The Philosophy Department is thrilled to share that Professor Vida Yao’s article “Eros and Anxiety” from Synthese was selected for the 43rd volume of the Philosopher’s Annual!
The goal of the Philosopher’s Annual is to “select the ten best articles published in philosophy each year—an attempt as simple to state as it is admittedly impossible to fulfill.” The editors are Patrick Grim (Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan; Logic & Formal Semantics, Philosophy, Stony Brook), with Malte Hendrickx, Lindy Ortiz, and Alison Weinberger (University of Michigan).
Professor Yao’s “Eros and Anxiety” explores the following: “Recent philosophical interest in ‘transformative experiences’ is largely motivated by L. A. Paul’s arguments that such experiences challenge our hopes to live up to an ideal she believes is upheld within western, wealthy cultures. If these experiences reveal information to us about the world and ourselves that is in principle unavailable to us before we undergo them, it seems that there is no hope for us to be ‘rational’, ‘authentic’ and ‘autonomous’ masters of our own lives. Supposing that Paul is right about this, how concerned should we be? Here, I challenge the ideal of rational ‘self-realization’ that guides Paul’s project, and which must be granted in order to motivate the problem purportedly generated by experiences that drastically change what we want and what we know.”
Read the full list of selections here.
Congratulations to Professor Yao on this remarkable achievement!