Papers by Nora Hämäläinen
Bloomsbury Academic, 2012
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Joutsen / Svanen. Kotimaisen kirjallisuudentutkimuksen vuosikirja, 2022
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The Murdochian Mind
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, 2022
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Journal of Philosophy of Education, 2021
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Reading Iris Murdoch's Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, 2019
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Notre Dame philosophical reviews, 2015
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
IJFAB: International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, 2021
Beginning with Barry Hoffmaster’s charge that we reclaim bioethics from the moral philosopher’s t... more Beginning with Barry Hoffmaster’s charge that we reclaim bioethics from the moral philosopher’s top-down theorizing, I discuss two moral philosophy contexts that offer resources for the kind of complex attention Hoffmaster demands: Iris Murdoch and Cora Diamond in moral philosophy and Margaret Urban Walker, Hilde Lindeman, and Marian Verkerk’s joint take on bioethics. My aim is: 1) to dispel a simplified notion of philosophy in bioethics; 2) to unite two strands of philosophy, which converge on important issues relevant to contemporary bioethics; and 3) to explore these strands in terms of enabling, maieutic work on our ethical points of departure.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Modern Philology, 2020
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Philosophy, 2020
Consistency is usually seen as one of the hallmarks and a cardinal virtue of moral theory, as wel... more Consistency is usually seen as one of the hallmarks and a cardinal virtue of moral theory, as well as of any defensible real-life moral perspective. In everyday life a consistent set of moral beliefs is conductive to moral clarity, communicability, responsibility and responsiveness. But this is just one side of the story. In this paper I argue that inconsistency, properly understood, is a productive and constructive aspect of both moral philosophy and our moral lives. After an introductory glance at Ralf Waldo Emerson and Hannah Arendt, the argument proceeds in three main steps. First, I discuss the philosophical importance of paying heed to inconsistencies in our moral lives, which often are prematurely pruned from moral philosophy. Second, I discuss the positive moral roles of inconsistency in terms of responsiveness to different situations, values, needs and concerns that call upon our attention in everyday life. Third, I argue that moral inconsistencies contribute to the necessa...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Descriptive Ethics, 2016
Modern moral philosophy has generally organized its inquiries around two core subjects: 1) normat... more Modern moral philosophy has generally organized its inquiries around two core subjects: 1) normative ethics or ethical theory, concerned with the good and the right, and 2) metaethics, concerned with the meaning, role and status of moral language and moral judgements. These are the central nodes to which other approaches to ethics and other areas of moral inquiry are appended, but they constitute only a part of moral philosophy. To rethink this mode of organizing the field Hamalainen identifies two distinct strands in modern moral philosophy. First, there is a main stream which follows the division of labor between metaethics and normative ethics, and which generally holds that the former should provide ideas concerning the nature and status of morals and the latter should provide rational grounding of morals along with action guidance. Second, there is a strand of moral philosophy which gives priority to the description of our moral lives, moral practices, historically contingent norms, ideas and habits.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Descriptive Ethics, 2016
Hamalainen introduces the idea of descriptive ethics as a topic unduly neglected by contemporary ... more Hamalainen introduces the idea of descriptive ethics as a topic unduly neglected by contemporary philosophers. She argues, first, that philosophical ethics cannot be pursued in meaningful ways without substantial descriptive or comparative work, which often benefits from other sciences as well as the arts. Second, she argues that the main reason why the projects of descriptive ethics are left to others is that there is in today’s philosophical ethics too little understanding of the philosophical import of descriptive work and the philosophical hazards involved in such work.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Descriptive Ethics, 2016
This chapter presents five different ways in which contemporary moral philosophers reach for desc... more This chapter presents five different ways in which contemporary moral philosophers reach for descriptive knowledge about morality, values, and conceptions of the good. These include intuition, narrative literature/film, moral histories, experimental and empirical work, and contemporary “hard cases.” What is interesting about these entrances for knowledge about contingent moralities into philosophy is how they all, in different ways, both open and close the door to a richly descriptive take on ethics.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Descriptive Ethics, 2016
Hamalainen identifies experimental ethics as a main claimant to the title of the contemporary des... more Hamalainen identifies experimental ethics as a main claimant to the title of the contemporary descriptive moral philosophy above others. Reviewing three types of X-phi—the Knobe effect, the trolley cases, and the coin in the phone booth—she argues that contemporary experimental ethics is too close to analytic moral theory regarding its terms and presumptions to be a genuine alternative to mainstream analytic ethics. The experimental work conducted in this field can, however, contribute importantly to the formations of a broader descriptive approach to ethics.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Descriptive Ethics, 2016
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Descriptive Ethics, 2016
Taylor’s work offers itself as a vantage point to descriptive ethics, which seems close to the co... more Taylor’s work offers itself as a vantage point to descriptive ethics, which seems close to the concerns of contemporary mainstream Anglophone moral philosophy. He places himself in explicit dialogue with contemporary Anglophone ethics and social philosophy, and his manner of coining concepts is amenable to Anglophone moral philosophers. But his work is constructed in a way which defies the demands of mainstream moral theory. His most influential book Sources of the Self is not just a history of ethics or moral personhood. It is also an essay on moral genealogy, as well as an exercise in moral and evaluative self-knowledge. Not suggesting a “rational grounding” and theoretical basis for given values and norms, but rather investigating certain aspects of our own evaluative framework, Taylor’s project is close to Foucault’s. But in contrast to Foucault he argues that an affirmative articulation of one’s own normative commitments is essential for a consistent descriptive moral philosophy.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Descriptive Ethics, 2016
Hamalainen discusses the philosopher’s distinctive role in the furtherance of a descriptive ethic... more Hamalainen discusses the philosopher’s distinctive role in the furtherance of a descriptive ethics. Drawing on Max Weber she argues that the current academic specialization and compartmentalization is a natural consequence of a certain idea of expertise and scientific work. But the kind of specialization that may well be in place in the sciences is ill suited to philosophy, because it severs the philosophical work from the real-life intelligence and concerns of the philosopher. In contrast to this, the descriptive moral philosopher must often relinquish the benefits of scholarly and technical expertise, and be a dilettante and an intellectual.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Descriptive Ethics, 2016
Hamalainen presents a methodological problem in contemporary moral philosophy: the problem of imp... more Hamalainen presents a methodological problem in contemporary moral philosophy: the problem of implicit methodological rules and boundaries that make it difficult to include, into moral philosophy, a rich account of our moral present. She develops the notion of a “moral present”: a communal framework of action and valuations, which not only sets the standard for our individual judgments, but is also responsive to the constant ongoing negotiation of practices and norms in human societies. She suggests that this moral present should be a central concern for moral philosophers.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Descriptive Ethics, 2016
Hamalainen returns to the apparent methodological conflict between the Wittgensteinian conceptual... more Hamalainen returns to the apparent methodological conflict between the Wittgensteinian conceptual elucidations and the kinds of empirical and archival work suggested by Dewey and Foucault. She (1) discusses Stanley Cavell’s defense of the Wittgensteinian procedure, (2) offers a critique of this defense, focused on the somewhat arbitrary rules it places on philosophical study, and (3) provides an analysis of what we can and should save of this analysis under the auspices of a broader descriptive moral philosophy.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Descriptive Ethics, 2016
Like Dewey and Wittgenstein, Foucault is a thinker of the moving horizon, not interested in uncov... more Like Dewey and Wittgenstein, Foucault is a thinker of the moving horizon, not interested in uncovering universal principles, but rather in understanding the different ways in which humans come to know about themselves and their world and act upon themselves and others: the conditions of possibility of taken-for-granted views and practices. Not all of this knowledge is ethical in any sense of the word, but much of it is. Foucault’s late work, especially volumes 2 and 3 of the History of Sexuality, is often described in terms of being his work on “ethics.” But these late writings present only the culmination of a thick descriptive and historical inquiry into moral personhood, ancient as well as modern. The essential input of his work for a descriptive ethics lies in his capacity to describe the complex interdependence of practices, institutions, values, forms of personhood, and forms of conceptualization. He also exhibits an intense relationship to his own moral present, which is exemplary for a descriptive philosophical ethics.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Papers by Nora Hämäläinen
När Donald Trump blev vald till president uppstod en internationell diskussion där man försökte förklara hans framgång som ett resultat av det sena 1900-talets ”postmoderna” filosofi. Debattörer och akademiker skrev om hur filosofer som Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida och Jean-François Lyotard förstört det västerländska tänkandet. Där människor förr trodde på en objektiv sanning har de nu blivit relativister som tycker att sanningen är en konstruktion, hette det.
Problemet med resonemanget är att det bygger på en felaktig bild av vad de utpekade filosoferna egentligen skrev, och att förklaringsmodellen skapar syndabockar i stället att hjälpa oss att förstå vad som händer i vår samtid.
Är Trump postmodern? är ett försök till orientering i nuet. Genom läsningar av bland annat Foucault, Derrida och Lyotard, och reflektion kring olika debatter i Finland och i Sverige (bl.a. den om skolans uselhet), söker Hämäläinen ett alternativt sätt att se på vår tid.
Topics discussed include:
* scientific vs. non-scientific ways of describing human and animal behaviour
* the ethics of eating particular animal species
* human nature, emotions, and instinctive reactions
* responses of wonder towards the natural world
* the moral relevance of literature
* the concept of dignity
* the question of whether non-human animals can use language
This book will be of great value to anyone interested in philosophical and interdisciplinary issues concerning language, ethics and humanity's relation to animals and the natural world.
Sabina Lovibond, Essays on Ethics and Feminism (OUP 2015), Chapter 14: ‘Iris Murdoch and the ambiguity of Freedom’
Science and the Self: Animals, Evolution, and Ethics: Essays in Honour of Mary Midgley edited by Ian James Kidd and Liz McKinnell (Routledge, 2015), Chapter 14: Benjamin Lipscomb, ‘Slipping out over the wall: Midgley, Anscombe, Foot and Murdoch’
Varieties of Virtue Ethics edited by David Carr, James Arthur and Kristján Kristjánsson (Palgrave Macmillan 2016), Chapter 6: Konrad Banicki, ‘Iris Murdoch and the Varieties of Virtue Ethics’