Symposium on How We Get Along: Responses to Critics (original) (raw)

2014

Abstract

How We Get Along begins with a sob: you are crying uncontrollably. But then you get a hold of yourself and settle down to have a good cry. I ask: what has changed? Whatever it is, it’s what makes the difference between behavior that is out of your control and therefore not an action of yours, on the one hand, and behavior that is in your control and therefore an action, on the other. I contend that whereas the uncontrolled crying is simply the manifestation of hurt or grief, the controlled crying manifests something further, namely, your awareness of the hurt or grief, and your resulting perception of crying as what it makes sense to do. Had you been unable to think of what you might be crying about, you would have asked yourself “Why am I crying?”, and your tears would have tapered off. Because you do know what you’re crying about, however, you keep crying, but now with the concurrence of that self-understanding, which transforms your crying from mere behavior into an action. What ...

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