Research Catalog

Title

Impossible dreams : rationality, integrity, and moral imagination / Susan E. Babbitt.

Author

Babbitt, Susan E.

Publication

Boulder, CO : Westview Press, 1996.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xii, 242 p.; 25 cm.

Summary

Conventional wisdom and commonsense morality tend to take the integrity of persons for granted. But for people in systematically unjust societies, self-respect and human dignity may prove to be impossible dreams. Susan Babbitt explores the implications of this insight, arguing that in the face of systemic injustice, individual and social rationality may require the transformation rather than the realization of deep-seated aims, interests, and values. In particular, under such conditions, she argues, the cultivation and ongoing exercise of moral imagination is necessary to discover and defend a more humane social vision. Impossible Dreams is one of those books that combines discourses that were previously largely separate: feminist and antiracist political theory, analytic ethics and philosophy of mind, and a wide range of non-philosophical literature on the lives of oppressed peoples around the world.

Subject

• Ethics
• Feminist theory
• Imagination (Philosophy)
• Imagination
• Integrity
• Reason

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Myths, fantasies, and realism : the story of Sethe -- Transformation experiences and rational deliberation -- Objective interests, nonpropositional knowledge, and conversion experiences -- Leading life from the inside : individuals, minority rights, and some problems about indeterminacy -- Personal integrity, politics, and moral imagination -- Feminists and nature : a defense of essentialism -- Reason and the erotic : the moral significance of personal relations and commitments -- Philosophy and literature : recalling the archangel.

ISBN

• 0813326397 (cloth : alk. paper)
• 0813326400 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^^95045757^

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library