perform at the time? Can there ever be good reason to affirm things in the past that we know were unfortunate? In this original work of moral philosophy, R. Jay Wallace shows that the standpoint from which we look back on our lives is shaped by our present attachments-to persons, to the projects that imbue our lives with meaning, and to life itself. Through a distinctive "affirmation dynamic", these attachments commit us to affirming the necessary conditions of their objects. The result is that we are sometimes unable to regret events and circumstances that were originally unjustified or otherwise somehow objectionable.Wallace traces these themes through a range of examples. A teenage girl makes an ill-advised decision to conceive a child - but her love for the child once it has been born makes it impossible for her to regret that earlier decision. The painter Paul Gauguin abandons his family to pursue his true artistic calling (and eventual life project) in Tahiti--which means he cannot truly regret his abdication of familial responsibility. The View from Here offers new interpretations of these classic cases, challenging their treatment by Bernard Williams and others. Another example is the "bourgeois predicament": we are committed to affirming the regrettable social inequalities that make possible the expensive activities that give our lives meaning. Generalizing from such situations, Wallace defends the view that our attachments inevitably commit us to affirming historical conditions that we cannot regard as worthy of being affirmed--a modest form of nihilism.

Genres: Philosophy

Hardcover

First published May 1, 2013

Reviews

[Jana Light · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Our plight as humans might be that we are condemned, in virtue of our attachment to life, to affirming conditions in the world that we cannot possibly regard as worthy of this attitude. There is something absurd about this situation, involving as it does the persistence of attitudes that don't fundamentally make sense to their bearers. But the absurdity may be one that is endemic to the human condition." pg. 204

[jeremiah]

<3

[Teaghan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In The View From Here, R. Jay Wallace does a decent job of discussing issues of regret and reconciling wrong past actions with the present. Such discussion is worthwhile, as it fills a hole generally avoided in philosophy: how do we deal with bad actions when good arises from them? Wallace admits from the beginning that he doesn't have a good answer to this question, eventually settling on what he calls "modest nihilism" which can basically be translated for the common man to "shit happens". This explanation is certainly unsatisfying, but Wallace still has a great deal of interesting thoughts on the subject, enough for a worthwhile book. Still, I don't believe it'd be too much to ask for a few more grasps at a grander theory rather than end on a shrug.