Edward Harcourt
University of Oxford, Philosophy, Faculty Member
- Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophy of Mind, Moral Psychology, Child Development, Wittgenstein, and 12 moreMeta-Ethics, Virtue Ethics, Nietzsche, Philosophy of Psychoanalysis, Philosophy of Psychopathology, Literature, Philosophy of Art, Aristotle, Philosophy of Psychology, Naturalism, Consequentialism, and Emotionedit
- Edward Harcourt’s research lies in ethics, in particular in moral psychology, and on the boundaries between ethics an... moreEdward Harcourt’s research lies in ethics, in particular in moral psychology, and on the boundaries between ethics and the philosophy of mind. His special interests include neo-Aristotelianism and child development, ethical dimensions of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, the moral emotions, love and the virtues, and Nietzsche's ethics; the philosophy of mental health and mental illness; literature and philosophy; and Wittgenstein. A Fellow of Keble since 2005, he was previously Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Kent, and before that Domus Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. He has been a Mind Association Research Fellow and has held visiting appointments including Visiting Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and Wittgenstein Professor at the University of Innsbruck. Before taking the BPhil and DPhil in Oxford he was an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read Philosophy (Part I) and History (Part II). He was Principal Investigator of the Wellcome ISSF project ‘Therapeutic Conflicts: Co-Producing Meaning in Mental Health’ and of the AHRC International Research Network ‘The Development of Character: Attachment Theory and the Moral Psychology of Vice and Virtue’, and remains a director of the biennial Oxford Summer Schools in Philosophy and Psychiatry. He recently completed a four-year secondment to the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council as Director of Research, Strategy and Innovation. In addition to his role in the Philosophy Faculty, he is Professor of Philosophy in Oxford’s Department of Psychiatry where he leads on Patient and Public Involvement for the Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre, and Academic Director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy.edit
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Philosophy and Routledge
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Psychoanalytic writing rarely features on university ethics curricula, so the idea that psychoanalysis has a place in the history of ethics may be a surprise. The aim of the paper is to show that it should not be. The strategy is to... more
Psychoanalytic writing rarely features on university ethics curricula, so the idea that psychoanalysis has a place in the history of ethics may be a surprise. The aim of the paper is to show that it should not be. The strategy is to sketch in outline an enduring line of inquiry in the history of ethics, namely the Platonic-Aristotelian investigation of the relationship between human nature, human excellence and the human good, and to suggest that psychoanalysis exemplifies it too. But since the suggestion, once made, seems not only true but obviously true, the paper spends some time exploring why the place of psychoanalysis in the history of ethics has so often been overlooked, before developing the outline more fully and offering detailed reasons as to why psychoanalysis fits it. One consequence is that Freudian and (in a sense explained) ‘relational’ variants of psychoanalysis continue the Platonic-Aristotelian line of inquiry in interestingly different ways.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Philosophy and Morality
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The concept of epistemic (specifically testimonial) injustice is the latest philosophical tool with which to try to theorise what goes wrong when mental health service users are not listened to by clinicians, and what goes right when they... more
The concept of epistemic (specifically testimonial) injustice is the latest philosophical tool with which to try to theorise what goes wrong when mental health service users are not listened to by clinicians, and what goes right when they are. Is the tool adequate to the task? It is argued that, to be applicable at all, the concept needs some adjustment so that being disbelieved as a result of prejudice is one of a family of alternative necessary conditions for its application, rather than a necessary condition all on its own. It is then argued that even once adjusted in this way, the concept does not fit well in the area where the biggest efforts have been made to apply it so far, namely the highly sensitive case of adult patients suffering from delusions. Indeed it does not serve the interests of service users struggling for recognition to try to apply it in this context, because there is so much more to being listened to than simply being believed. However, the concept is found t...
Research Interests:
This paper interweaves a ‘micro’ theme concerning shame and guilt and a ‘macro’ theme concerning self-regulation generally. Neither shame nor guilt is more other-independent than the other. Moreover, because other-dependence in either... more
This paper interweaves a ‘micro’ theme concerning shame and guilt and a ‘macro’ theme concerning self-regulation generally. Neither shame nor guilt is more other-independent than the other. Moreover, because other-dependence in either emotion is not a mark of heteronomy, neither emotion is more characteristic of a well-functioning moral consciousness. Then, relying on phenomena described by ‘extended mind’ theorists, I argue that a common view of self-regulation in children – that it is importantly other-dependent – is also true of adult self-regulation. But that is all the more reason to think that other-dependence and a well-functioning moral consciousness can go together. Moreover, since shame and guilt are one aspect of self-regulation, if other-dependence can be a characteristic generally of our well-functioning self-regulation – the ‘macro’ thesis – this supports the ‘micro’ thesis that other-dependence can characterize the well-functioning of both shame and guilt. The conclus...
Research Interests:
Secure attachment is reliably associated with ‘the virtues of intimacy’ – the capacity to love well, or to engage in love relations of the best sort. And there is a widely held intuition that the capacity to love well is associated with... more
Secure attachment is reliably associated with ‘the virtues of intimacy’ – the capacity to love well, or to engage in love relations of the best sort. And there is a widely held intuition that the capacity to love well is associated with the virtues across the spectrum: loving well makes us good generally – get it right in the love department, and the rest will take care of itself. This intuition has filtered back into attachment theory, and informs efforts to trace a developmental connection between secure attachment in the early years and adult virtue. That is the first route from secure attachment to virtue. There is an a priori consideration to the effect that these efforts cannot succeed: the capacity to love well, and secure attachment itself, is a capacity trained upon a very small number of non-substitutible individuals, whereas the virtues (which include justice, fairness, fidelity to promises and so on) are in their nature said to be impartial. So how can a capacity of the first kind be the psychological foundation of a set of capacities of the latter kind? This paper develops that objection, and proposes a second route from secure attachment to virtue, though it remains an empirical matter whether the route is actually taken. Alongside its association with the virtues of intimacy, secure attachment is also associated with the disposition to explore the environment, both physical and social, and in a way which does not speak merely to the subject’s immediate needs or interests. Since virtues may be conceived of as patterns of sensitivity to reasons, and reasons may be conceived of as features of the environment, it should be no surprise if there is after all an association between security of attachment and the virtues beyond the virtues of intimacy.
Research Interests:
There are many exciting points of contact between the questions pursued by attachment theory and those first raised by Aristotle’s ethics, and which continue to preoccupy moral philosophers today. This volume brings experts from ethics... more
There are many exciting points of contact between the questions pursued by attachment theory and those first raised by Aristotle’s ethics, and which continue to preoccupy moral philosophers today. This volume brings experts from ethics and from attachment theory together to explore them for the first time, in order to show philosophers working in moral psychology, or in ‘virtue ethics’ – better, the triangle of relationships between the concepts of human nature, human excellence and the best life for human beings – that they both have more to learn from, and more to teach, developmental psychology in the attachment paradigm than has been thought to date.
Attachment theory is a theory of psychological development. And the characteristics attachment theory is a developmental theory of – the various subvarieties of attachment – are evaluatively inflected: to be securely attached to a parent is to have a kind of attachment that makes for a good intimate relationship. But obviously the classification of human character in terms of the virtues and vices is evaluatively inflected too. So it would be strange if there were no story to be told about how these two sets of evaluatively inflected descriptions relate to one another. This collection of papers explores the latest empirical findings on the relationship between attachment and the vices and virtues, and the relative importance of attachment status as against other determinants of prosocial behaviour. It also probes the concept of the prosocial itself, and the connections between prosocial behaviour, virtue and the quality of the social environment; explores whether what we know about these connections casts light on whether there are even such things as stable character traits; and whether attachment theory, in locating the origins of virtue in secure attachment, and attachment dispositions in human evolutionary history, gives support to ethical naturalism, in any of the many meanings of that expression.
Attachment theory is a theory of psychological development. And the characteristics attachment theory is a developmental theory of – the various subvarieties of attachment – are evaluatively inflected: to be securely attached to a parent is to have a kind of attachment that makes for a good intimate relationship. But obviously the classification of human character in terms of the virtues and vices is evaluatively inflected too. So it would be strange if there were no story to be told about how these two sets of evaluatively inflected descriptions relate to one another. This collection of papers explores the latest empirical findings on the relationship between attachment and the vices and virtues, and the relative importance of attachment status as against other determinants of prosocial behaviour. It also probes the concept of the prosocial itself, and the connections between prosocial behaviour, virtue and the quality of the social environment; explores whether what we know about these connections casts light on whether there are even such things as stable character traits; and whether attachment theory, in locating the origins of virtue in secure attachment, and attachment dispositions in human evolutionary history, gives support to ethical naturalism, in any of the many meanings of that expression.
Research Interests:
The concept of epistemic (specifically testimonial) injustice is the latest philosophical tool with which to try to theorise what goes wrong when mental health service users are not listened to by clinicians, and what goes right when they... more
The concept of epistemic (specifically testimonial) injustice is the latest philosophical tool with which to try to theorise what goes wrong when mental health service users are not listened to by clinicians, and what goes right when they are. Is the tool adequate to the task? It is argued that, to be applicable at all, the concept needs some adjustment so that being disbelieved as a result of prejudice is one of a family of alternative necessary conditions for its application, rather than a necessary condition all on its own. It is then argued that even once adjusted in this way, the concept does not fit well in the area where the biggest efforts have been made to apply it so far, namely the highly sensitive case of adult patients suffering from delusions. Indeed it does not serve the interests of service users struggling for recognition to try to apply it in this context, because there is so much more to being listened to than simply being believed. However, the concept is found to apply smoothly in many cases where the service users are children, e.g. in relation to children's testimony on the efficacy of treatment. It is suggested that further research would demonstrate the usefulness of the concept in adult cases of a similar kind.
Research Interests:
As Lamarque agrees, to read philosophy is to read for truth, so if literary fiction non-accidentally conveys philosophical claims, Lamarque's anti-cognitivist position on it must be flawed. Deploying Iris Murdoch's notion of the... more
As Lamarque agrees, to read philosophy is to read for truth, so if literary fiction non-accidentally conveys philosophical claims, Lamarque's anti-cognitivist position on it must be flawed. Deploying Iris Murdoch's notion of the 'work' an author does in a text, I try to expand what should be ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
XXX
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This is a response to Stephen Groarke's 'Moral Experience and the Unconscious', which is itself a commentary on y 'Madness, Badness and Immaturity', all in the same issue of PPP
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The paper focuses on Richard Moran's account (in Authority and Estrangement) of the distinction between attitudes that meet, and alternatively fail to meet, his transparency criterion for what he calls rational health, and compare this... more
The paper focuses on Richard Moran's account (in Authority and Estrangement) of the distinction between attitudes that meet, and alternatively fail to meet, his transparency criterion for what he calls rational health, and compare this with the psychoanalytic distinction between contained and uncontained states of mind. On the face of it, Moran's distinction appears to be a useful theoretical deepening of the psychoanalytic distinction. On closer examination, however, it appears that (a) rational health is a more demanding standard than containment, so the rationally unhealthy contains much that is mentally (quite) healthy; and (b) more seriously, some states that meet the 'transparency' condition are manifestly mentally unhealthy. So transparency needs to be supplemented by an independently understood notion of containment to approach a realistic norm of mental health/ill-health.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Drawing chiefly on attachment theory, but also on Aristotle’s treatment of vice and virtue, and on Kant, an account of love is proposed according to which love of human beings for other human beings is attachment’s distinctively human... more
Drawing chiefly on attachment theory, but also on Aristotle’s treatment of vice and virtue, and on Kant, an account of love is proposed according to which love of human beings for other human beings is attachment’s distinctively human form. The account thereby aims to satisfy three desiderata for any account of human-for-human love, namely (i) that love comes in good and bad varieties, i.e. that it is evaluatively various, (ii) that love’s goodness or badness bears an important relation to autonomy, and thereby to (self-)respect, and (iii) that distinctions between types of love (‘romantic’, ‘parental’, ‘filial’) are too superficial to mark differences in concepts of love. In arguing for the proposed account, I examine relations between parents and their very young children and argue that it is irresistible to see these relations in terms of evaluative concepts which are either the same as, or close relatives of, those that apply to adults. The proposed account can thus be seen not only as an account of love but as a contribution to a ‘virtue ethics’ of the very young.
Research Interests:
This paper tries to connect some considerations about two moral emotions – guilt and shame – with some considerations which have been thought to support the view that the mind is extended. Guilt and shame are emotions of self-regulation... more
This paper tries to connect some considerations about two moral emotions – guilt and shame – with some considerations which have been thought to support the view that the mind is extended.
Guilt and shame are emotions of self-regulation – our experience of these emotions is a sign of whether our self-regulatory systems are in good (or less good) working order. Philosophical literature about guilt and shame often asks ‘which of these emotions manifests a more mature or more well-functioning self-regulatory system?’ Answers vary, but advocates of both answers often assume that the standard of maturity is independence of others’ valuations. This assumption reflects a deeply entrenched view about psychological maturation (present in much child-development literature, but not only there), that although dependence is the inevitable condition of the young, to mature is gradually to come to do for oneself what in youth others did for one. The assumption, however, is a mistake: both guilt and shame can form part of an optimally well-functioning self-regulatory system, and yet be strongly connected to others’ valuations. So the deeply entrenched view ought to be a mistake too. Drawing on some considerations which have been thought to show that the mind is extended, the paper argues that, in the specific case of self-regulation, the deeply entrenched view is indeed mistaken: whether we are young or old, other people form a critical part of the self-regulatory system of any well-functioning human being. The paper suggests, further, that the deeply entrenched view is mistaken quite generally, though this need not be taken to establish any conclusion of an ‘extended mind’ variety: maturity in general, and mature self-regulation in particular, is not about non-other-involving forms of mindedness, but about forms of mindedness that involve others in the right ways.
Guilt and shame are emotions of self-regulation – our experience of these emotions is a sign of whether our self-regulatory systems are in good (or less good) working order. Philosophical literature about guilt and shame often asks ‘which of these emotions manifests a more mature or more well-functioning self-regulatory system?’ Answers vary, but advocates of both answers often assume that the standard of maturity is independence of others’ valuations. This assumption reflects a deeply entrenched view about psychological maturation (present in much child-development literature, but not only there), that although dependence is the inevitable condition of the young, to mature is gradually to come to do for oneself what in youth others did for one. The assumption, however, is a mistake: both guilt and shame can form part of an optimally well-functioning self-regulatory system, and yet be strongly connected to others’ valuations. So the deeply entrenched view ought to be a mistake too. Drawing on some considerations which have been thought to show that the mind is extended, the paper argues that, in the specific case of self-regulation, the deeply entrenched view is indeed mistaken: whether we are young or old, other people form a critical part of the self-regulatory system of any well-functioning human being. The paper suggests, further, that the deeply entrenched view is mistaken quite generally, though this need not be taken to establish any conclusion of an ‘extended mind’ variety: maturity in general, and mature self-regulation in particular, is not about non-other-involving forms of mindedness, but about forms of mindedness that involve others in the right ways.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The paper concerns two familiar lines of inquiry: one, stemming from a neo-Aristotelian naturalism associated with Foot and others, asks whether we can derive a catalogue of human excellences from what humans need in order to be some way.... more
The paper concerns two familiar lines of inquiry: one, stemming from a neo-Aristotelian naturalism associated with Foot and others, asks whether we can derive a catalogue of human excellences from what humans need in order to be some way. The second asks whether (as Plato said) virtue is a kind of health, and vice a kind of illness. The first is often seen as a failure to the extent that it does not enable us to derive a list of moral virtues. But the concept of human excellence is many-layered, so the fact that Foot’s approach may not succeed for moral virtues does not show that it is no good for anything. The kinds of psychological characteristic derived from a more liberal application of Foot’s approach may also help to give non-trivial answers to the second, Platonic line of inquiry.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
These comments focus on the Platonic-Aristotelian identification of mental health with virtue and mental illness with vice, which connects Plato and Aristotle directly to contemporary discussions arising out of Szasz and anti-psychiatry.... more
These comments focus on the Platonic-Aristotelian identification of mental health with virtue and mental illness with vice, which connects Plato and Aristotle directly to contemporary discussions arising out of Szasz and anti-psychiatry. It is argued that though one Aristotelian characterization of virtue-the rational adjustment of emotion (and by extension, other types of mental state) to cause and context-fits mental health exactly, Aristotle's account of mental illness as disunity may be questioned. First, some forms of disunity (such as Kleinian ambivalence) may actually be aspects of mental health. Secondly, some psychiatric disorders-notably some personality disorders-are more obviously related to vice and weak will, and therefore lie more obviously on a continuum with virtue, than others. It is also suggested that this limitation on the account of mental illness as disunity may have been intended by Aristotle himself.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Art, Literature, Values, Self Control, Self, and 8 moreDiscipline, Agency, Perspective, REE, Character, Self Deception, Foot, and Revaluation
Under the influence of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically inspired research in child development, philosophers have recently begun to acknowledge the role played by loving nurture in the development of the capacity to think about... more
Under the influence of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically inspired research in child development, philosophers have recently begun to acknowledge the role played by loving nurture in the development of the capacity to think about oneself or, as I shall put it – though the thoughts in question obviously sometimes fall short of knowledge – the capacity for self-knowledge. As Neera Badhwar has said, drawing on the work of D. W. Winnicott and others: The look of love does more than see the loved individual veridically: it also shows the loved individual what it sees. … The loving mother reflect[s] the baby’s facial expressions and mental states on her own face, thereby giving the baby a concrete image of its own psychological states. The mother’s look of love is, then, the first avenue to self-awareness and self-understanding.
Any question about action explanations that appeal to the unconscious raises the prior question of what is meant by unconsciousness and by unconscious mentality. Though a full treatment of these questions lies beyond the scope of the... more
Any question about action explanations that appeal to the unconscious raises the prior question of what is meant by unconsciousness and by unconscious mentality. Though a full treatment of these questions lies beyond the scope of the present chapter, some comment on them is needed in order to avoid taking for granted conventional philosophical uses of 'unconscious' as introducing a well-demarcated topic or set of topics. As regards action explanations that appeal to the unconscious themselves (henceforth, for brevity, 'unconscious action explanations'), the questions addressed here are mainly two. First, to what extent are unconscious action explanations of a distinctive kind or kinds; in particular, how, if at all, do they differ from the kinds of action explanations supplied by conscious factors, and from the kinds of explanation, conscious or unconscious, of doings of ours which are not actions? Secondly, how closely is the phenomenon of irrationality in action connected with the availability of an unconscious explanation? Many things people do are explained by things about themselves that they don't know-that is, by things about themselves of which they are, in a non-technical sense, unconscious. A man knocks over a glass thanks to a Parkinsonian twitch, without knowing he has the disease; a woman vomits because she is pregnant, though she doesn't know it yet. But these doings of ours do not qualify as actions. Irritably criticizing a friend, however, is an action, and might be explained by the fact that my blood sugar is low, which I don't know.