John P. Birkelund Lecture in the Humanities

Moral Thought in the Age of Psychology

The ascendance of psychology in the twentieth century and beyond has had consequential effects on our frameworks for understanding the moral life. In this lecture, Amanda Anderson explores the importance of literary and philosophical approaches to moral reflection in the context of influential psychological paradigms, from psychoanalysis to cognitive science. In drawing out literary forms of moral reflection, she pays particular attention to the under-acknowledged case of rumination (as opposed to deliberation or judgment), looking at examples drawn from both novels and memoirs.