Among moral claims of which I am most suspicious, two seem particularly doubtful: the first insists on minimizing regret; the second asserts the need to resist our fears. Because much like regret, fear is too complex a human experience for a single discussion, I focus on the inward-looking fear of one’s own badness and otherness. I call this eidetic fear—eidetic because of its phenomenological vividness—and argue that it can lead to narrative self-estrangement. I claim that eidetic fears are mistakenly left out of discourses about fear as a moral emotion. I suggest that rather than rejecting eidetic fears as purely destructive to the self, we re-consider their role in helping us to embrace the contingency and relationality of all our identities.   

This talk will be held in South Kedzie Hall, Room 530.