Disorientation and Moral Life
Ami Harbin
Reviews and Awards
"Exciting, challenging, and innovative thinking is found in recent feminist and critical race theory, and Ami Harbin's new book, Disorientation and Moral Life is an example...this book is enlightening and would be a good textbook in both philosophy and psychology courses. Clearly, it makes an invaluable contribution to the interdisciplinary fields of philosophy and psychology." -- Metapsychology Online Reviews
"The book demands that we attend to a feature of ordinary human lives curiously neglected by moral theory. Most of us will eventually find ourselves in a situation that staggers our normal expectations: a serious illness, the end of a career, the realization that we are the target of oppression. Harbin asks us to think carefully about these situations, and especially to see how they might be harnessed to contribute positively to our moral choices...Disorientation is a part of many human lives, and in highlighting its capacity to foster moral improvement, Harbin has done a good thing for both ethical theory and the pursuit of social justice." --Hypatia Reviews Online
"Ami Harbin's first book, Disorientation and Moral Life, is a much-welcomed contribution to the field of feminist philosophy. Drawing on a rich tradition of thought in moral psychology, philosophy and feminist theory, as well as on first-person accounts of the disorientations of migration, trauma, queerness, illness and feminist and anti-racist consciousness-raising, Harbin provides readers with a compelling and conceptually astute reading of the moral significance of disorientations." --Hypatia
"By setting out to find moral fruit growing in the disorderly cracks of unsettling phenomena, Harbin contributes to the growing and vital field of non-ideal theory in ethics. There's great and urgent value in her argument against treating practical disorientation as an abject defect...For insisting that we pay close attention to those who wrestle viscerally with problems of how to go on, Harbin's book is a vital intervention in moral philosophy." --Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews