In Defense of a Narrow Drawing of the Boundaries of the Self

Abstract

In his monograph *Happiness for Humans*, Daniel C. Russell argues that someone’s happiness is constituted by her virtuous engagement in a certain special sort of activity, which he calls *embodied activity*. An embodied activity is one which depends for its identity on things which lie outside of the agent’s control. What this means is that whether or not it is possible for the activity to continue is not completely up to the agent. A motivating example is my activity of living alongside my spouse. Whether or not it is possible for this activity to continue is not entirely within my control, because my spouse might die, or otherwise become unavailable to me. To defend the view that it’s embodied activities which are constitutive of happiness, Russell defends what he calls the *embodied conception* of the self. This is the view that the boundaries of the self whose happiness is at stake include all the constitutive parts of our embodied activities.

In response, I provide two arguments. Firstly, I show that while Russell makes a good case for the relevance of embodied *activities* to happiness, he doesn’t establish that we must adopt the embodied conception of the *self* in order to obtain those insights. Secondly, I argue that to draw the boundaries of the self in accordance with the embodied conception involves forming beliefs in a way that is not epistemically responsible. In making this argument I rely on the claim that there is a strong, particular sense in which other people are unknowable to us, a claim which is developed in the fiction of Haruki Murakami.

Full text

Vol.:(0123456789)
The Journal of Value Inquiry (2020) 55:669–684
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-020-09761-2
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In Defense ofaNarrow Drawing oftheBoundaries
oftheSelf
SeanWhitton1
Published online: 7 October 2020
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020, corrected publication 2022
1.
In his monograph Happiness for Humans, Daniel C. Russell defends a number of
theses which together constitute a normative conception of happiness for humans.1
He argues that someone’s happiness is constituted by what he calls embodied activ-
ity. Russell thereby focuses our thinking about happiness on a special sort of agency,
rather than on our patiency (to borrow Russell’s terminology). We make our lives
happy by engaging in the right sort of activities in the right way—specifically, by
engaging in embodied activities in ways that are virtuous. What simply happens to
us, on the other hand, is never constitutive of happiness. Accidents of fortune merely
have the potential to prevent us from being happy, and their occurrence can force us
to have to try to make our lives happy in a new, distinct way.
An embodied activity is one which depends for its identity on things which lie
outside of the agent’s control. Whether or not it is possible for the activity to con‑
tinue is not completely up to the agent, for example, my activity of living alongside
my spouse; my wife might die, or otherwise become unavailable to me. Contrast this
with a formalized activity, such as living in a way which is respectful of others. It’s
entirely within my control whether or not I live in ways which are respectful, so the
activity does not depend for its identity upon anything which is outside of my con‑
trol. In terms of this contrast between embodied and formalized activities, Russell’s
philosophy of happiness becomes the view that not only is happiness a matter of
activity, rather than what happens to us, but it is a matter of embodied activity, not
formalized.
Thank you to Julia Annas, Rachana Kamtekar, Jeremy Reid, Houston Smit, Mark Timmons and an
anonymous reviewer for helpful discussions and comments on this material.
* Sean Whitton
spwhitton@email.arizona.edu
1 University ofArizona Department ofPhilosophy, Social Sciences 213, 1145 E South Campus
Drive, Tucson, AZ85721‑0027, USA
1 See Daniel C. Russell, Happiness for Humans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
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