Duties to change desires that sustain oppressive structures

有责任改变维持压迫性结构的欲望

• 批准号: 2884765
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of St Andrews
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2884765
• 关键词: Duties; change; desires; sustain; oppressive

Do we have duties to change desires that we hold which sustain oppressive structures? Answering this overarching question will involve taking on the following three questions: 1. Which desires, if any, sustain oppressive structures? How do they do so? 2. Do we have duties to change these desires? If so, what kind of duties are these?3. Are the objections to the view that one has duties to change desires like these successful?Research context, methods and sources, originality/innovation and contribution to knowledge (academic impact): Some desires sustain oppressive systems - for example, when lots of women desire to have a manly boyfriend, this helps to sustain patriarchal gender roles. In this project, I will motivate and defend the view that we have duties to try to change our desires (and sometimes, the desires of others) when those desires sustain an oppressive system. First, we have a duty to cultivate desires which disrupt these structures. For example, finding "conventionally unattractive" bodies beautiful and sexually desirable. Second, we have a duty to undermine systems which produce desires that sustain oppression. For example, pornography, if it plays a harmful role in shaping our sexual desires. My methodology will involve conceptual analysis; for example, I will explore what it means to be feminine or masculine. I will also draw upon the tools of amelioration - theorising about how we might change a concept for a certain political goal (Haslanger, 2012). In exploring the role of desires in sustaining oppression, I will draw on moral psychology and the literature on adaptive preferences. In the first section, I identify the desires at issue through examining critiques of critiques of sexual, gendered, and aesthetic desires. For example, sexual fetishes for Asian women play help to sustain racist hierarchies (Zheng, 2016); the desire to conform to traditional gender roles - for example, to be traditionally feminine - may contribute to patriarchal harm (Chu, 2018); the desire to be thin and to go on a diet for aesthetic reasons may sustain oppressive beauty standards (Eaton, 2016). In the second section, I will make my positive argument for the duties we are under. First, I explain why these should be considered duties, rather than merely as reasons for action. Second, I explain why we are under these duties instead of some alternatives I consider. In the third section, I defend my view against potential objections and objections raised by other philosophers. The first type of objection is that these duties would be unfair or unethical. For example, it is infantilising to suggest people are incapable of making their own choices about what will harm them (Srinivasan, 2021). I argue the issue is not whether they harm themselves but whether they harm others, so concerns of paternalism are not relevant. Another ethical objection is that everyone is differently placed to resist such desires (Chambers, 2022). I argue that it is a common feature of duties that different people are differently placed to carry them out, as with the duty to give to charity, so it is no problem that the same goes for duties not to have politically bad desires. The second type of objection is that endorsing these duties would be impractical or politically counter-productive in virtue of casting a structural problem as if it is an individual problem (Srinivasan, 2021); I argue that, while these problems are structural, it is necessary for individual patterns of desire to change in order to solve them.

我们有责任改变我们所持有的维持压迫结构的欲望吗？回答这一首要问题需要回答以下三个问题：1.如果有的话，哪些人希望维持压迫结构？他们如何做到这一点？2.我们有责任改变这些欲望吗？如果是这样的话，这些责任是什么？3.反对一个人有责任改变欲望的观点成功了吗？研究背景、方法和来源、原创性/创新和对知识的贡献(学术影响)：一些欲望维持着压抑的制度--例如，当许多女性希望有一个有男子气概的男朋友时，这有助于维持父权制的性别角色。在这个项目中，我将激励并捍卫这样一种观点，即当我们的欲望支撑着一个压迫的体系时，我们有责任试图改变我们的欲望(有时是其他人的欲望)。首先，我们有责任培养破坏这些结构的欲望。例如，发现“传统上不吸引人的”身体美丽，性欲强。其次，我们有责任破坏那些产生了支撑压迫的欲望的体系。例如，色情，如果它在塑造我们的性欲方面起到有害的作用。我的方法将包括概念分析；例如，我将探索女性或男性意味着什么。我还将利用改进的工具--对我们可能如何改变某个政治目标的概念进行理论推导(Haslanger，2012)。在探索欲望在维持压迫中的作用时，我将借鉴道德心理学和关于适应性偏好的文献。在第一节中，我通过考察对性欲望、性别欲望和审美欲望的批评来确定所讨论的欲望。例如，亚洲女性的性恋物癖有助于维持种族主义等级制度(郑，2016)；遵守传统性别角色的愿望--例如，成为传统上的女性--可能会导致父权伤害(朱，2018)；出于审美原因而想要变瘦和节食的愿望可能会维持压迫性的美丽标准(Eaton，2016)。在第二部分，我将为我们所承担的职责提出我的积极论点。首先，我解释为什么这些应该被视为义务，而不仅仅是作为采取行动的理由。其次，我解释了为什么我们要承担这些责任，而不是我考虑的一些替代方案。在第三节中，我针对潜在的反对意见和其他哲学家提出的反对意见，为自己的观点辩护。第一类反对意见是，这些关税将是不公平或不道德的。例如，认为人们没有能力就什么会对他们造成伤害做出自己的选择是幼稚的(斯里尼瓦桑，2021)。我认为，问题不是他们是否伤害了自己，而是他们是否伤害了他人，因此，对家长式作风的担忧无关紧要。另一个伦理上的反对意见是，每个人抵制这种欲望的位置都不同(钱伯斯，2022)。我认为，职责的一个共同特点是，不同的人执行职责的位置不同，就像向慈善机构捐款的职责一样，因此，没有政治上的不良愿望的职责也是不成问题的。第二类反对意见是，赞同这些义务将是不切实际的或在政治上适得其反，因为它将结构性问题描述为个人问题(斯里尼瓦桑，2021年)；我认为，尽管这些问题是结构性问题，但个人的欲望模式有必要改变以解决它们。